Aria spent the day in a state of shock. She figured that hanging around a public place like this would keep the people looking for her (assuming there were any) off of her trail. Her hope was that people would mistake her for a high school student on a field trip. And to her surprise, no one ever did suspect a thing.

On a few occasions, she let Clifford out onto the sidewalk. People would come by to pet him and remark at the cuteness of such a docile cat, which was behaving more like a dog on the end of her makeshift leash. She was able to sneak Clifford into a public restroom in the subway station adjacent to the museum, where she created a puddle for him to drink from in an indentation in the tile floor. Aria waited for the brief seconds in between people coming and going to stop pretending to wash her hands and instead drink from the faucet. They both went without food that day. And as the night set in, Aria realized, not having thought of it before leaving, that she had no idea how she was going to get food for either of them.

When the sun went down, she snuck into the public bathroom one last time. She pulled out her toothbrush and toothpaste and hairbrush and brushed her teeth just like she would have if she were home. She watched herself in the dirty mirror, pulling the bristles of her hairbrush through her hair. The way she felt had changed throughout the day. Now, she wasn’t feeling empowered anymore. She wasn’t feeling sadness anymore. Instead she was feeling lost in a world that she now realized she was completely unprepared for. She found herself staring at a leak of orange soap fluid on the sink, in a daze, when the automatic lights switched off. “Come here, sweetie pea,” she said to Clifford, scooping him up again.