“Disoriented.”

“I mean, look what I did,” she said. “Untied myself and climbed up that hill and ran out to the road without even putting my clothes on. I had to be disoriented. If I was thinking normal, would I do that? Then, after that old guy, the one on the road who…” Her frown made it as far as the left side of her mouth before retracting.

“The old man who…”

“I was going to say the old guy saved me but I wasn’t in real danger. Still, I was pretty terrified. Because I still didn’t know if Dylan was okay. By the time the old guy called the rescue squad and they got there, Dylan was out of the ropes and standing there. When no one was looking, he gave a little smile. Like ha-ha, good joke.”

“You feel Dylan manipulated you.”

“That’s the saddest thing. Losing trust. The whole thing was supposed to be about trust. Nora’s always teaching us about the artist’s life as constant danger. You’re always working without a net. Dylan was my partner and I trusted him. That’s why I went along with it in the first place.”

“Did it take him a while to talk you into it?”

She frowned. “He made it like an adventure. Buying all that stuff. He made me feel like a kid having fun.”

“Planning was fun,” I said.

“Exactly.”

“Buying the rope and the food.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Careful plan.”

Her shoulders tightened. “What do you mean?”

“You guys paid cash and used several different stores in different neighborhoods.”

“That was all Dylan,” she said.

“Did he explain why he’d planned it that way?”

“We really didn’t talk about it. It was like…we did so many exercises before, this was just another one. I felt I had to use my right side. Of my brain. Nora taught us to concentrate on using the right side of the brain, just kind of slip into right-brain stuff.”