Randy had been in Vancouver for five days without any contact from Meg. At first, he thought she simply didn't want to talk while driving, which made sense – she was so edgy in cars, he reasoned, she wouldn't want the added distraction of trying to juggle a phone and a steering wheel at the same time. Then one day stretched into two, then three, and by the time day five rolled around, Randy was flubbing lines, barking orders at stagehands, barely eating, and not taking the least bit of care with his back. 'Where is she? Why hasn't she called me? She ran again. She had to. Something scared her, or she couldn't handle it.' He paced aimlessly in his trailer; occasionally a crew member or co-star banged on his door, asked him to come out and shoot scenes or be social, but he did the minimum necessary or ignored it altogether. 'No. Meg promised me. She promised me she would listen. She wouldn't run. Something had to happen to her.'

Five days, six nights. Saturday night. The entire film lot had cleared out, everyone having made enough friends and acquaintances on set to make for a palatable evening in downtown's many bars and clubs, except for Randy. His reputation as an irritable, anti-social git was firmly cemented, so he spent his evening drinking his dinner and pacing back and forth in tighter and tighter circles in his trailer. Irritation grew to agitation, agitation grew to rage, which gave way to him overturning a chair by slamming it to the ground. The rotation and fast movement nearly brought him to his knees; he snapped his hands down to his lower back and yowled.

In a panic, Randy clawed for his phone and dialed the number Dave had given him for Meg. When the line cut to voicemail for the umpteenth time, Randy found himself remembering only snippets of the night after that point, ending with him on the phone with Dave. He remembered an overwhelming sense that something had gone terribly wrong with Meg, and then anger that Dave had never told him the name of his apartment complex. He remembered trying to make more phone calls – to Meg, to Dave, even to Joe – but Meg didn't answer, Dave couldn't understand him and had to keep calling back, and Joe was kind enough to not pick up.

The night blurred further after that; there was more pacing, something else broke, loudly, and then the trailer was markedly darker. Randy's phone kept ringing; it was never Meg, it was Dave, and Randy remembered eventually telling Dave to stop calling back, just in case Meg was trying to call. Then he opened another bottle of tequila. And then a third. The room was both falling away and compressing in on him, and he couldn't organize anything in his head. One minute, he wanted to find Dave and ask for help. The next, go to Meg and make sure she was safe. The next, strangle Joe, slowly. The next, throw yet another object around his small – and yet somehow still shrinking – trailer. So instead, he drank and drank. By the time he was drunk enough to shake away the panic, he had missed six calls from Dave. By the time he realized he was going to throw up, he nearly missed the sink as well.

Laying in the doorway of the tiny film-lot trailer's bathroom, Randy slapped for his phone when it rang. He knew, without looking, who it would be.

"I'm gonna walk out, Dave. I know you live in Seattle, I can find her. I found her once already."

"Calm down, Randy. What happened?"

Dave was no less concerned that he hadn't heard from Meg in so many days, but he trusted her. If he didn't, he'd have gone out of his mind with worry years ago. Not to mention, Dave had already called his apartment complex. Meg's rental car, along with Meg, had arrived earlier that morning. 'Later than I like, but she made it. That's all I need to know, and when she feels like it, she'll call. And it's nothing Randy needs to know, period. He needs to leave her alone.' Randy tried, as best as the alcohol would let him, to explain what had happened, what had gone through his head, and at the end, all Dave could do was sigh.

"You've both lost it. You sound like you had a panic attack, or close to it. Besides, you used to trust Meg. Remember all the times you said she would be fine when she went to New Orleans? And she-"

"And she almost fucking died, Dave! And what came back isn't Meg anymore! You know that!"

"And what you're turning into isn't you. Get a hold of yourself. She's fine."

"You talked to her? You know that she's fine?" Irritation was starting to creep back into Randy's voice, and he rolled from his back to try to look for the third bottle of tequila. It was a poor decision; the room began to spin wildly and he had to slam his head against the floor to make it stop.

"No." Half a lie, but Dave didn't care.

"Then you don't know! You don't know shit!"

Dave, no less irritated, finally lost his temper. "And you've come up with zero plans tonight, Randy, other than to get completely bombed. Here, I know! I'll call the film lot, get you a few days off, and you can just go hang out with her at my place. That'll fix everything! And if she's not there, then you've got a few days to drive around Seattle and make sure she's not just, you know, wandering around lost or something. Meg's so helpless, you know. There, there's a great plan."

The line was silent for a few seconds. They stretched to minutes, and Dave could hear Randy's faint breathing in the background. When he spoke, it was as though a small child was asking for an impossible favor. "Would you? Please? I'll pack. I'm packing right now. I don't even care if they say no, I'm just leaving."

Dave smacked himself in the forehead, loudly; he didn't mean to give Randy the idea to simply leave. The consequences of that could go far beyond just tanking the movie and Randy was in no condition to understand that. "Randy. Don't do that. You know I wasn't being serious, and you don't need that trouble. The film company would have a field day, Corporate would probably fire you -"

"I need her, Dave."

"You know, there's another thing. Why would I enable you? You're not going to my apartment, Randy. No. She has this time away from you to get her head together. I thought having you nearby would be good in case there was an emergency, but it's bad for both of you."

"Meg isn't -"

"No, listen. This is for both of you – to help you, not to hurt you. Whether or not you see it, Meg's issues are wearing you down, too. You can't just fix her. You're not going to take all of her problems on yourself – look at you! Look at what you're doing, right now. Go ahead and be pissed off, but you need the space just as much as she does, because you have no perspective right now. You're acting just like you did after Sam, and over what? A relationship you aren't in and don't have. I'm not going to let you wreck yourself, or her. Go sober up and get some sleep. Finish your movie, go home, and get through PT. If you talk to her, fine. If you don't, that might even be better. Maybe we're all better if we don't, right now."

Dave didn't hear the line drop after he brought up Sam; Randy was looking at his phone in stunned silence. 'I am not...this isn't the...I don't even know if she's there. I don't know where she is.' The room continued to tilt around him, and he draped an arm over his eyes, trying to shut out the spinning. 'Tomorrow. Tomorrow I push to get this stupid film wrapped, and then I find her. Dave's right about one thing – I have to end this. Just not the way he thinks.'

Meg sat on the floor in Dave's bedroom. She hadn't moved much in the past day; from the bed to the floor, occasionally to the bathroom, and back again. Food wasn't appealing, she didn't care to learn the neighborhood, and her neighbors were a mystery that she chose to leave alone. She watched her phone light up again and again, but she never picked up to see who was calling. She didn't care. Her mind spun with a single thought, as it had for days, now precisely seven of them: 'You got on the plane without saying goodbye.'

Eventually, it occurred to her that at least some of the calls might have accompanying messages. 'Dave probably called the apartment complex to make sure my car showed up, though. It probably doesn't matter if I talk to him.' Meg traced her fingers along the edges of the phone, breathed deeply, and finally tried to check for messages. She couldn't remember how to use a majority of the phone's features, but voicemail came with its own icon. 'I think this is how I check, but how do I tell if I have messages in the first place? I used to have this phone. Why don't I remember?'

In the middle of the second message – both of them were from Randy – Meg let out a scream that brought neighbors to her door, pounding on it and yelling into the apartment to see if she was okay. Eventually the complex manager arrived and unceremoniously let himself in.

"You're Meg, right? Are you okay? Dave said you would be here..."

"And now I'm about to not be here." Meg hadn't moved much out of her suitcase; the few things that had come out were now being slammed unceremoniously back in. She whipped the zipper shut so quickly she clipped part of her finger in the track, but barely noticed the blood.

"Dave said this would probably happen. He wanted me to call him." The man reached for his phone and began to dial, but Meg snatched it from his hands and whipped it out into the hallway, narrowly missing the heads of the people who had gathered in her doorway.

"Whoa, kiddo. Take it easy." The man's voice had gone from calm to exceedingly cautious.

"You...get the fuck out of my way." Meg's voice was dangerous, and she shoved past him as much as her slight frame and damaged leg would allow, scanning the counter for the envelope of money Dave had left her. 'He said emergencies – well, he just created one. Good job.' Snatching the envelope, she stormed out the door, the crowd cutting her a wide path as she went. Each step of the staircase was misery, and she had picked up her suitcase with her left arm - 'Like a complete idiot, Meg,' - but she refused to stop and show even a hint of weakness to the people she knew were watching. Throwing the suitcase into the back of the car, she hobbled around to the driver's side, let herself in, and drove out of the parking lot in a fury.

The cord of the wall charger still dangled from her phone when she pulled into a gas station some twenty miles from the apartment complex, thoroughly lost, though relatively sure she could buy a car-phone-charger and an international map inside the attached convenience store. "Randy would appreciate this whole being-lost thing," she mumbled to herself. Leaning back in her seat, she restarted her voicemail from the beginning.

'Hey kiddo...I'll keep it short. I wanted to call you before Dave gave you the phone, just to leave you an official first message and tell you not to worry about anything. The match, the movie...the apartment. Really, don't worry about the apartment. I won't be that far away, and if it sucks – don't tell Dave I said this – but if it sucks, I'll find something better for you. And it's Dave's place, so it probably won't suck, but it won't be all girly, either. Which is probably okay, since you're not all girly. And you know what I mean, so don't get all pissy about it. Plus, you've gotta go through his stuff and tell me if there's anything we can use for blackmail. Listen, I gotta go, some asshole is calling me for a promo – I'll call you before I get on the plane.'

The system toned, counted to the second message, stated the time – 5:32 in the morning – and toned again. She dug the box to the phone out of her suitcase while she listened, knowing the instructions were inside. She could figure out how to skip to the third message later; right now she just needed to grit her teeth and hear the rest of what Randy had to say in this one and then end the call.

'Hey Meggie. I hope this isn't me calling too much...I couldn't find my phone last night, and...I don't know. It was weird. The match was shitty, everything hurts. You probably saw it, I don't need to tell you. Obviously, my phone turned up. It got into my pants pocket from the arena, but I don't remember putting it there. I guess Colby got me good, huh? That apartment must be something special. Dave was on the phone with the complex manager past midnight, trying to get shit set up for you. He said the guy's a friend of his, but still...be careful. My plane is leaving in...a half hour? I don't know. I wish you were here to talk to. You're my Meggie, you know? I miss you. Be careful driving. You promised you'd get there. Try to call me, okay? Even if I'm on the plane, leave me a message. Just pretend like you're talking to me. Shit, it's probably just as good, right? Lo- er, bye, Meg. Talk to you later.

Meg ended the call to voicemail and rested her head on the steering wheel. "Five thirty-two. Five motherfucking thirty-two in the morning. At the airport. And Dave was on the phone at midnight. Think, Meg. Think. When did you call Dave?" She punched at buttons on the phone, luck guiding her into the list of completed calls. "Dave," Meg whispered, "Why would you lie to me? You knew I would go to Seattle anyway; where else could I live? Randy was going to be right there in Vancouver. Why lie?" There, in the list, at 12:38, sat Dave's number. "You were talking to me, not to the apartment guy. And Randy wasn't on the plane."

Meg sat in silence for some time before attempting more spoken logic. Her mind was reeling; pieces weren't adding up – or rather, they were, and in ways that made her skin crawl. "Why did I think Randy didn't call me? I should have gotten his first voicemail...well...first." A quick call to customer service solved that. She'd had the voicemail. She didn't know what the small symbol in the top bar of her phone meant – either for the missed call or the waiting message. She saw them, ignored them, talked to Dave, and pounded the phone into the dashboard before ignoring it for the remainder of the drive. 'You fucking idiot, Meg. What the fuck is wrong with you? What happened to you in that accident? Nobody said you hit your head; why can't you remember how to use a fucking phone? This is the same phone you used to have!'

She shook her head, hard. 'Dave said he was already gone, before 12:38. But he was in the airport waiting for a call from me, in the morning. He didn't get to Vancouver until...well, however long it takes to fly from the east coast to the west coast. So, a few hours of radio silence, then driving, sleep, getting set up...I probably shouldn't have another message til the next day. Unless there's one in there from Dave. And holy fuck, do I have something for him. I can wait to check the rest.'

Meg smiled. "No," she said, looking at her phone, "No, I know you better than that, Ran. You'd call me falling asleep just to snore into the phone. I'll guess you called from baggage claim. No – better yet. Airport bathroom." Laughing, she turned the engine over and pulled out of the gas station lot, driving north. "This has to be one of my better ideas. Definitely. Oh, Meg. You do the dumbest shit, sometimes."