But, you know, I didn’t really feel like talking anyway. I stood there in the water—knee deep with my waders on—casting, teasing the fly over the water, and then slowly reeling back. The other kids had gone around a bend down river, so the only person I could see was Layla. After a while, she just sort of blended in with everything, like she was part of nature.

The way Layla fished, it was like she belonged there, even with her weird hair and strange clothes. She was really graceful when she cast, and really calm while she waited for a fish to bite. But, I was calm there, too. There was something about water—the way it sounded against the banks and over the rocks. It was like we were a million miles away from every bad thing.

I must have been spacing out a little because I didn’t feel the tug until Layla said, “I think you got something.” I reeled my line back in and grabbed this good looking fish they call a “Big German Brown trout.” I took it off the fly, and threw the trout in our bucket. After just a while, Layla and I had caught three brown trout. We went back to find Nina, so she could show us how to kill them and prepare them to be cooked.

As we walked along the river, Layla and I still weren’t talking.

But it was as if some of her anger had been left back where we had been fishing. I left some of my anger there too—my anger about having to be at this camp in the first place.

We floated a little more that evening and then set up camp where the Wise River pays tribute to the Big Hole River. Just kidding.

That’s just an expression I learned here. When one river feeds into a bigger river, it usually becomes part of that new river. The first river is then called a tributary to the second.

We all ate our freshly caught fish for dinner together. Then we camped, there at the end of Wise River. My muscles ached, but a good kind of ache. I slept pretty well.