1
BREANNA
The guy behind the counter was going to be a problem. I could tell before he opened his mouth.
He was big—tall and broad through the shoulders in a way that made the space behind the counter look like it had been built for someone smaller. Dark hair pushed back off his forehead, a jaw that could have been cut from the same granite as the mountains outside, and hands that were currently doing something with a logbook and a pen that suggested he wrote things down by hand on purpose and not because he didn't know how to use a computer.
He looked up when the screen door slapped shut behind me, and his eyes found mine. My heartbeat did something I was going to ignore.
I'd driven all the way from Raleigh. My car smelled like gas station coffee and the hand sanitizer I'd spilled in the cupholder somewhere around Burlington. I'd left campus at noon, skipped lunch, and spent the last forty-five minutes on a two-lane road that wound through the mountains like it was trying to lose me.
I was tired and hungry, and my hair had been in the same bun since six a.m. I was not in the mood for the face.
The face. I knew it by heart. Every outfitter, every guide service, every outdoor rec counter I'd walked up to—the same face. The polite shift. The quick flick of the eyes—down, up, settle on a neutral expression that almost hid the fact that they'd already decided what I wanted before I said a word.
She wants the sunset float. She wants the gentle rapids. She wants someone to paddle for her while she takes pictures for social media.
I didn't want any of that. I wanted information, and I wanted it specific.
Wildwood River Co. was the last outfitter on my list. I'd tried three others between Boone and Asheville. The first one had tried to sell me a couples’ package. The second had nodded along while I talked and then handed me a brochure with a girl in a bikini on the front. The third had listened to my whole explanation, paused, and said, "So like a nature walk, but on the water?"
I'd walked out of that one without responding.
This place was different from the others, at least physically. No neon signage, no inflatable kayak propped by the door. The building was wood and stone, lived-in, with a covered porch that looked out over a gravel lot and, beyond it, a slope of green that dropped toward the river. There were racks of paddles along one wall, a whiteboard with trip schedules written in neat block letters, and a topographic map of the river pinned behind the counter that had been marked up so many times the original print was barely visible.
It looked like a place that took the water seriously. That was either a good sign or a setup for a more sophisticated version of the same disappointment.
The man behind the counter set his pen down. "Help you?"
Two words. No smile. Not unfriendly—just unhurried. Like he had all day and planned to give me exactly as much of it as I needed.
I walked to the counter and put my hands flat on it, the way I always did when I was about to have this conversation. Grounded. Ready.
"I need access to a stretch of river with specific conditions," I said. "East-facing bank, open canopy—minimal overhang from hardwoods, no dense rhododendron tunnel. Slow current, ideally a wide bend where the water spreads out and goes shallow at the margins. Water temperature in the low seventies if you've been monitoring it, though I can take my own readings on-site."
He didn't blink. Didn't do the face. Didn't look at me like I'd spoken in a language he didn't recognize.
"What's the access for?" he asked.
And here it was. The moment where I explained my work and watched a grown man try to figure out how to respond to a twenty-three-year-old woman talking about insects with unreasonable enthusiasm.
"Firefly field survey," I said. "I'm collecting population and behavioral data onPhotinusspecies along riparian corridors in the western part of the state. I need to be on the water at dusk—ideally in position thirty minutes before sunset and staying through full dark. The habitat conditions I described correlate with peak signaling activity. I've been working from satellite imagery and topo maps to identify candidate sites, but I need someone with ground-level knowledge of the water to get me to one that's actually accessible."
I waited. This was usually where it fell apart. The nod that meant he'd stopped listening. The suggestion that I "check with the park service." The well-meaning offer to "set something up" that would never actually happen.
He turned to the map behind him. Studied it for a few seconds. Then he tapped a spot upstream of the marked trip routes—a wide bend I could see even from where I was standing, the contour lines spreading apart where the river flattened out.
"The stretch you're looking at off the satellite—that's Dawson Bend. East-facing, open canopy. But the bank's undercut on the inside of the curve. Water temp runs warmer than the rest of the river because it's shallow and sun-exposed, but the substrate is mostly bedrock, not the silty margins you'd want for larval habitat." He looked at me. "You'd get adult activity there, but you wouldn't get density."
I stared at him.
He turned back to the map and tapped a different spot—farther upstream, past the last marked trail. "This is what you want. Hadley Bend. East-southeast exposure, canopy opens up on the south bank where a storm took out a stand of hemlocks eight years ago. The regrowth is low—wildflowers, grasses, young hardwoods. Water spreads wide and goes ankle-deep at the margins, and the substrate is silt and leaf litter over clay. Temp runs seventy-one, seventy-two this time of year. I don't monitor it officially, but I've been on that water enough to know."
He said all of this the way a mechanic would describe an engine—no performance, no flourish. Just information, delivered because it was relevant.
My hands were still flat on the counter. I realized I was gripping the edge.
"Hadley Bend isn't on your trip routes," I said, because I'd studied every map of this river I could find, and that stretch hadn't appeared on any outfitter's published itinerary.
