The song ends, and the lights come on. It’s over. Everything is over. I accept hugs and warm wishes for my future with my usual effervescence. (Thank you! I love you! God Bless! PTL!) But for once, it tires me out. Apparently, being ungenuine is exhausting. I don’t bother correcting anyone on the destination of my plans, and I don’t share what’s in my heart. Not even with Ben. I’ll miss him and his ridiculous lumberjack beard the most out of all these kids. Pretending everything is okay around him makes my insides squirm, but I’m allowing this door to close, and I’m walking away. I’m turning over a new leaf, a new life. I really hope it works out for them in there.

But I’m no longer sure it will. Not for any of us.

The clock on the wall reads seven thirty, and I’m regretting asking Vada to wait until sundown to pick me up. I was all in my feels and wanted to sneak out of my parents’ two-story bungalow in Ann Arbor, Michigan, under the cloak of night. After all, I’ve never snuck out before—I’ve never disobeyed my parents, full stop—and felt I should do the thing properly. I imagined a dark house and my parents asleep in their separate beds. I would crack open my window, lifting it from its well-worn sill, and toss out a bunch of bedsheets tied end to end. I’d shimmy down to where Vada waited, her mom’s car silent from being rolled in neutral down the street toward my window. I’d land with a soft thud in the dewy grass and not bother looking back as we pulled out of town, never to be heard from again, on our way somewhere explicitly not here.

But then my mom messed it all up with her caring.

I’m finishing my packing, holding two pairs of fairy wings in my hands and trying to decide which to bring, when she taps on my door.

“I told you,” I say, petulant. “I’m running away.” Because of course I couldn’t leave without telling them first. Always the good girl. Always courteous.

“I know,” she says, sitting on my bed, her hands folded over a stack of something in her lap. “I know,” she repeats. “I wanted to make sure you didn’t forget anything.”

I straighten, tapping my chin with one finger. “I wonder what that must be like? To forget something. Something so super life-altering and important for, I don’t know, nearly two decades…” I nail my mom with a look, daring her. Her expression narrows. She wants to say something—chastise my back talk, maybe—but she can’t. She doesn’t have a leg to stand on here. Instead, she swallows, her hands dancing along the object in her lap.