I like to make my nighttime escapes unnecessarily dramatic because it makes it easier to ignore the weight in my chest. I can briefly fool my body into believing I’m going on an adventure.

The adventure starts when it’s late enough that everyone is asleep, usually just Mom, but sometimes Beth. Tonight Beth is staying over. I get out of bed as quietly as possible and then I open my window, fighting with it, because the house is shrinking or the window is expanding—I’m not sure—and when it’s open, I crawl onto the roof, which slopes down, and make my way carefully to the very edge of it on my butt until my legs dangle over the side. It’s not a long drop by any stretch of the imagination, but it feels farther standing up, so I don’t.

I’m still impressed with the fact I can jump off the roof and land perfectly each time. Okay, not the first time. Definitely not the first time. I landed hard on my knee that time, but it wasn’t enough to keep me from leaving. It was enough that I bled, sticky red all down my leg—but that just told me I was alive.

I jump.

It’s effortless.

It is so easy.

I land. The ground is a shock against my feet, like it always is. Landing makes me dizzy. My cell phone vibrates in my back pocket. Milo. I ignore it.

I grab my bike and I get on it and I just go.

Branford is so still this late at night. Shuts down after nine o’clock. There are no cars headed anywhere and the roads are silent. Every so often I pass a house with an air-conditioner in the window and its rattling drone fills the street. When it fades, there’s only the soft rush of my bike wheels on the pavement. The first night, I walked. It’s too far to walk.

He walked.