We were all sprawled on the grass in Miller Park, the four of us, and the mood was somewhere between euphoric and dead. Three years of university, and every summer the question came up again: what do we actually do with ourselves?

"Detox," Lauren announced, lying flat on her back with her black hair fanned out on the grass. "That's what we need. No phones. No laptops. No scrolling until two in the morning."

"You say that every summer," Jason said. He was sitting against a tree with his eyes closed, still wearing the exhausted face of a man who'd just finished a four-hour anatomy exam. "And every summer you're posting selfies by day two."

"That was one summer."

"I found a cabin near Lake Vernon once," Rayan offered, scrolling through his phone. "Looked amazing. Four hundred a night."

"For four hundred a night, the lake should come to us," I said.

Lauren sat up and started searching too, holding her phone close, muttering prices under her breath. Everything was too expensive. Rayan struck out as well — everything cheap was either a ditch with a roof or eleven hours away. I'd been half-searching for weeks, honestly, keeping a list in my notes app, and one of the results I'd almost scrolled past snagged my eye.

"Okay," I said slowly. "Don't laugh. But I found something."

They all looked at me.

"It's a farm. Out past Harrow's Woods — like two hours north. They take seasonal workers in the summer. Room and board are included."

Silence. Then Rayan made a face like I'd suggested we spend the summer eating gravel.

"Farm work? Ashley. You know what farm work is, right? It's scrubbing chicken coops and shoveling manure. That's the detox you're offering us?"

"We wouldn't be there all day," I said, and I'll admit I was already selling it in my head. "The listing says the hours are flexible. And look—" I turned my phone around, "—there's a lake right on the property. A whole lake. Swimming, no people, no signal. We work a few hours in the morning, relax the rest of the day. It's basically free."

"Basically free because they pay us in nothing," Jason said.

"You're paying four hundred a night otherwise. Do the math."

Lauren leaned over and looked at my screen. "I mean... it's something different, at least. When are we ever going to …