The silence before Rosario spoke was rough. It stretched, like there were faeries up here playing with time on the roof too, each passing second unbearable. But I don't understand was better than you're crazy and with those words, Lyra nodded, her jaw tense. She flashed her eyes up at Rosario and could see the worry, and that was hard to look at, too; Lyra hated whenever anyone was seriously worried about her. Totally the wrong sort of attention.
She could work with 'I don't understand', though. "I'll start at the beginning," she said, twisting to reach down and pick up the binder. She'd drawn her route over a black and white print out from Google Maps, though its addition had felt a bit desperate; Lyra doubted a geographical aide was going to back her story up any. But it gave her hands something to do as she opened the binder and pointed, starting at Tennessee. "When I left, I was putting off getting home, a bit. Wanted to stretch out the adventure, didn't I? So, 'stead of spending the money on a bus back, I hitched lifts. Made it to Lexington, here, before I started getting a bad feeling bout the guy I was riding with. Don't remember his name, but he's not important. I got out, walked a ways, and then Johnny picked me up. He was the one I— I said he worked on the riverboat. That guy. He um, was heading back to New York too, said he'd take me all the way. So we stopped here, in Charleston, after dark," she tapped the map with a jittery finger, then drew a line down the road they'd taken. "And the next day, carried on through and stopped here, at the Mystery Hole. It was my idea, I wanted to see it. I made him go there. That's where it happened. Where I just... disappeared from the world. 'Tirely. Look—"
Lyra flipped the map over and unclipped the rings of the binder, passing over the statement from her bank, the one that backed up a trip outta Tennessee, into Kentucky, stopping at the motel in Charleston then going entirely blank till she was back home. "More than three months, and there's nothing. I spent nothing. And if you check my socials, they'd dead too. And I didn't message you, did I, all that time? Cuz I was down there, with them. Not even in the real world. And no one noticed. They did some kinda magic, made sure no one noticed. Three months late and Jocelyn, mom, you... no one blinked."