Birds. Cars. People planting flowers in boxes outside their homes. And one of them stops to look over at me and maybe wonders who the girl in dark glasses is who’s stepping out into the world.

And it’s Me.

Alice.

Alive.

And now I’m outside, in the world. For real this time. I feel wind on my bare legs and the concrete path under my shoes and the sunlight burning my eyes, even with the glasses on. And it’s wonderful and horrible and I want to keep moving and I want to go back and I want to laugh and cry and scream and dance, but it’s all I can do to keep breathing.

There are hands holding me up. Opening car doors. Sliding me inside a car seat that’s so far reclined it probably isn’t even legal any more.

And now I’m in a car. A car that smells hot, with stitched seats that scratch my thighs. And it feels like going back in time, to a place where speed ruled and the wind knew my face.

Dad pauses just for a moment, hand on the door. And I know he’s remembering the last time I was in a car and how much it hurt me. And I know he’s feeling as if he’s the one doing that to me, but he isn’t. I am. I’m making this decision and it’s bad and entirely right.

‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘Just hurry.’

He nods and it’s strange to see him not making jokes. He closes the door and comes round to start the engine. ‘Where are we going?’

For a moment, I don’t know. Where is Rowan? How can I be there for him when I don’t know where ‘there’ is? But then there’s only one place he would go to hide.

‘The playground behind the school,’ I say.

I close my eyes and shove the earplugs as deep into my ears as they can go. And I slide on the pair of unplugged headphones Mum is handing me from the back seat, too.

Dad pulls out of the drive and I grip the door. He isn’t making his usual celebrity jokes about my sunglasses and I think he’s perhaps as afraid as I am.

I concentrate on my breathing, and try to remember what it was like to ride a bike with Wesley. And how all I could do then was watch him die, but how this time I’m reaching out. I’m stopping that car in its tracks. I’m rewriting all of it.

I scrunch my face up and try not to feel the spoon-annihilating noise still piercing through the headphones, and the flashing lights and the rumbling under my fingers, and try to keep the cracks together as my world seems to earthquake.

A short car ride = 3 spoons