Escaping Reality

cutting my eyes away from the mirror
    and heading for the door. I do not want anyone to see me right now when I
    have no idea who “me” is or will be tomorrow. In a zone, that numb place
    I’ve used as a survival tool almost as many times as I’ve tried to find the
    meaning of that symbol on the note, I follow the soft hum of orchestra
    music from well-placed speakers, entering a room with a high oval ceiling
    decorated with magnificent artwork. I tell myself to get lost in the crush of
    patrons in business attire, while waiters toting trays offer champagne and
    finger foods, but I don’t. I simply stand there, mourning the new life I’ve
    just begun, and I know is now gone. My “zone” has failed me.
    “Where have you been?”
    The question comes as Chloe Monroe, the only person I’ve let myself
    consider a friend in years, steps in front of me, a frown on her heart-shaped
    face. From her dark brown curls bouncing around her shoulders to her
    outgoing personality and fun, flirty attitude, she is my polar opposite and I
    love that about her. She is everything I am not but hoped I would become.
    Now I will lose her. Now I will lose me again.
    “Well,” she prods when I don’t reply quickly enough, shoving her
    hands onto her hips.
    “Where have you been?”
    “Bathroom,” I say. “There was a line.” I sound awkward. I feel
    awkward. I hate how easily the lie comes to me, how it defines me. A lie is
    all that I am.
    Chloe’s brow puckers. “Hmmm. There wasn’t one when I was there. I
    guess I got lucky.”
    She waves off the thought. “Sabrina is freaking out over some
    donation paperwork she can’t find and says she needs you.” Her brow
    furrows. “I thought you were doing research? When did you start handling
    donor paperwork?”
    “Last week, when she got overwhelmed,” I say, and perk up at the
    idea that my new boss needs me. I don’t need to leave. I need to be needed
    even if it’s just for tonight. “Where is she?”
    “By the front desk.” She laces her arm through mine. “And I’m
    tagging along with you. I have a sixty-year-old admirer who’s bordering on
    stalker. I need to hide before he hunts me down.”
    She tugs me forward, and I let her, too distracted by her words to
    stop her. She’s worried about being hunted but I am the one being hunted.
    I thought I wasn’t anymore. I thought I was safe, but I am never safe, and
    neither is anyone around me. I’ve lived that first-hand. I felt that heartache
    of loss, and while being alone sucks, losing someone you care about is far
    worse.
    My selfishness overwhelms me and I stop dead in my tracks to pull
    Chloe around to face me. “Tell Sabrina I’m grabbing the forms and will be
    right there.”
    “Oh. Yes. Okay.” Chloe lets go of my arm, and for a moment I fight
    the urge to hug her, but that would make her seem important to me, and
    someone could be watching. I turn away from her and rush for a door, and I
    feel sick to my stomach knowing that I will never see her again.
    I finally exit the side of the building into the muggy August evening,
    and head for a line of cabs, but I do not rush or look around me. I’ve
    learned ways to avoid attention, and going to work for a place that has a
    direct link to the world I’d left behind hadn’t been one of them. It had
    simply been a luxury I’m now paying for.
    “JFK Airport,” I pant as I slide into the back of a cab, and rub the back
    of my neck at a familiar prickling sensation. A feeling I’d had often my first
    year on my own, when I’d been certain danger waited for me around every
    corner. Hunted. I’m being hunted. All the denial I own won’t change my
    reality.

    ***
    The ride to the airport is thirty minutes and it takes me another
    fifteen to figure out what terminal locker 111 is in once I’m inside the
    building. I pull it open and there is a carry-on-sized roller suitcase and a
    smaller brown leather shoulder bag with a large yellow envelope sticking
    up from inside the open zipper. I have no desire to be watched while I
    explore what’s been left for me. I remove the locker’s contents, and follow
    a sign that indicates a bathroom.
    Once again in a stall, I pull down the baby changer and check the
    contents of the envelope on top. There is a file folder, a bank card, a cell
    phone, a passport, a note card, and another small sealed envelope. I reach
    for the note first.
    There is cash in the bank account and the code is 1850. I’ll add