Before Mark drives me home, I go to Jenna’s room to tell her that I’m going to Michigan. It’s strange, seeing her bookcases empty, half her clothes taken from their hangers and packed into boxes labeled “Donation” in her mom’s handwriting. The other half—her formal dresses for school banquets and weddings and funerals—hang forlornly. I wonder if Trisha means to keep them or just couldn’t bear to put any more bits of Jenna into boxes.

It feels too soon.

But there’s the window where she cried over Moot, and there is the bed beside which I first stepped into Orman. There’s the rug that covers a large Coke stain, from when we were too immersed in our books to hear the glass fall and the liquid soaked into the floor.

Maybe part of her lingers still. Maybe I am not entirely alone.

“I’m taking a trip,” I whisper. My voice comes out reverent and hushed. “I’m going to Michigan. Mostly because of that book you sent. You probably think it’s stupid, but … you’re not here to tell me what a stupid idea this is, so I’m going to do it, okay? I swear on Orman, I’ll come back and do everything you wanted. The prep course, Missoula … everything.”

A light wind rattles against her bedroom window, the leaves on a tree branch casting fluttering shadows on the floor. I hope it’s a magical, clever wind come to aid me in Jenna’s absence.

I hope it stays.

When I stand between my mother and the television later that night to tell her I am going to Michigan for a week, that Mark took care of the flight, she tilts her head to look at me, cigarette held between her fingers.

“You know where the suitcase is?” she asks.

My father took the luggage when he left us, but I nod anyway.

“Great. Just leave me y’all’s travel details. Now, can you move, Ames? This is the best part.”

I don’t correct her when she assumes Jenna’s parents are going with me. Later, I hear her laughing in the living room as I pack my duffle bag with sweaters, T-shirts, and the 101st copy of The Forest Between the Sea and the Sky.

After hesitating, I pick up my camera case from where it rests on my dresser, a dust ring left in its wake. I haven’t touched it since the festival, haven’t wanted to, even if my head can’t seem to stop trying to take mental photos.