I woke up alone and Coralin was gone. There was no trace of her. Her stuff had vanished! We’d been traveling together for the last week: two weird souls floating alone through the American void, searching for something. I don’t know what. Running. I met her at a train station in the quiet night, standing there on the platform hugging herself in the smoky light as if willing herself to disappear. What did I say to her? I can’t remember. “Gotta light?” Probably that. She lit a cigarette and we passed it back and forth. Those are handy like that. They start a conversation. Or prolong one.

I always liked to boast to my friends that traveling alone makes you a better person. Something in your brain clicks on, I claimed, that unearths a personality you didn't know was in there. I'm not sure anymore if that's true. It's just a romantic idea. I meet a lot of people but they're on their own wavelength. They come and go like moths around a light, a type of grief you don't get used to. I wasn't interested in Coralin's story and she wasn't interested in mine. We agreed not to share our real names.

Last night we found a cheap hostel and explored our new city, still drunk on the travel potion as we wandered twisty dark streets that were like piers into the abyss. We peeked behind corners, rattled locked gates, and laughed at each other’s horrible jokes that were not even funny. It was one of those nights that seemed to stretch and stretch into something unreal, where you say anything and it always works out. It couldn't last but you can make it count. One of my friends likes to say: moments like those are deposits for the future. Coralin and I were with each other long enough for me to think maybe there was a reason we'd met. You learn a lot about a person by the way they travel.

At the end of the night we shared another cigarette outside the hostel, sort of our ritual now ever since we met on that platform a week ago. I didn’t really know how to smoke but I faked it pretty well. She taught me how to flick like I’d been doing it for years and before I knew it Coralin and cigarettes were linked in my mind.

But now she was gone. There was no note or anything. I reached into my pocket and slammed back another Protoloxin. I was never one for the easy solution but as the weights get heavier you think maybe there’s something to these drugs after all. They were Coralin's, she shared them with me. Said they kept the suicidal thoughts away. I didn't ask.

I went downstairs and up to the front desk. "Did a woman check out of room 5 earlier? Short. Brown hair. Tattoos?"

"No my friend. Not so early." The man behind the desk did not seem to care. I left.

The sun was not fully up. The trains were not running yet. Where had she gone? Maybe she was just taking a walk. But I knew I wouldn't see her again.

That night I caught a train out of town, but I lingered on the platform for as long as I could, smoking our last cigarette.