At ten-thirty, Imogen’s door is still closed. It’s the third time this morning I’ve checked to see if she’s awake yet, and that’s after checking twice last night.

I should have just chased her when she left. I should have made her believe me, shouldn’t have let her go thinking that maybe she wanted some time alone…

I don’t know. I don’t think that would have worked, I think we’d have had a shouting match in the hospital corridor and that would never have fixed anything.

But now she’s still asleep. It’s been eleven hours, which I guess isn’t all that much if you’re trying to heal a fractured ankle and you’ve been walking through the cold for days, but I’m kind of worried that something happened.

Could a blood clot or something…?

Did she fall…?

I turn around, head to the nurses’ station again, and there’s finally someone there who barely looks up at me as she types something into the computer.

“Yes?” she asks, still not looking at me.

I put on my most charming smile.

“Sorry to bother you, but do you know if Imogen in room two fourteen is still asleep?”

“The girl who was in the plane crash and walked forty miles?”

“Right.”

“She checked out first thing this morning,” the nurse says, tapping on a keyboard. “We wanted to keep her for another night, but she—”

“She’s gone?”

I feel like a trap door opened underneath me, and I put my hands palm-down on the counter in front of the nurses’ station.

The nurse just nods, and I’m suddenly unmoored, unanchored.

You lost your chance, I think. You fucked up and now your chance is gone, you idiot.

“Did she say where?” I ask, swallowing hard.

“Most people go home when they leave a hospital,” the nurse deadpans.

My jaw tightens for just a second, and I have to fight the urge to grab her, shake her, demand to know where Imogen went.

But instead I walk away. The nurse doesn’t know, either. When I get back to my room my mom is there, unpacking bagels from a brown bag and placing them on the tray that swings over my hospital bed along with little plastic tubs of cream cheese.

“Not that Solaris is exactly New York City, but at least they have all right bagels,” she murmurs to me. “I’m afraid that up here they’ve confused them with donuts or something. Look at this.”

She pokes one, her finger leaving a deep impression.

Imogen’s gone.

Most people go home when they leave the hospital.

Imogen lives in Seattle now, but did she go there? Or did she go home to Solaris, with her parents, maybe to recuperate for a bit before going back to her research job?

“Wilder,” my mom says.

“Sorry.”

“Do you want the everything bagel or the sesame one? If you can even call these bagels.”

I swallow, my mouth dry, my mind still completely elsewhere.

“Sesame,” I say.

“What’s wrong?”

I sit in the vinyl-covered armchair next to the bed, lace my fingers together. I feel more at loose ends than I can remember ever feeling before, more like something important has slipped through my fingers.

She left. Without saying goodbye, and the knowledge is like a rock in my gut. The last time I saw her before this was ten years ago, and she was running away from me then.

She’s running away from me now.

I clear my throat. My mom arches one eyebrow, still waiting for an answer.

“Sorry,” I tell her. “Imogen already checked out and… I’ve still got something of hers.”

“That’s the second girl from yesterday?”

“Yeah. The girl I was stranded with.”

My mom spreads cream cheese on her subpar bagel, radiating disapproval, because as much as I don’t involve my parents in my sex life, they’re not blind, deaf, or stupid. They know that I’ve got a habit of going through women and never bringing one home.

Hence my mom’s collection comment yesterday. Even if she’s never said anything, it’s not a secret that she thinks it’s more than time for me to, if not exactly settle down, at least date someone.

“And you’re so upset that she’s already out of your hair?”

I pause, a bagel halfway to my mouth. I close my mouth. I put it down.

She might not take you back, I think. Maybe you shouldn’t tell your mom about this, because what if she doesn’t and it gets around Solaris that the dork from high school turned you down?

“Wilder?”

Don’t be fucking stupid.

“Imogen and I went to high school together,” I say slowly, looking at the bagel and not my mom. “And I fucked up pretty bad then.”

“I don’t remember her,” my mom says.

“You wouldn’t,” I say.

And then, before I can stop myself, I tell my mom everything.

She’s the first person I’ve ever told, the whole story spilling out of me in fits and starts, from studying for biology to getting rescued on the side of the road to being afraid that the love of my life slipped through my fingers twice.

It feels good to get it off my chest.

When I finish, she wipes her fingers neatly with a napkin, poised and ready.

“All right, let’s get to work,” she says.

I clear my throat, not really sure what she means.

“There’s only so many places she can be,” my mom says, perfectly reasonable. “Let’s find her so you can grovel and finally have a girlfriend you’ll let us meet.”

First thing the next morning I’m sweating, shaking, my heart rate skyrocketing. I haven’t been able to eat for ten hours because the only thought I’ve had this entire time has been a loop on continuous replay: dropping out of the clouds, instruments going haywire. The mountain, up close, rushing in.

It plays again. And again.

“Thank you for flying CanadaAir to Edmonton!” says a perky female voice over the loudspeaker. “Please be aware that since the first half of this route is pretty bumpy over the mountains, we’ll be delaying beverage service…”

I turn my head to look out the porthole, but my mom’s closed it. There are only two seats on this side of the aisle and one on the other, so the outdoors is never far away enough.

“I wish you’d take some Xanax,” my mom says, her voice worried.

I just shake my head, sweat rolling beneath my collar.

“My head’s gotta be clear so I can fly,” I say.

She looks away, because as gung-ho as she was about Imogen at first, she hates my plan.

“At least spend the night in Edmonton,” she says.

I don’t answer her, just tilt my head back against the seat rest and close my eyes. If I spend the night somewhere I’m afraid I’ll lose my nerve and wind up back in Solaris, no closer to Imogen than before.

And I can’t do that. I have to get to her, even if I have to spend hours and hours sweating and shaking in tiny planes, even if the mere thought of flying makes me vomit up everything I’ve eaten for the past day.

I wish I could take the Xanax, or get drunk, or do anything to make me forget where I am and what I’m doing, but I can’t. Not if this is going to work.

And I want it to work more than I’ve ever wanted anything.