Dad: I’m glad you’re safe but I need to know where you are. I worry that there’d be no way of knowing if something were to happen. Text/call. – Dad

Him signing ‘Dad’ makes my stomach ache. Obviously unnecessary and sweet at once. Zaps some humanity into the words. Of course it’s you, Dad, and of course you’re right. I imagine him as he probably is, faintly reeling, which isn’t difficult to do because I’ve seen it before, only once; the dark shadows of his trail-run face collapsed, heavy grey brow stitched, eyes split and searching. And truly, how could I do this to him? It’s the reasonability of his request that bothers me. I know I’m wrong. But this is the only way to become a synapse-trace, a nowhere girl.

I said it all already.

Me: I won’t be back for at least a few weeks. I promise I’m safe, and that this isn’t anything like Celeste, obviously. This is very important. I promise I wouldn’t be doing it if it weren’t.

And then the frenzy in the middle of the night, zooming down the Virginia turnpike: the phone ringing and ringing and ringing without an answer or even a declining to show there was something alive on the other end. Declining would’ve made the choice too intentional. My justification was that I’d already said the kicker, which, to me, is all that matters. This isn’t anything like Celeste.

Or maybe I’m safe isn’t enough. How could he not feel my absence the same way? Both of us here one moment and gone the next.

My decision came from a combination of things. Less urgently, it was the desire to know how the leaving felt, to drive away, age seventeen, and savour the sting of the tether finally snapping against my back after years of pulling, pulling, pulling – a promise to myself that I’m captaining an autonomous vessel capable of vanishing into the night if only it could muster up the courage to floor the gas. More urgently, I knew I wouldn’t get a chance like this again, a corrosive mixture of a lack of responsibility, obligation, achievement and peace. Maybe I’m overdue something good. I didn’t lie: this is very important.

This isn’t only not like Celeste, or despite Celeste – it’s because of her. For her. She’s due something good too. Dad would never understand this. To be honest, it’s difficult to articulate, even to myself, why this whole endeavour is a running-towards, not away. Towards atonement. Towards peace.

Towards Roxy.

In a different way, towards Celeste.

I didn’t even think Dad would realize I was gone so quickly. Shit. I press into the jelly of my eyes with my middle fingers until my vision’s lousy with stars, and jab in another reply.