Step one was planning. No phone calls, no messages beyond the one asking her to come over. No exchange of information is more transient than a face to face conversation. We met at midnight and spoke in hushed voices. Each conversation was finished by thanking fate for her living situation: a house in the middle of a forest void of any other vestiges of civilization, save for the rotting wooden fences along the path leading up to it. We had a good laugh about how it's the exact kind of place people get kidnapped to. Oh, irony.
I withdrew all my money from a few different ATMs over the course of several days. We took all the cash out of my wallet, out of the emergency fund envelope, out of the piggy bank. Felt odd to see it all in one place; in the form of physical bills, all my savings seemed much bigger. Not that it would matter. She promised to take care of me, and I knew she would.
Surprisingly enough, two large cardboard boxes were enough to fit everything I wanted to keep. I walked around my place aimlessly, wondering if there was anything more I could possibly come to miss, but nothing came to mind. Nothing I could pack, at least. I figured I might miss the nearby park and the ducks in its pond. Maybe a few of the local cafés, too. I haven't been to any of them remarkably often, though. Hopefully not often enough for any of the staff to remember me. Either way, sacrifices had to be made.
Step two was cybersecurity. Cyberdisappearance. Truth be told, a lot of it was nowhere near crucial. None of my social media or messaging app accounts were likely to contain any clues. We spent at least an hour deleting all of them anyway. I just didn't like the idea of investigators snooping in my conversations. I wondered if they'd even be able to find a semi-recent photo for the missing person report. I factory reset all my devices. Did you know that after a factory reset, some data can still be recovered in almost one-fifth of the cases? She did, so we didn't take any chances. She packed my phone and laptop into a paper bag laid neatly with the rest of my things and planned a proper sendoff.
Step three was redundancy. Dress-up. Imagining every ridiculous edge case that could give us any trouble and accounting for it. Sitting in the back of her car, I tore my eyes away from the last sight of my former home and put on the wig she brought me. It was cheap, but believable enough if seen through the window of a moving car. The night was dark, the sky entirely cloudy and starless. I thought of what we were trying to prevent: the minuscule possibility of a stranger noticing me in the backseat of a nondescript car at three in the morning and committing my face to memory well enough to eventually recognize it in a missing person report. What a joke! But jokes like to come true. You can never be too sure.
Step four was a road trip. It was surprisingly fun; I haven't been this happy to just sit in a car and watch the scenery go by since I was a little kid.
We made two stops during the few hours it took. The first one was to dump my devices in a river, just on the outskirts of the city. The sky was as pitch black as when we had left. Watching her walk towards the riverbank from the backseat, at some point I could only make out a vague silhouette. I felt a pang of guilt for polluting the water, but it was quickly washed away by a wave of deep comfort. Sorry, fishies, I swear we had a good reason.
The second stop was at a gas station. The cameras made me nervous, so I grabbed the book I've been reading just to have an excuse to keep my head inconspicuously down. I doubt the inside of the car was even visible on the feed. Even if it was, nobody would probably look at it. I read the same line over and over again anyway. By the time we reached our destination, the sun had begun to come up. The merciful cover of darkness was slowly giving way to a soft luminescence. I was exhausted. She took my hand and showed me to my bedroom, bathed in the peach-pink light. The fresh sheets had a faint floral scent. Sleep came almost as soon as she tucked me in. I dreamt of nothing at all.
Step five was waiting. Every morning right after bringing me breakfast she'd look up the missing person reports. It took four days until mine showed up among them and three weeks until it disappeared like I have.
At least that's what she told me. I have to admit I skipped this step; I just couldn't be bothered. The job was done. I was home.
I listened to the birds sing as I hung my clothes in the spacious oak wardrobe beside my bed. Some of the hangers were already occupied; she said she had left me a few welcome gifts. In the pocket of one of the dresses, I found the final of said gifts: a charming little flip phone with only one contact in it.