Page 55 of We Are Okay

“Marin,” she says.

“It was really dark. You know how dark it is out there.”

chapter twenty-one

AUGUST

YOU GO THROUGH LIFEthinking there’s so much you need. Your favorite jeans and sweater. The jacket with the faux-fur lining to keep you warm. Your phone and your music and your favorite books. Mascara. Irish Breakfast tea and cappuccinos from Trouble Coffee. You need your yearbooks, every stiffly posed school-dance photo, the notes your friends slipped into your locker. You need the camera you got for your sixteenth birthday and the flowers you dried. You need your notebooks full of the things you learned and don’t want to forget. You need your bedspread, white with black diamonds. You need your pillow—it fits the way you sleep. You need magazines promising self-improvement. You need your running shoes and your sandals and your boots. Your grade report from the semester you got straight As. Your prom dress, your shiny earrings, your pendants on delicatechains. You need your underwear, your light-colored bras and your black ones. The dream catcher hanging above your bed. The dozens and dozens of shells in glass jars.

The cab was waiting outside the station.

The airport, I said, but no sound came out.

“The airport,” I said, and we pulled away.

You think you need all of it.

Until you leave with only your phone, your wallet, and a picture of your mother.

chapter twenty-two

AUGUST

I BARELY REMEMBERgetting there. I walked up to the ticket counter and said I had a reservation.

“Do you have a flight number?”

I shook my head.

“Spell your name for me?”

I couldn’t think of a single letter. I wiped my palms on my jeans.

At the station, the officers said, “You sure you don’t know where he is?”

“I was in bed when he left.”

“Miss? Will you spell it?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t spell my name.”

“I’m sorry,” I told them. “I made him eggs but he didn’t eat them.”

“I found a reservation for Marin Delaney. SFO to LGA. But it’s for the twenty-third.”

“I’m early,” I said.

“I can see that you’re upset,” they said.

“Let me see if I can get you on a flight today,” she said. “There will be a fee.”

I took out the ATM card.

The heat—it swallowed me up when I arrived in New York. All my life, hot days came with cooler breezes, but even with the sun setting, the air was thick and relentless.

I boarded a bus from the airport. I didn’t know which direction I was going in, but it didn’t really matter. I watched out the window until I saw a motel sign lighting up the dark.HOME AWAY FROM HOME, it said. I rang the bell to get off at the next stop. The moment I stepped into the lobby, I knew it was no place to be. I should have left, but I crossed the room anyway.

“You over eighteen?” the man behind the counter asked me.