Louisa pauses on the station steps and spots two men by a car, smelling their cigarettes and sensing threat in their coarse laughter. Her body reacts with fear, biting her lip until she tastes blood, and she quickly assesses she cannot return to the train before it departs. The area is deserted, heightening her vulnerability.

One man hushes the other, thinking he heard something; the second man sounds drunk. Under stress, Louisa’s mind fixates on her past trick in a library bathroom—slithering under stall walls—and imagines Ted’s disgust, nearly laughing aloud before stifling herself. She uses the shelter of deep shadows along the steps to move quietly.

Keeping close to the wall, Louisa slips past the car and beyond the streetlamps, where the night becomes a “dark hole.” She cannot see or hear the train anymore and hopes Ted will not hate her for leaving him with the painting. What troubles her most about Ted is the possibility that his kindness is genuine, which feels like a responsibility she cannot bear.

Louisa grips her backpack straps and walks into the pitch-black road beyond the station lights. She frames her departure as not missing but simply gone, asserting a fragile autonomy as an eighteen-year-old alone.

Suddenly, a man yells, then another joins in, and Louisa breaks into a run, fleeing deeper into the night.