It was great. Freedom even the imagined kind always is.

I always tried to imagine what it would be like to open your door to find something you had given up on. Maybe it had seen places you never had, been rerouted and passed through so many strange hands, but still somehow found its way back to you, all before the day even began.

This was just one night, one chance to vary and see where it took me. The fireflies were probably already out: maybe it wasn’t just a season or a time but a whole world I’d forgotten. I’d never know until I stepped out into it. So I did.

From up above, in a plane passing over, you’d just see one little light in all this dark, with no idea of the lives that were being lived within it, and in the house beside, and beside that one. So much happening in the world, night and day, hour by hour. It was no wonder we were meant to sleep, if only to check out of it for a little while.

Are those the only options? Nothing or forever?

I wanted to be somewhere else ... Someplace where the sight of me sobbing would tie me to no one and no one to me.

You just walk over there and into the office and say, 'Hey, be my prom date,'" he said. "It's that simple.