A homeless girl is walking down the street carrying two backpacks, two skateboards, and a banjo, looking for her traveling companion, a boy named Evan.

After her dad killed himself, she ran away from his tiny adobe in Tuscon, where she was living alone, with Evan, who she met at the bus stop. He had run from his abusive family. The two traveled together for a long time, often sleeping together. He proposed and she accepted. He collected, books, any books, in his backpack. One was "Herman Melville, Volume 1," the first volume of a biography on the author's life. Now, they weigh her down.

She sees a group of men with packs and tries to avoid them. She asks for free samples at a store and tries to use their bathroom, but is denied on both accounts. Outside, one of the men walks toward her. She throws up on the sidewalk and a woman helps her and offers her water and food and to come to her home for tea. The girl refuses and goes to the old reservoir, where Evan had proposed. The man ambushes her in the woods and rapes her, and the woman appears and fights him off with a stick.

She lets the woman take her to her home, where the woman feeds her and offers her clothes and a bathroom. The woman tells her about long backpacking trips with a friend, Ginny, who it seems she was in a relationship with. She tells a story of getting mauled by a bear. She feels reluctant to accept help but steals the woman's toilet paper. In the bathroom, she realizes she can't find her money. They had saved $1500 to start a life together. She realizes Evan most likely stole it and ran off. She feels hurt and betrayed. The woman pressures her to drink with her then, as she's dozing off, insists she play her a song, becoming angry when the girl doesn't want to. Her mood swings quickly back though, begging the girl to stay when the girl says she'll leave.

The next morning, the girl decides what to leave behind, leaving many of Ethan's books at the woman's house. She decides not to look for him any more. She asks the woman to drive her to the interstate and drop her off. However, when they get there, the woman ignores her instructions and says she'll drive her home herself, though the drive is long. The girl brings up the story about getting mauled by a bear again, and the woman says she punched the bear. You're meant to punch the bear or make yourself bigger.

The girl wonders how to make oneself bigger, but the next year, the girl gives birth, presumably to Evan's baby, and finds a new sense of strength and feels she has done exactly that.