Matt started to take long walks. No direction, no destination, just one foot in front of the other.

He set out at the time when he normally would have gone to school. By lunchtime he would reach one of the neighboring small towns, where he would stop and chew on a tasteless burger at a fast-food place, head bent over his food at a booth in the corner. Afterward he would walk around town and then back home, sometimes getting there before dark, sometimes not. When he finally crashed on the couch in the evenings—he never used the bed in the bedroom—the physical exhaustion would pull him under and he’d be able to get some kind of sleep. He had learned that if he made himself tired enough, he wouldn’t have to think about anything.