Translations:Prologue/6/en

We were away from our parents and the control of any adults, making our own decisions about where to go, what to eat, when we slept, judging for ourselves what risks to take. At school, none of us were the cool kids. Only Danny played an organized sport—basketball—and he soon quit that to make time for our hikes. I was the skinniest of the group and usually the coldest, and I always felt like I was weaker than the others. Still, I liked the physical challenge, and the feeling of autonomy. While hiking was becoming popular in our part of the country, not a lot of teenagers were traipsing off in the woods for eight days on their own.