I drove home the long way.

Here’s what I’d gone up there to do, and I may as well be honest since I’ve been honest about the rest.

I’d gone to get it back. Not legally — I knew it wasn’t mine anymore, I’d sold it, I signed a paper. But somewhere in me was the idea that if I could see it, if I could hold it, something would be returned to me that had been taken.

But it hadn’t been taken.

That’s what I understood on I-70 somewhere east of Boonville. Everything else in those five months was taken. My phone was taken. My food was taken. My name in that house was taken and handed around and laughed at.

The hair I *sold*. I decided. I got up one morning, and I walked to Commercial Street because I had no bus fare, and I put it on a counter and traded it for the one thing I wanted, which was to know.