The Grace Year

Tierney wakes up and realizes that she is exposed and alone in the woods without water. Her nerves are “dangling by a thread” and she wonders if “Eve is toying with [her]” (172), but she makes her way through the woods and finds water high on a spring. She notices that it tastes clean, “nothing like the water from the well” (173). She comes across a frayed red ribbon, and attached to it is the skull of a dead girl. Tierney remembers the ghost stories about the girls who went into the woods and never returned, and she wonders if “the ghost stories are true” (176).

Tierney runs away from the dead girl and stumbles through the woods until she arrives back at the girls’ camp. She keeps her distance and hides in the trees, watching the girls and listening as they discuss her. Kiersten says that there’s “a lot more [she] can cut off of Gertie” if Tierney tries to come back (178). Tierney heads back into the woods, feeling lonelier than ever before.

For days, Tierney hides out in the woods, and she starts to regain her sanity. She wonders if “just being around [the other girls] is what’s making the sickness spread” (179).