After the baker’s wife dies in Act Two of Into the Woods, the baker flees from his child, his friends, and the giant trying to murder them all. He finds the ghost of his absentee father in the woods and insists he’s done with all the fairy-tale trappings of his life: no more riddles, curses, quests. His father says, sure, why not run away? But “where did you have in mind? . . . Unless there’s a ‘where,’ you’ll only be wandering blind. Just more questions, different kind.” It isn’t enough to leave. If you aren’t running toward a new, specific life, you will always be haunted by the life you leave behind.

In Act One, before their lives sour, Cinderella flees her prince. Knowing she would, he’s spread the palace steps with pitch, trapping her midflight. She might give in to the trap and let him catch her. But the prince doesn’t know her, only her ensorcelled performance, the fantasy version of her. She’s left with an impossible choice: go home and stay safely herself, or give in to the fairy tale. Let the prince find out if he loves her more than the idea of her. Her choice is no choice at all: she leaves behind her shoe, giving the prince control over the story’s familiar end.

There’s no chance the prince won’t pursue Cinderella’s clue. She acts as though he might find it in the pitch, shrug his shoulders, and go home to marry some richer woman. And there’s no way the baker can leave this story. The whole world is only his house and the woods. It isn’t that he doesn’t know what he’s running toward, it’s that the story has nowhere else to go. It’s the appearance of flight they want, knowing the real thing is beyond them.

This is the way the story’s told. This is who we are.

*

Bernard and Edith agreed they were better as friends. She figured this meant they’d still fuck now and then but at least she didn’t have to worry about long-term satisfaction. It was only a way of blowing away dust.

They watched Minority Report on his couch, Edith’s head on his lap. Tim Blake Nelson put Tom Cruise into a horrifying carceral limbo. God, Bernard said, no one gives me gender envy like Tim Blake Nelson.

Really?

Don’t say it like that. Bernie played with her hair.

No he’s great. He’s the perfect amount of fucked-up looking.

Only dudes get to be that ugly and still be hot.

Why was she trying to be friends? Edith didn’t want to stay in Texas. She’d lived here for years without building a life—pulled away by Val’s magnetic draw. Why start now?

Do you think you’ll leave, she asked, if things get worse? The two of them had gone to a protest the week before. The court had blocked a law qualifying trans healthcare as child abuse, but they all assumed it’d return like a horror movie slasher: gnarlier, harder to kill.

Not really. I grew up here, not like it’s anything I’m not used to.

Yeah but like. If they start taking away hormone access or whatever.

Trans people survive all the time without doctors’ support. We’ll survive. His hand trailed down to her ribs. All we can do is take care of each other and live the best lives we can.

Wouldn’t you rather do that in a state that didn’t hate you?

And which state would that be? Edith’s body strained toward his fingers. She always got like this the day after her shot. Unwise, feral.

But Bernard, resting his palm on her rib cage, only said, Have you been eating enough?