Beth paced by the door after she slammed it shut for the second time, too angry to sit down or even care about the state of the room. How dare he? Yeah, they'd gotten off on the wrong foot, but that gave him no right to snap at her. She was just trying to make it better and ease the tension. Talking about your family and your life was what normal people did after all.

Feeling the need to hit something, Beth clenched her fists. But instead she tried to focus on calming down. That meant breathing properly, which she wasn't doing at the moment. Beth was going from holding her breath to keep herself from screaming, so short huffs of air like she might blow a pig's house down.

In through the nose, out through the mouth.

She kept telling herself that until she found herself calm enough to perch on the edge of the bed. She started feeling a little ashamed of her behavior. Maybe she overreacted and fought fire with fire. She didn't have to yell back at him. Beth wondered how she could have gotten under his skin so much after only a couple hours of knowing him. He seemed to take whatever she said or did personally.

As she thought about it, she realized that those couple of hours were also the ones she was supposed to count to call her mom. There were more important things than an angry redneck to worry about at the moment now. She needed to keep her lies straight.

The next thing Beth had to do was call Darcy and fill her in a bit on the situation. Beth unlocked her phone and scrolled through it until she found the number for the condo that was sent to her before she left. Following the directions on the night stand, she used the room's phone to dial it up and waited several rings. The phone was just about to go to voicemail when someone answered.

"HELLO?" Beth could hardly hear the person on the other end over the insanely loud music in the backround.

"Hi, Darcy?"

"YEAH?" There was a pause and music was turned down a few notches. "WHO'S THIS?"

"It's Beth."

"OH BETH! Shh everyone its Beth! HEY!" Darcy was still yelling into the phone with even with the music turned down. "ARE YOU SETTLED IN FOR THE NIGHT?"

"Yeah I am, I haven't called my mom yet though," Beth waited to see if Darcy would say anything and when she didn't, asked, "has she called you?"

"NO…" Darcy must have finally realized her voice was still raised and started to talk a little more normally, "...no, if you can believe it." Beth heard Darcy laugh, probably recalling all of her parent's overprotective moments. "She sure is giving you a lot of freedom, hey?"

"You could say that I guess…" Beth mumbled into the phone at the irony.

"Anyway, we're all really excited that you're going to be here tomorrow!" There were a few cheers in the backround to emphasize. "We've missed you a lot!"

Beth sighed then. She missed them too. It was only recently that she had started getting back into things and hauling her ass so that she could graduate. She'd pushed her best friends away immensely after her father's death. Yes, they all loved him too, Hershel had touched everyone in the community somehow, but they didn't go through the same grief that she did.

At school they were given a few pamphlets on the five stages of grief (well, actually Beth had been given several dozen by the guidance counselor):

1. Denial.

2. Bargaining.

3. Anger.

4. Depression.

5. Acceptance.

The pamphlets were supposed to neatly outline and explain everything they were feeling, saying it was perfectly normal after a loss. What Beth felt didn't seem perfectly normal though. What she felt was so crushing that doing the simplest tasks were a struggle. And that was if she managed to get out of bed.

Most of the time, it felt like she couldn't breathe – like something was pressing against her chest and forcing the air completely out. Which is why she'd thought, if she couldn't breathe, why should she move? Why should she move a single muscle when she could lay there and imagine a perfect world?

On those days, her friends would come by and try to help, following everything the pamphlets suggested. But she was interested in any or their attempts. They couldn't fix her; and neither could the bottle pills on her night stand they constantly stared at.

It was something she had to fix. But every time she thought she had it figured out, or even managed to trick herself that she was okay again…something like a scrapbook or a clanging noise would try to send her spiraling down again.

From the sigh, Darcy seemed to catch on that Beth was upset, "What's eating you?"

"We may have a small problem with tomorrow…" Beth spoke hesitantly.

She could then hear the music get even quieter and guessed Darcy must have been moving to a different room in the house. "What's wrong?"

"Well…" Beth started to regale Darcy with the story of the truck the same way she did with Maggie. Quickly and panicky. Adding the parts about how she couldn't tell Annette because she'd drag her back home and then waited for Darcy's response.

Her response happened to be the same as Maggie's. "Shit."

"Yeah, I will get out of here eventually. Just not as soon as planned," Beth hoped what she was saying was true.

"Okay, well we'll cover for you for a few days," Darcy paused to think, then said, "My aunt will take some convincing, but she's cool."

Beth felt a small amount of relief from that, "Thank you so much, Darc."

"No problem, Mama Greene won't hear a word from us!"

Beth was about to say goodbye when she realized there was one other person Mama Greene couldn't hear from. There was still the sheet of paper she had to fill out information on, which thanks to Daryl being a jackass, ended up with her in the room on the floor. Which made it a whole hell of a lot easier to improvise. "One more thing. I need to put down a contact number for the mechanic, but I can't put down Mom or Maggie or the condo for obvious reasons."

"Easy, put my cell, it's a Georgia number," Darcy offered. "But you're paying the long distance charges."

Beth added that to her mental list of everything she was going to have to pay, "Deal."

"Great, see you soon!" Darcy was about to hang up when Beth heard a shuffle and she was back saying, "Beth, I'm really glad you're not giving up on this adventure."

The line went dead after that and Beth hung up her own line. Darcy sound different from her usual self during that last sentence. She was the loud, spitfire of the group, but she was quiet when she said it, like she was questioning if she should. She probably had some double meaning to it that Beth was too tired to think about at the moment. But Beth was glad she wasn't giving up on Florida or freedom either.

Even though she was exhausted, there was still one more all she had to make. So once again, Beth dialed, but didn't have to wait multiple rings this time. Right after the first Annette was picking up, she'd probably been sitting there staring at it since she got home. "Hi, baby."

Beth tried to keep the conversation as short as possible so she wouldn't give anything away. She answered yes to being at the border (lie) and yes to checking in with the girls (true). She told Annette she missed her (true), that she was gassing up regularly (kinda true, but not really) and that everything was fine (lie). Then she yawned to let Annette know she just wanted to go to bed and told her she loved her.

After she hung up, Beth really did get ready for bed. But it was just reaching six o'clock and impossible for her to close her eyes and fall asleep. So she ended up looking up at the ceiling and continuously praying that everything would work out as planned.