Some instinct kicks in and I roll onto the grass on the other side of the street just as the truck screeches past. My left arm scrapes against the gritty sidewalk. I lift my head in time to see the muddy truck tear around another corner. For a few more seconds I can still hear it, and it takes some time to understand that the truck is gone without my body splattered across it like an insect carcass.

For a second everything comes in gulps—my breath, vision, heartbeat. The injustice of my situation fills me up and threatens to spill out my eyeballs. I’m ditched, alone, in a who-knows-where part of a magical but strange city, and I nearly got turned into truck-paste.

A new worry pops between my eyeballs like a slung stone. “My camera,” I manage to squeak.

I look around, and I see the camera bag behind me. I pull the strap toward me, pretty sure that I actually will die if anything is wrong with my camera.

There’s a small scratch across the front of the case, but the heavy-duty bag did its job. The bag somehow got flung off my shoulder and landed on the grass and my camera is still flawless.

I have my camera. I can take my travel photos and Treasure Hunt photos. Something New hasn’t gone quite like I planned so far, but I can figure something out. I have my camera. I will be fine.

Eventually my breathing begins to calm down. I start to stand up, but my knees are so jittery I sit down again. My arm from my left shoulder down to my elbow is scraped and gritty. I feel the pain beginning to seep in, dull like a slow squeeze, but at the moment it doesn’t hurt too bad.

Now that my panic and adrenaline levels are starting to normalize, I go over my situation again. My heart is still fluttering, but my thoughts are slowly coming back to me, and I shake my hands at my sides like I can shake my brain back into focus. It also helps hold back the wet heat starting to sting my eyes. If Ruth hadn’t abandoned me, I wouldn’t be sitting here, scraped up, by the side of an unknown road. I slap the concrete under me—how dare she leave me like this—but it only adds a hurt palm to my injuries.