beginnings, pt. ii

New York felt like a liminal space, too familiar to be foreign, too alien to be home. It was a place to disappear, to leave behind all the old trappings of our lives--one last "fuck you" from Sean after someone finally killed him. We shuffled into the city looking and feeling nothing like ourselves, after spending four hours on the bus, if you can imagine. I kept looking over to say something to Nora and thinking someone else was standing beside me. But nobody looked twice as we hauled our overstuffed luggage out of the terminal, and that was the idea. We could have been anyone. I thought that comfortable anonymity would have set my mind at ease, but instead I felt exposed. If something went wrong now, this far from everything, what could we do?

We met our contact--when I insisted she give me a real name she said, and I quote, "You can call me Charlotte, because I'm kind of a lot"--at a diner that was far too brightly lit, its colors too garish. I couldn't focus as she told us about the tech she'd added to the cheap, sensible car we would be taking west, or about the work she'd done on constructing identities for us in the event things went wrong. I didn't even have enough focus to be suspicious.

"Nothing's untraceable," she was saying, in response to something Nora said. "But anyone trying to trace you will have to get past me, and I'm fucking awesome."

The car she'd prepped for us was waiting in a nearby parking lot, where she assured us the parking fees had been taken care of. It was a far cry from what I imagined when I thought of Nora taking me on a road trip somewhere--this car was too cramped, too weak, too bland. There was no room to get comfortable, no room in the back to sleep.

It was supposed to be fun. We'd earned some quiet, Nora and I, after everything that had happened, but there was no peace to be found on the path we'd found ourselves on. Still, there was nowhere to go but forward.