Kendra Rae Phillips’s flight from New York begins as an escape without a destination: in December 1983, she boards a train at Grand Central Terminal in Midtown Manhattan carrying hidden savings, a burning scalp, and the fear that she has already caused irreparable harm. The scene makes departure both physical and uncertain. Kendra is moving away from the city, but she does not know where she is going, how long she can remain missing, or whether distance can undo what she has done.

Flight from New York

Kendra has left her apartment in secret, taking money she had hidden in a torn pair of polka-dotted panties at the bottom of her sock drawer. The savings give her a means to travel, but not a plan. Before leaving, she had imagined making small talk with the taxi driver and asking whether he knew an upstate town that might be welcoming to people like her. Her attention had instead been fixed on what she had overheard a woman say to a man on the phone. At the station, she still cannot name a destination or explain fully what has made her run.

The opening places her in a train car whose doors remain open and whose movement has not yet begun. She watches the visible strip of platform, wondering whether someone has followed her. The other passengers offer no sign of pursuit: on one side sits a young mother and her baby in matching red winter coats with black velvet lapels; on the other, a gray-haired man sleeps with his forehead against the window, snoring. Kendra counts herself among the same four people who were in the car when she entered it five minutes earlier. The ordinary, nearly motionless scene gives her fear a sharp focus: she is already away from home, but not yet beyond anyone’s reach.

Pain and the decision to go

Kendra’s body keeps pulling her attention back to the reason the journey feels urgent. Her nails scrape from the front of her scalp to the back and forward again; each moment of relief gives way to dry, searing pain. She compares the worsening burn to a bad perm, intensified beyond what she can bear. The pain moves from her scalp to her neck, and each scratch seems to lead to another. She knows she should stop, but the itch persists, while waiting for the train to move leaves her with little else to attend to.

The overheard remark gives that physical distress a specific, unsettling context: “Imani says it’s not supposed to burn.” Kendra does not explain here what has been applied to her hair, who Imani is speaking to, or why the remark caused her to flee. Instead, the prologue lets the unexplained statement sit beside the burning sensation. Her body supplies evidence that something is wrong, while the circumstances remain only partly disclosed. That gap keeps the flight from reading as a settled escape: Kendra is running from a danger she can feel but has not yet fully described.

Recognition on the train

When the conductor reaches her car to check tickets, Kendra startles at his hand on her shoulder and bats it away before realizing who has touched her. She pays with a crisp twenty, then admits that she does not know where she is headed. Asked for the northernmost stop, she chooses Poughkeepsie, about two hours away, at a fare of four dollars and seventy-five cents. She searches her wallet for the remaining seventy-five cents and receives her ticket and change.

The exchange briefly appears to make the escape simple. Then the conductor recognizes her. His attention settles on her eyes; he says that she looks too young to be the woman he has in mind, apologizes, and leaves. As he goes, Kendra hears him mutter, “Witch indeed.” The encounter shows that her public identity can travel with her even when she has not chosen a destination. Recognition does not stop the train or expose her outright, but it turns a routine ticket check into a reminder that she may not be able to disappear merely by leaving the city.

The cost of disappearing

Kendra knows her name is being dragged through the papers and thinks it would be easy for people to believe that she wants a break from the spotlight. Yet she cannot imagine being left alone indefinitely. She worries about how long others will be kind to Trace before demanding answers, and she acknowledges that she will not be let off easily after what she has done. The consequences extend beyond her own absence: she thinks of careers jeopardized and recalls a note slipped under her door in the night by a Black writer she had idolized for much of her youth: “You couldn’t just let things be?” The question makes her flight part of a wider rupture, though the prologue does not specify the careers at risk or fully recount her actions.

Once the conductor leaves and the train doors close, Kendra exhales in relief, but the relief does not last. The itch becomes all-consuming; she bites her lip to keep from screaming and understands that reaching the end of the line will not necessarily end either the scratching or the running. As the train accelerates, she rests her head against a warm, sweaty window and closes her eyes. For the duration of the ride, she tries to pretend that everything is okay and that it is not too late. The ending offers no confirmation that she reaches Poughkeepsie, remains missing, or repairs the harm she fears she has caused. Its fragile hope rests only in motion: she has left New York, but neither the pain nor the past has been left behind.