=== PAGE: journal:013_the_night ===
====== Entry — Age 17, very late ======
----

I've packed the bag. I keep starting this entry and stopping it so I'm just going to write it straight through.

The journal. The photograph — all of us, the early one, before everything got complicated. Clothes. The money. That's all.

I'm going through the rear wall. I know exactly how. I've known for over a year.

I'm not saying goodbye to anyone. I've thought about whether that's cowardice and I think it probably is, partly, but I also think that if I try to say goodbye I will be talked out of it or I will talk myself out of it, and I can't afford that right now. Something has been approaching the snapping point for months and it's here and I have to move while I can.

Mom is downstairs. The light is on in the kitchen. She'll be there in the morning, same as always, same as she's always been. She won't be able to explain where I went.

//I hope Rhys is all right. I hope he knows it wasn't anything he did. He's the only person in this house I can say that about cleanly and without qualification, and I can't even say it to his face, so I'm saying it here.//

I hope the father —

//I can't finish that sentence. I'm going now.//