We pass a felled tree in the meadow, decomposing but alive with the motion of termites devouring. I am the tree, I think. I am cut down, caving in on myself. I have to smack a mosquito off my face before I go too far down that spiral.

            “The thing I love about hiking is how it gets you out of your head and into your body,” I say. No one responds. That’s happened a lot since I arrived three days ago.

            I spend the rest of the hike silent, head down, but for occasionally mouthing “I hate this,” to my boyfriend every time he looks at me too reassuringly.

            His friends, I’ve decided, already hate me. He will hate me soon, too.

            I lose track of how many mosquitos I slap off my neck, my arms, my hands, my legs, my back. I give up around mile three. A mile later, I realize slapping mosquitos is a wordless way to voice my discontent, so I resume the killing spree.

            His friends wore bug spray. I doubt it would have mattered to them if they hadn’t. They’re ultra-marathoners and ultra about everything. They enjoy gritting their teeth through their various hobbies and look down on anyone who doesn’t share their masochistic interests. But then, that’s probably all in my head. Isn’t it?

            After the hike, I mope around. I tell my boyfriend I’ll never hike again in my life. He asks if I’m just saying that for dramatic effect, or if I really mean it.

“I really, really mean it,” I say.

I watch my petulant-child-self from above. I know I’m testing his patience but I’m too hot and bug-bitten to care.

He has one week to reconnect with his oldest friends and I’m ruining it. He doesn’t say this, but I know it.

Back in our basement bedroom at the rental house, he tells me no one expects anything from me. I tell him I don’t feel like I’m fitting in. I tell him I’m trying — he gives me a little look — but I don’t think his friends like me. He says he doesn’t think that’s true. Unconvincingly, as far as I’m concerned.

On the fourth night, I have to make tacos for the group. I made an elaborate plan, five kinds of veggie fillings to meet every Bay Area diet requirement in the room. But that was on day one. That was before I understood their standards and before they convinced me to go on a six-mile hike.

His friends document their lives incessantly. Shots of grand scenery from lookout points. Screenshots of their heart rates and macros. Photos of healthy home-cooked meals. There are even a few pictures of me, scowling at a GoPro, standing a little too far behind the group in mosquito meadow. Pieces of evidence that I existed in their lives, however briefly.

It occurs to me that this is completely normal behavior and my snobbishness about social media is likely because I have very little to share. But as they compare routes over dinner, I find myself thinking — if a trail runner runs in the forest but doesn’t record it on Strava, was the trail truly run?

I watch them shovel down ten tacos each, copiously salting each one.

His friends play the New York Times crossword puzzle every night. They’re intense about it, like everything. They’re always trying to beat their last time. I avoided this ritual until the seventh and final night of the trip, but I thought I’d make one last effort to win them over.

After the crossword (I guessed once, incorrectly), we play Connections, matching words with a common theme. “This might be too easy,” I say, “but those four words are the only words with the letter T in them.”

These graduates of elite Master’s programs immediately dismiss my guess. They spend half an hour solving another clue, and then my answer is finally revealed. The silent T.

“Nice, you had it!” my boyfriend says.

“Well, the silent T isn’t really the same as just having a T in them,” his friend says.

I wonder if I was happier alone. I wonder about the future of our relationship. I’ll need to make a real decision about this once I’m home, I think.

As it turns out, I didn’t.