Call me stupid, but somehow, I hadn’t expected to see my own face on CNN less than tweny-four hours after I ran away. Obviously Mom and Mariska are trying to keep my disappearance under wraps, so it’s not like the world is going to be out looking for me. But the story has put me on the public’s radar, even if the world thinks I’m locked away at Lovesdale.

“I can’t get back on a bus,” I mumble, not caring that it’s probably not normal to be talking to myself in the bath-room. “What if someone sees me?”

It dawns on me that I’m really lucky to have made it even this far. Sure, I look totally different. I hardly recognize myself when I look at my short, orange-blond hair and glasses in the mirror. But all it would take is one die-hard fan who happens to be riding the Charlotte-to-Tampa route. My heart sinks. What am I going to do? I can’t stay locked in a diner bathroom for the rest of my life.

I pound my head against the cool metal of the stall door again. Suddenly, a sliver of white catches my eye. I blink a few times, lean back from the door and stare at the piece of paper taped to the metal, inches away from where I was self-destructively banging.

USED CAR FOR SALE: CASH ONLY. $1000 OUT THE DOOR, it says. I gulp and lean forward to read the fine print. 1968 VW Beetle convertible in good condition, 178,000 miles. Must sell. Ask at the counter.

Okay. Now, I don’t usually believe in signs. But come on, can it be pure coincidence that there’s a car for sale mere inches from where I was halfheartedly trying to put myself into a coma moments earlier?

I think no.

“I’ll buy a car,” I say aloud, still not all that concerned that I have apparently begun having whole conversations with myself in the bathroom. “I’ll buy a car,” I repeat more firmly. “I’ll drive to Florida.”

After all, I have a driver’s license. Most of the time, I get chauffeured around, of course. But Mariska thought it would be a cool idea to do the driver’s test with a reporter and video guy from Access Hollywood in the backseat to prove that I’m just a normal teen (as if normal teenagers take Billy Bush and a video camera along on their driving tests). I actually passed on my first try (although maybe not every DMV guy straightens the cones out for test takers. But regardless, I did learn how to drive—on my mom’s manual transmission vintage Porsche, which, believe me, was not easy).