I adjust the straps on my pack again, then continue along the hallway, looking for the right kind of store. I find it near the end of the terminal—a convenience store that sells electronics, including prepaid phones, a burner if you’re a drug dealer. Something that can’t be traced back to me.
I wait behind a stressed-out mother buying a chocolate bar for her wailing kid, then ask the cashier for a phone, pointing to the wall above his head. The pimply eighteen-year-old hands it to me, and when I ask, shows me the pared-down features—how to make a call, how to text, how to block my number.
It isn’t hard to be anonymous. All it takes is a couple hundred dollars in cash. I pay for it and add in some snacks for the bus ride. Crackers and cheese, a package of maple-flavored beef jerky, and a Coke. It’s almost four hours to Bishop, and the last thing I ate was a bad bagel with cream cheese at Newark at five in the morning.
I leave the store and exit the terminal. The air is warm and dry, the sun high in the sky. I shade my eyes, looking for a bench. I find one to the right. I put my pack on it and feel around in the top pocket until I find my old phone. I stare at it for a moment, its cherry-red case, the stickers on the back that I collected over time. A daisy. A peace sign. A band logo. This phone has been my lifeline, everything good coming from it—this trip, this job, this change. But now, like so many things, it’s time to let it go.
I should’ve left it in New York, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. If something unexpected came up, I needed a way to communicate. And I should put it in the trash right now without looking back, but I have trouble doing that, too. I want to check in one last time, like that half bottle of wine you swore you wouldn’t drink. You know you should pour it out, but one more glass can’t hurt, can it?
My hands shake like an alcoholic as I turn it on, wondering how many texts there’ll be. It takes a minute for it to connect to the airport’s Wi-Fi. Then it shudders and pings as the messages load. In the end, there are five. Four texts and an email for good measure, all saying the same thing.
Where the fuck are you?
My heart starts racing, and my armpits fill with sweat. My fingers hover over the screen, years of reflexes pushing me to answer, to assuage, to diffuse. But I don’t do that anymore. I don’t have to answer; I’m not going to.
Instead, I control my breathing, then google my old name: Cassandra Adams. A few articles load, along with tags in friends’ social media posts. I scan the list quickly, but there’s nothing new. I try another search: Cassandra Biggs missing. Again nothing. And then one more: Cassie Peters missing.
Did you mean Cameron Mack missing? Google asks. Below is a link to an article headed with a ten-year-old poster of Cameron Mack and the phrase HAVE YOU SEEN HER? underneath her gap-toothed smile. I stare at her innocent eyes, feeling a mixture of sadness and kinship. Cameron isn’t missing anymore, and I don’t seem to be either.
I close the browser and take photographs of my important contacts, and the texts, too, in case I need them. When I’m done, I pull the SIM card from my iPhone, then crush it beneath my heel and toss it and the phone into a nearby trash can, watching it disappear below cast-off ice cream cones and soda cans.
That’s how easy it is to throw your life way.
* * *
On the ride to Bishop, I can’t help feeling like one of the men sitting on the bus is watching me. He has that bounty hunter look I was expecting to see at the airport—bulky arms filled with faded, menacing tattoos and a vigilante expression, his aviators covering his eyes. He gives me a hard stare as he walks down the aisle. I stare him down and he looks away, and I tell myself I’m being paranoid. I didn’t escape from Guantanamo. There’s no crack commando team trying to locate me, just one angry man who doesn’t have my number anymore.
I rest my head against the window and watch the scenery. The faded, round hills full of scrub bushes that surround Reno. The blue lakes and bleached-out sky, the sun hot through the window. Small tourist towns that seem to spring up out of nowhere. I’ve forgotten how everything is so spread out here compared to New York, the years in Manhattan painting over my life before, when I was Cassie Peters, and still thought good things happened to good people.
I drift off for a while, and at some point, we cross into California. When I wake up, the view is made up of large conifers spread out on hillsides with the High Sierras peeking out behind them. My stomach feels empty, hollowed out. I eat the snacks I bought at the airport, wishing I could dig into a healthy meal. The last fresh thing I had was the orange juice I made at the apartment four days ago before I moved into a decrepit motel in Jersey near the airport to let the dust settle before I took my flight.
It was an odd, suspended feeling, being there. Starting at noises outside. Keeping the blinds shut. Only venturing out when I had to, a hat pulled low, my hoodie zipped up to my chin. I slept poorly and my muscles started to hurt from lack of exercise. But when it was finally time to go, I was nervous. I wasn’t safe in that motel, but it was a fear I knew. What lay ahead was filled with uncertainties. I left anyway, taking a cab to the airport, and passing through security with my eyes roving over the other travelers. When no one stopped me or pulled me aside, I breathed a sigh of relief that I’d passed the first of many hurdles.
I do that now as I rinse out my mouth from the jerky, the salt clinging to my tongue.
When we arrive in Bishop, it’s after six and my hunger is palpable despite the snacks. I’m meeting Ben at Schat’s, a local bakery chain that’s famous in these parts. It’s a short walk from the grocery store parking lot where the bus drops me off, but I have an errand to run first.
The man in the aviators gives me that hard stare again, like he’s memorizing me, and I give him my best New York glare back, the one I’ve learned to use to dissuade catcalls from construction workers. He turns away, and I watch him walk into the arms of a petite woman who he picks up and swings around like a child.
I dismiss him and struggle with my pack. The air is dry and thinner than in Reno. Bishop’s at four thousand feet—enough altitude to feel it, especially if you’re carrying fifty pounds.
I set off for the post office, and the back of my T-shirt is sweaty within minutes. The buildings look familiar, the memories sharp. I grew up forty miles from here in Mammoth Lakes, and Bishop was where we’d go for supplies and doctors’ appointments when my mother remembered to make them. Nothing much seems to have changed in the intervening years.
A car passes me and slows. It’s a man driving, his burly arm resting on the windowsill and covered in blurred tattoos. I give him a friendly smile and wave him away. A ride with a male stranger is the last thing I need right now.
I pass a lot full of RVs and trailers protected by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. Three people stand near the entrance—an older white woman who’s tanned like leather, with short, spiked gray hair; a man in his mid-thirties with a protruding belly; and a younger woman in her mid-twenties with light brown skin and hair that’s almost white blond in a thick braid down her back. They appear to be having an animated discussion.
I watch them as I walk past. The older woman seems to be haggling over something. Then the younger woman puts her hand on her arm and says her name distinctly enough that I can hear it. Sandy. I know the tone; it’s one I’ve used more times than I care to remember when I want to calm down someone who’s being unreasonable. To soothe them right before they explode.