"I had to grip the wheel," I said. "On the ramp. Just now."
She looked at me sideways. "You? Really?"
"Every time."
She nodded slowly, as if this were a piece of information she needed and had been missing. Then she said, without looking at me, "I'm angry at you, too. I want you to know that. I've been trying not to be, because you — because of what you did. But you were there. For a whole year. You fixed my expense reports. You walked past me in the stairs. And you knew I was going crazy and you didn't say anything until somebody threw me a party."
"Yes," I said. "That's true."
"Why?"
So I told her about the beige. I told her about my mother, and the gas station in Kentucky, and COYLE & SONS on the side of the truck, and the parking lot in Muncie, and a red coat gets you found. I told her I'd climbed that bank on my hands and knees because the sirens were coming and every part of me had been trained since I was seven years old to get out before anyone wrote me down. I told her that I'd let Derek have it because having it would have meant being seen, and being seen was the thing I was most afraid of in the whole world, more than the water.