She had been looking forward to seeing this city. From the time she’d spent in Athens after college, most of the Greek portion of their itinerary wasn’t new to her, but Taormina was a revelation. She’d read all about the winding streets of the old city, the breathtaking views of the sea, the elegant five-star hotels and their sprawling terraces, tinkling with grand piano music. This was once a destination for the most elite international jet setters, and every part of it screamed vintage glamor. She felt she could properly appreciate it alone, absent the constant drip of disaffected commentary.

Running had been Elena’s prescription for her daughter’s anxiety: she often referred to it as “Nature’s Xanax,” a phrase that usually made Alex scoff. But sometimes, like today, she had to grudgingly admit that it helped. The rhythm of her legs carrying her around the winding streets felt meditative, moving her as if they belonged to someone else, giving her a sense of total freedom. The pace was perfect for appreciating the city, too, slow enough that she could peek into windows but fast enough that she could cover the better part of it in a single go. She passed the shops, the bakeries, the restaurants with vines growing over the arches of their doorways.

As she rounded the corner to the piazza—a sprawling checkerboard floor, surrounded by a white stone church and charming little cafés, just like she had seen online—her legs slowed to a stop, almost involuntarily. It was one thing to see the world through travel porn Instagram accounts, whose abundance of impossibly beautiful images had an almost flattening effect. It was quite another to actually be there, experiencing it in three dimensions.

She walked over to the railing that overlooked the sea far below, taking her phone from her armband and leaning over to check out the view. The Verseau was just visible in the distance, eclipsing the other boats in size and elegance, its dark blue hull seeming to disappear into the water beneath it. After pausing her music, she removed her headphones and let them dangle around her neck as she cleaned the lens of her phone’s camera with the edge of her shirt. This was one of the many places her parents wanted photos of, and she swept the camera over the piazza to get a panoramic shot. She took a video, too, for good measure, knowing that it would never fully capture what she was currently experiencing.

Without her music, though, her thoughts began to wander to forbidden places—places she had been trying desperately to avoid.