Everything fit neatly into my faded backpack, but then I was well-practiced in packing it after having done so at least a dozen times. Each time had ended in screaming, in tears, and in me back upstairs in my room.

Not this time. If I didn’t follow through now, I would be stuck here. I’d live here forever.

I’d die here.

Feeling queasy, I slung the bag over my shoulder and headed down the stairs. My mother sat at the kitchen table, her thin robe loosely tied, eyes glassy from the pills. The medicine was supposed to help her, but she never got better—only worse. More fearful, more controlling.

All those chemicals had taken their toll on her body. She looked so tired. The weary shadows around her eyes and tension lines around her lips always made my gut clench. I should be here to protect her. I just couldn’t, I couldn’t.

I leaned my backpack against the leg of the table and sat down across from her.

“Mama.”

Her eyes came into focus. She sighed. “Not this again, Evie.”

I swallowed. “Please, Mama, try to understand. I need to see more of the world than these walls.”

“What is there to see? Suffering? People starving? Go look at the TV if you want to see the world so badly. You know I’m right.”

We used to watch the news together. Every young girl abducted, every college girl who had her drink drugged was somehow a mark against me.

That could have been you, she would say.

Whereas most families might let the tragedy of strangers pass them by like waves, she would catch them, collect them, marking down their names and ages in her notebooks and checking whether they had been found in six months, a year, five years, until I felt like I was drowning in unseen violence.

“I don’t want to watch the news. I want to see things for myself. Ordinary things. I want to be ordinary. I want to live.”

She scowled. “Don’t be dramatic. You’re living here. You’re safe.”

I firmed. “No, Mama. I know you need to stay inside, but just as much, I need to go out into the world. Experience things for myself. And I’m going to. You can’t stop me this time.”

Her face seemed to crack. Plump tears slipped down her cheeks. “I don’t understand why you’re talking this way. What have I ever done but protect you?”

Guilt swelled my chest, but I forced it down. I would be strong.

“I can’t stay here. I love you, but I just can’t stay.”

“Evie, Evie, my baby.” She clasped her hands together, begging.

I knelt at her feet, taking her hands in mine. I could feel each bone, each tendon beneath the paper-dry skin.

“Please. Give me your blessing to leave. I’ll come back to visit. Maybe even move back to town after a while. I need to see something of the world first.”

“How are you going to afford it?”

I’d been lucky enough to get a job doing touchups for a small photography studio up the road when I was sixteen. I could do the work from home, and the paychecks were deposited directly in our account—well, technically my mother’s account. I wouldn’t take that money even if I could, knowing she didn’t have another source of income.

I did get a small weekly allowance, though, and had saved up a hundred and sixty dollars. Not enough to get me all the way to New York, not with paying for gas, food and motels along the way.

“I talked to someone through the college’s job placement system. There’s an opening at a photography studio up in Dallas.”

I’d work there for a while, saving up money and looking for another stop closer to Niagara Falls. That was the plan anyway.

She sniffed. “If you leave, you won’t ever come back.”

It was a pronouncement, bitter and unyielding.

“I will, I promise—”

“No.” She hardened, her tears drying as quickly as they’d come. “I mean it, Evie. You wouldn’t be welcome here anymore. You’d be one of them.”

The paranoia. I knew it was a sickness, but labeling it didn’t help me.

“I’m your daughter. Always.”

She shoved back from me. “If that were true, you wouldn’t leave me. If you leave, you wouldn’t be my daughter anymore.”

Her words sank into my stomach like a lead weight. No shock, only resignation. Maybe I had always known it would come to this.

“I love you, Mama,” I whispered, and it panged with permanence.

As if finally realizing I was serious, her eyes widened, filling with rage.

“You won’t last a second out there. Not one goddamn second, you hear me? You have no idea what kinds of things happen out there—”

“I do, Mama. Because you’ve told me every day that I can remember. Well, do you think nothing bad ever happens here? That I’m safe just because I’m trapped here? What about Allen?”

Her head jerked back as if I’d slapped her, and in a way, I had. We never talked about that, not even to the counselor.

Mama had dated a few men when I was very young, when she still left the house. The last man she dated was Allen. He had been so very understanding of her desire to spend nights at home instead of going out for dates, even if it meant her young daughter was in the way. My mother would take her pills and go to sleep and he would slip into my room.

One night, she caught him in the act. She’d kicked him out of the house the next day, and that fall, I’d stayed home to be homeschooled instead of going to ninth grade.

She had stopped dating altogether. She stopped going outside too. The world was too scary. Well, I was a little scared too, but I was even more terrified of rotting here. At least her isolation had led to me getting my driver’s license and the rust bucket I used to get groceries each week. It was a pumpkin turned into a carriage, ready to take me away from here.

I softened my voice. “I’m not mad at you for what happened. It wasn’t your fault.”

Her nostrils flared. “You ungrateful bitch. I picked you over him. Is this how you pay me back? By leaving?”

I steeled myself. “I’m going now. I’ll call in a few days to let you know I’m settled.”

A plate landed at my feet like a Frisbee, clattering harmlessly to the floor, shatter-resistant. I slung my backpack over my shoulder and walked to the door. A bowl of oranges spilled around my ankles. A mug thudded against my leg.

She screamed at me, and I kept walking. I wanted to be smug. I was finally getting what I wanted. I had done it. It was a victory. But I couldn’t shake the feeling I had left something important behind.

Not all those who wander are lost. I knew that, I believed it, but just now, with my mother sobbing obscenities while I drove away in my ten-year-old Honda, I felt very alone and a little bit lost.

Chapter Two

The Niagara Falls mark the border of Ontario, Canada and New York, USA.

By late afternoon, I knew I’d taken a wrong turn. I’d only driven two hundred miles away from home. The three-lane highway had narrowed to one lane on either side, flanked by deep ditches and wide fields.

I’d only run occasional weekly errands in my car, and now I was driving across Texas—which felt as broad and wide as the world. The signs changed as soon as I left our small city. Different colors, different markings than the maps, and I soon found myself turned around and twisted.

I considered going back but I’d been driving this way for two hours. By the time I got back to the main freeway, it would be dark. I might miss it again and make everything worse. Besides, I was tired, hungry, and I really had to use the bathroom.

An exit sign had little pictographs for food, gas, and lodging. I pulled onto a smaller road, also devoid of cars or buildings. The pavement was smooth enough. The little reflective lights in the middle were comforting, like maybe I couldn’t be too far from civilization if they’d bothered with safety features.