“A few days ago, I didn’t know women like you existed.”

Mitty scratches her cheek, clears her throat, trying her best to seem nonplussed. “What kind of woman is that?”

Lena speaks without hesitating. “A woman as confused about all of this”—she gestures to the empty parking lot, the sky—“as me.”

She says it with such a tidy certainty that Mitty can’t even begin to form some bashful protest. She couldn’t have predicted that the thing she hates most about herself, the reason she so often feels sore and alienated around other people, is the very thing that she and Lena share. Knowing she would no longer have to pretend her world is more abundant than it is—that she is less bewildered by life than she is—in front of a new person, and what they saw wouldn’t drive them away, brings her a thrilling peace. Maybe she is naïve for believing that this could be what she had been missing all along—a person to echo her endless confusion about the rules of living. But she is past the point of caring whether or not this makes her gullible; it feels too good to just drive, Lena with her hand out the open window, surfing the headwind, Mitty’s grip loosened around the wheel, as though the roads had become straighter and better paved since they’d left that morning. The brief reprieve of not knowing—not fearing—whatever comes next.