Of Human Bondage was the story of a young man who left his home, left everything, to pursue his dreams and that's what Maddy was determined to do.
"You're going where?" her parents asked her at the dinner table one night after she announced her plans.
"Sydney, Australia," Maddy amplified. Previously she'd only said "Australia."
"By yourself?" her father asked.
"Yes."
"For how long?" her mother asked.
"I'm not sure. I think I'll be back for next semester, but I'm not sure."
"You are not dropping out of college to become some kind of Australian beach bum, young lady," her father said.
"No, I'm not, Daddy. This is just something I have to do."
Maddy hadn't told anybody what had happened with Ryan.
After she'd pulled herself together, she went downstairs and got a ride from a guy she knew from a class they had together. The next day she called Ryan and told him to meet her in a local coffee shop because they had to talk. She told him that she was breaking up with him.
"Why?" he'd said. "Because I didn't want to listen to you yammer on and on about that book with the club-foot guy?"
"You don't remember what happened last night?" Maddy has asked, thinking that maybe last night had been a blessing in disguise. Ryan was such a jerk. How come she'd never noticed it before?
"No," Ryan had said. "I drank too much. All I know is I woke up on the floor of some guy's room."
Maddy hadn't known if he was lying about not remembering raping her, but it didn't matter. She remembere and that's all that mattered. All his pleading and sweet talk wasn't going to change anything.
"Why do you have to go to Australia alone?" Maddy's mother asked. "You know we trust you, but it's so far away."
"Look, I've made up my mind. I'm going to use my babysitting money, so you don't have to worry about paying for it. I'll check in with you guys. I just need to get away," Maddy said.
Maddy's parents couldn't talk her out of it, and after finals were over, she boarded the plane for Australia with what she was wearing on her person and one bag—her knapsack. It was a fairly large bag and contained a lot of stuff, but Maddy didn't want to be burdened with more than that. She had a credit card and figured if she desperately needed anything, she'd buy it. Having just one bag gave her the freedom to go where she wanted. It was liberating to be so free.
Despite what Maddy had told her parents, she hadn't stayed in Sydney. She traveled around, and always remembered to check in with her parents. She talked to people whenever she needed help but as the weeks passed, she deliberately began keeping to herself, staying in her hotel and sitting around the pool the whole day, or bringing her book and sitting on a bench in the zoo instead of really looking at the animals, or going to coffee shops and writing down her thoughts and feelings, trying to figure out what in her head was real and what was just a defense mechanism.
It seemed to be working. Maddy slowly started to feel like herself again. The incident with Ryan (that's what she'd started calling it in her mind) started to recede and almost felt like it hadn't happened. She was going to go back to college and switch her major from psychology to literature. She would buy a new wardrobe. She would be a different person.
Maddy's plane back home was leaving from Sydney and by then she was hundreds of miles away so she took a small plane to Sydney. The flight went fine even though she was a little nervous about small planes.
Then the flight back home. Maddy didn't check her knapsack. She never did. This was something she was very diligent about—never to let the bag out of her sight. Even though the stewardess wanted her to put in the overhead compartant, she did her best to stuff it under her seat.
Maddy closed her eyes and napped.
The next thing she knew the plane was in trouble, crashing, and she was alone, but pulled out her knapsack from under the seat and held onto it like it was a teddy bear. When they'd crashed and she found that she was alive, she'd fiercely held on to her knapsack like a security blanket. It was what kept her alive.