A single bar shows in the corner of my phone screen: just one line out of a possible four. If I were yesterday me, the woman who depended on connectivity to survive, the lack of service would flood my system with panic. It would make me pace back and forth until more bars appeared.
But I'm not yesterday me. I'm now me; the one hunched over in the back of a BMW wearing yesterday's clothes, and that single bar makes me damn near giddy with relief.
“Cut me off already,” I whisper. “Please just cut me the hell off.”
I'm aware that I could stow my phone in my carryall. I could power it off myself without waiting for bad cell coverage to disconnect me from whatever satellite is spinning around Earth firing data at anybody with a SIM card.
But I can't do it.
No matter how much I want to, the command doesn't reach my fingers. The phone has practically grown into my hand, and I need it forcibly removed, like a polished black tumor. Just looking at the screen makes me feel sick and pathetic and lost in a hundred different ways.
I shift my gaze to look out the window.
We drive between pine trees that are so tightly packed, they block out the midday sun. We entered the forest somewhere north of White Plains twenty minutes ago, driving in a black Beamer that smells like bleached lemongrass, and the road has showed no sign of letting up. It keeps going, like the winding Montana travelogue at the start of The Shining, tunneling endlessly into the forest dark of upstate New York.
The gloom is comforting, though. It feels womblike. Protective. Nobody can reach me here. Nobody can take my picture or yell at me in the street or slide into my DMs to tell me real quick just how they're going to take me apart, piece by dripping piece.
I'm breathless with anticipation.
I need this.
I'm so ready to disappear.
Soon, okay? Willow says in my mind. Soon you'll be free.
The car hits a bump and I only just keep hold of my phone.
"Sorry, ma'am," says the driver-forties, jowly and bushy browed. "Only one road in and out of this place, and it looks like they haven't resurfaced since the millennium."
“Which millennium?” I ask. My voice is as cracked as the skin around my nostrils, but still he laughs.
Our eyes meet in the rearview mirror and I try not to shrink from his gaze, imagining what he must see. My Lululemon cardigan hangs off me, foraged from the bedroom floor this morning, and my white jeans are stained with the wine that I spilled last night while rushing to switch off the news. My shoulder-length auburn hair is scraped back from my face, tied in a messy bun.
I haven't slept in three weeks.
My eyes hurt.
They beg to close.
“You're on TV, right?” the driver says, and I flinch. Damn. I shouldn't have engaged. I want to revel in the silence as we travel farther from reality's reach. Besides, I'm afraid what I might say. My mouth has never been my friend.
"That show," the driver says. “The one about the girl."
I could pretend I'm getting a call—I've acted with fake phones enough to know I could pull it off—but the lie feels too big. He must have noticed that my cell hasn't made a sound since the airport.
