Maybe it’s a secret I keep. I hope I’m wrong. I hope I’m just growing. But I can’t shake the fear that when combined the stuff Dad and the woman who gave birth to me are made of can only combust. Or maybe we were rigged as a pair with premature time bombs and my countdown’s shrinking. But the most pressing concern is that Celeste and I had never been separate terrors at all – that the two of us and our paths are inexorably bound to one another – and I’ll find myself at the bottom of a ravine one day too, mind splintering as I’m taken back by the dark.

Maybe.

The podcast came from the buzz of a hunt without capture. The somehow comforting futility of a search with nothing left to find, the certainty that nothing was waiting behind the trees to catch you.

And I’m thinking all this on Monday morning, when I realize despite all the uncertainty, the disconnect, the unfamiliarity, that I am happier now than I have been in a long time.

Peyton and I spent Sunday driving around the island, her showing me all the relevant locales, which I already knew about but pretended like I didn’t, in case she had any interesting insights – grocery store, laundromat, cheapest liquor store. (‘Here is where you will not go because it is very illegal, and the dude that runs it does not forgo an ID check if you give him five bucks.’ To be fair I didn’t know that one.) I’m now entirely confident in my bearings; it would be next to impossible to get lost. We’d gone halfsies on a cheap fan and its low buzz is both comforting and useful, firstly for its intended purpose of recirculating the humid air in our room to create something resembling coolness, and secondly for droning out Peyton’s intermittent snoring. Despite this, so far, I don’t hate having a room-mate as much as I thought I would. Sure, the notion of sharing what had always been a private space with someone else is odd, and if aliens were to visit Earth and Peyton was the first one to greet them I’d say they were being thrown in at the deep end of humanity. But otherwise, I’m unusually comfortable.

But a lack of privacy still throws a wrench in the plans and I’m unsure if I can trust her. I’m minding myself, and still keep the podcast stuff in the locked drawer in my head.