Where She Went

Aldous clears Adam’s schedule and encourages him to spend a day alone and unplugged before the tour starts. As Adam wanders the streets of New York, he thinks about how bad things have become with his band. They never even stay in the same hotel anymore. Then, he sees a flier with Mia’s face on it. She will be performing in a cello concert that night. He immediately walks to the box office and buys a ticket.

Adam remembers the aftermath of the accident. The car crash killed Mia’s parents immediately. Her brother had died in the ER shortly after. Mia sustained massive injuries to her legs and one arm, requiring extensive surgeries. But she also suffered brain damage. It was not catastrophic, but it changed her personality from vivacious to something dull and monotone. In the weeks following the accident, she receives a letter saying that she has been accepted to the Juilliard School of music. She immediately asks for her cello and begins preparing to enter the school five months later. Playing the cello begins to recover pieces of her personality, but her playing has changed. It has gone from something impressive to being, as one journalist describes it, “otherworldly.” The day she left for Julliard, she told Adam she loved him and never returned. He didn’t even realize that they had broken up.

When the concert ends, an usher approaches Adam and says that Mia would like to see him backstage. Apparently, he has not been as incognito as he assumed. When he sees her, he wants to touch her cheek, but recognizes that he may never be able to touch her again. They make small talk about her concert and his tour. Mia says that the next day, she is leaving for Japan. Adam wants to ask her if she knows how devastating the loss of her has been for him, but he doesn’t. They shake hands and say goodbye. 

Adam reminisces about the early days after the breakup. He had moved back in with his parents and started working at an electronics plant with his dad, doing data entry. At Christmastime, a friend named Kim visited him. She had been Mia’s best friend. When he asked if she knew why Mia broke up with him, she wouldn’t tell him. He shouted at her to leave him alone and she left. Then, for over the first time in a year, he picked up his guitar and started to write songs again. These were the sessions that led to the major breakthrough album for his band, an album which reporters would call the angriest album of the decade.