Four rings, and I’m about to hang up when I hear: “Margo’s Diner! The special today is beef goulash,” but it’s some girl. A voice I don’t recognize. I choke tears away and ask for Margo. When the girl puts down the phone to get her, I can hear the faint chatter and clink clank of dishes, The Weather Channel too loud on the TV above the receiver. I can hear my old life going on without me and it’s horrible. By the time Margo comes to the phone and says, “This is Margo,” the recorded voice is already telling me I need to add money. I only have pennies. I sob harder.

“Why don’t I matter to anyone?” I’m not even sure my words sound like words, but she knows it’s me. I hear her say, “Oh, girlie,” before the phone goes dead, and I imagine she says, You matter to me. Because I have to. I have to matter to someone.

I don’t go back to the house. It’s far and there’s no point. I’m done with wanting what can’t be mine. I drive until I can’t stay awake and sleep in my car at a truck stop, parked next to one of the parking lot lights to feel just a little bit safer.

— Chapter 42 —

I wake up when the truck engines start, hours before sunrise. Before I leave, I buy a postcard and a stamp at the rest stop store. It’s a picture of two beach chairs at the edge of a lake, sharing the shade from one big umbrella.

This one I send. I don’t write anything but her address. I drop it in the blue mailbox outside and pretend Carly is right where I left her and will understand everything when she gets the card. I pretend that I meant as much to her as she did to me. That when she looks at those two chairs, she’ll picture us sitting together, me with my guitar, her with a blue pack of American Spirits balanced on the arm of her chair. She’ll blow smoke out to the water while she tells me all the things I’ve missed.

I pump five bucks’ worth of gas into my car and hit the road.

Right before sunrise, when the sky changes to brighter blue, I see a sign for Asheville, North Carolina, and decide to go, because everyone says Asheville is like Ithaca but bigger. Because of all the places I’ve been, Ithaca is my favorite and I can’t go back.