I fight my way out. If I’m locked in, I jemmy the lock. If I’m lost in the woods, I draw a map.

And when I first noticed Celeste was gone, vanished from the trail like an unlit firefly in the dark, I was sure she’d done it to scare me.

Vision whipped straight from the sky, wispy half-clouds and back – I was alone and the world was so big. Music, from somewhere. It was driving me crazy, the cacophony of the birdsong and the drone of the music from an unknown source.

This part of the trail wasn’t commonly frequented, too big for anyone to come by too often. So I sat and didn’t move. A quiet sort of fear, agony put on pause. Full body shut down. Sit here. Don’t move. An older couple found me eventually, not before it was starting to get dark. Me, and Celeste’s phone on the trail, a few yards from me. I hadn’t even noticed it there.

By then, the music had stopped.

I felt their worry like a wave over me, and only then did I really start to register the fear. Where do you think she could be? She left? I wanted to save myself the embarrassment of having to explain that Yes, that is like her, and Yes, she would do that.

She must have got lost. Did she go off the trail? Yes, maybe.

Oh dear. Oh dear. She’s lost.

They helped me back to the parking lot. Everything that followed is a blur.

Dad asked a million times if I saw anything and each time that answer was the same. That was when I learned that some things are so troubling that one’s brain doesn’t simply lock a memory away – it’s possible that the memory isn’t registered in the first place. One’s body remains in the moment, fleshy and warm as the day one was born, unoccupied.

Everyone loved Celeste. She was going to Harvard. Beautiful and whip-smart. Teachers who had had the both of us would get to Perry on the register and there was always a look of disappointment. Mr Newhouse had chuckled a little under his breath and said, ‘Oh, wasn’t expecting that.’

After this, after the girl who was supposed to make good use of her life vanished, I decided I was to make good use of mine. Dad didn’t even approve of the podcast – he saw it as some weird profane vestige of grief, a sign I hadn’t grieved correctly. What he doesn’t know is the podcast was born from the searching rather than the losing. I don’t know why, but as we searched the woods I knew they’d never find her.