Days were longer in the Midwest. Long, flat stretches of brown and orange land split the roads and houses like great highways of natural earth, a world before the world that was now. It surprised Parker how much he could relate to a flat, empty stretch of space. He had always considered himself a child of the east coast. Now, though, he wasn't sure he belonged anywhere.

Journals forgotten, showering a luxury, meals fast and sometimes stolen -- this was his life, or had been.

When Parker left Destiny City, he did not know precisely what he was searching for, or where he was going. The first bus that rolled into the Greyhound station was the one he chose, that was it. It wasn't until he reached as far as Nebraska that he realized he was on a mission. Parker was searching for a place that gave him peace in the wake of Dani's death -- but did it exist?

He moved across states, did day labor, went hungry. If he had a viable parent to speak of, perhaps the police would have come after him. As a child of Hillworth, that was not a luxury. He was declared a runaway -- confirmed by his father's statement about the abrupt visit to the rehab facility -- and kicked out of school. The remaining belongings in his dorm room where pilfered by his peers until the last few bits were packed into boxes by administration and donated to Goodwill.

Parker Damhnait had run away, and that was to be the end of it.

In some ways, Parker thought that too. He made it as far as California, crossing the states in a slurring zig-zag. The Pacific Ocean was a mystery to him so he picked up a cheap boxed sandwich from a 7-11 and made his way there. The sand was cool, much cooler than the beach where he and Tate wasted so many afternoons. Tate. How was she? A kinder person would have thought of her more often, but Parker was a broken boy obsessed -- and only by one girl.

One dead girl.

Squishing over the sand, sandwich in hand, Parker looked gaunt and narrow. His hair was beyond shaggy. It fell past his shoulders, and to his credit, a modest beard had defied his delayed puberty to hedge onto his chin and top lip in sparse patches. Parker crossed the short stretch of sand and collapsed at the last strip of dry before the tide.

It would have been beautiful if he wasn't such a miserable hull of a person. That beach visit had been cathartic. Sitting there, Parker realized that he would never find the place that he was looking for: a place where nothing reminded him of Dani. The sky was the same blue as her hair, the green of the grass on the dunes the same on her eyes. A woman powdered her nose inches away, and Parker could only think of Sailor Magellan.

The world was nothing but a series of booby traps into painful memories he was not fit to process. And yet, on that beach, Parker was forced to realize that those feelings were unavoidable. So what had this voyage done? It offered him no more solace than his apartment with Tate in Destiny City.

That day, Parker made the decision to return to the city that had stolen the girl he thought he just might be able to give his whole heart to. There was nothing in the world that could bring him peace, but maybe, just maybe there was something in Destiny City that would. What could bring him closure? What could soothe an aching soul?

Oh, that's right -- holding the throat of the wretched b***h of a Nega that killed Dani until her face turned the same deep blue as her tangled mass of hair. Maybe that. Yeah, that sounded great.

For the first time in a long time, Parker Damhnait smiled.