I clutch the envelope, thick with bills, in my hand like it’s the world’s most expensive stress ball. After my run last night, I slipped it out of Graham’s wedding suit and lay with it under my pillow until it was time to get up again. I felt comfort in knowing it was there, within reach. But now as I stand here, it feels less like a life jacket and more like an anchor. A reminder that I don’t have to do this—I can leave, I can become someone else, I can disappear into the sky, too. This envelope allows me to leave right now, or leave later. After.

Now I have to choose.

From where I’m standing, in the center of the grassy knoll on which Graham and I are to be married tomorrow, I can just barely see the collection of lights in a valley on the closest mountain range. Once the sun finished rising, it would be gone, blending into daylight and hiding under the surrounding forest. But for now, it’s there, and I stare at it until I have to squint to focus.

I wonder if anyone in that valley is looking this way. Can they see my speck of a figure standing in the open plain? Would they wonder what I’m doing here in the same way I’m wondering what they’re doing there?

All of this is because of you, I’d tell the place if I could.

I think about the night in our dorm that we sat on the floor, shuffling through your iPod listening to NSYNC songs I’d never heard. I think about when we drank marshmallow-flavored Smirnoff and snuck back into the dorm by telling Brigid you were sleepwalking with the light of God and then stuffing our faces with leftover lasagna from the dining hall. I think about the time you taught me about your throwaway party shoes—cheap ones that can get ruined as they’re dragged along the floor of a sticky bar or house—and didn’t think less of me when I said my entire wardrobe was throwaway party shoes.

All of this is because of you.

All of me is because of you.

I close my eyes and straighten my shoulders and open my feet and rest my hands on my hips, just like you taught me to. I take a deep breath and then let it out slowly. I look at the mountains one last time.

Then I begin to jog down the stony road, toward the end of all of this.

Revenge is one sweet son of a bitch.

“Did you have a nice run?” Graham asks when I walk into the kitchen. I unzip my tight blue jacket, letting it fall loose around my body, cooling myself off. Running up and down a mountain is impossibly hard even when all you do is run.