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JJ’s bedroom was the sort of space that made immediate sense once you knew her: small, busy, and absolutely certain of itself.
The first thing anyone noticed walking in was the color. The walls were painted a soft, pale yellow that kept a bit of daytime sunshine even at night, but almost no patch of it was left untouched. One corner was a gallery of crooked drawings stuck up with washi tape—stick-figure families with impossible hair, a lumpy rocket ship with fire that looked like orange spaghetti, a rabbit wearing a cape and, inexplicably, sunglasses. Some were done in waxy, heavy crayon; others in felt-tip marker, the colors bled where she’d pressed too hard.
Glow-in-the-dark stars were scattered across the ceiling, but JJ had refused to let anyone place them in neat, grown-up constellations. Instead, there were dense little clusters over the bed, like swarms of fireflies, and then lonely single stars wandering out toward the ceiling fan. A few had migrated down the walls over time, stuck there by small hands that had stretched just as far as they could reach. At night they made a faint, ghostly pattern when the light went off, like her own private sky, brighter over the pillow where she slept.
The ceiling fan itself was old and a little wobbly, its blades painted white but chipped at the edges from years of pulling on the chains. JJ had insisted on hanging things from them once—paper cranes, a plastic ring, a purple ribbon—until Jess put a stop to it after one particularly dramatic tangle. Now only one survivor remained: a tiny silver foil star on a string, taped to the central fixture instead of the blades. When the fan turned, the string trembled and the star twitched, sending glints around the room like small, patient lightning.
Her bed sat pushed against the wall opposite the door, low enough that she could clamber in and out without help. The duvet was a riot of planets and smiling moons, each orb with a little cartoon face—Saturn’s rings wobbling, Jupiter with a big goofy grin. Matching pillowcases showed tiny astronauts doing handstands on the moon, which JJ liked to inform people was “wrong ’cause there’s no ’gravity like that,” even though she wasn’t totally sure what gravity did yet. The sheets beneath were mismatched: one pale blue, one with faint stripes, survivors from older sets that had somehow drifted into her room.
At the head of the bed, a small mountain range of stuffed animals leaned against the wall. There was the floppy white bunny with one ear permanently bent in half, fur slightly greyed from being dragged around by that ear for years. Next to it sprawled the stuffed dolphin with its chewed fin, a casualty of teething days long past. The bear—flat-faced from years of being slept on—wore a cheap plastic medal around its neck from one of JJ’s tumbling showcases, the ribbon knotted tightly so it wouldn’t fall off. Tucked half behind them, nearly forgotten, was a stuffed robot with embroidered buttons for eyes, one thread loosened so it always looked a bit lopsided and surprised.
Beside the bed, the small white bedside table bore the scars of four years of intense ownership. Crayon scribbles bloomed along one leg, mostly purple and green, where she’d practiced drawing circles and spirals. On top sat the astronaut night-light, a squat little figure in a bubble helmet with a soft, bluish glow that made his chest light up like a tiny moon. Around him was a clutter of treasures: a pink plastic hairband with a single glitter star still attached, a seashell she’d picked up on the beach in Key Biscayne, a chipped plastic bracelet that had once been bright rainbow but was now faded from bathwater and sun.
On the lower shelf of the table, books leaned drunkenly in a row—some with chewed corners, some cardboard baby books she had technically outgrown but refused to give up because she liked the textures, some thin paperbacks with more words than pictures that Jess had started reading to her. Among them, one or two small science picture books jostled for space: one about planets, one about “how things work” with cut-away drawings of toasters and cars and rockets.
Under the window, a low, white shelf unit held the rest of her universe. The top surface acted as a launchpad: a plastic rocket with its nosecone gnawed, a battered space shuttle with a missing wing, a mismatched crew of action figures and small animal toys arranged in what JJ referred to as “missions.” Tonight’s mission involved the rabbit, an astronaut, and a dinosaur all standing in a row on a pink plastic block, facing the window as if they were about to be beamed out into the Miami night.
Inside the cubbies, fabric bins bulged. One overflowed with building blocks in every color, the kind that clicked together with satisfying resistance; another contained an assortment of dolls and doll clothes, some carefully dressed, some naked and wild-haired, one with a drawn-on superhero mask in marker that had refused to wash off. A third bin was simply labelled “bits” in Jess’s looping handwriting on a taped index card: broken toy parts, stray screws from long-forgotten kits, metallic washers, and a plastic magnifying glass with a scratched lens. JJ’s “bits” were often spread across the rug in complicated arrangements that made sense only to her.
That rug covered most of the floor—a thin, soft thing patterned in simple stripes of blue, teal, and white. It was scattered with the fallout of her day: a small plastic screwdriver near the door; a pair of tiny socks inside-out and abandoned; a doll’s shoe; a crumpled sticker sheet with only the outline ghosts of stars remaining. Near the foot of the bed, someone—probably Heidi—had lined up three of JJ’s smallest sneakers side by side, like little footsteps going nowhere.
The paper “balance beam” ran diagonally across one strip of bare floor: a long line of painter’s tape, now slightly dirty at the edges and decorated with stickers of frogs, rockets, and one very stern-looking princess. The tape showed faint black smudges where JJ’s feet had landed over and over as she practiced “walking strong” like the girls she saw on gymnastics videos. In one spot, the tape wrinkled slightly where she’d peeled it up and tried to move it, only to smooth it back down when it tore.
Above that, taped to the wall at JJ’s eye-level, was a simple chart Camille had made: five squares across, one for each weekday, with rough doodle icons in each—book, ball, star, heart, and a little stick-figure stretching. JJ would put a sticker in the square when she’d done the thing: read, played outside, been “super kind,” done her stretches. The heart column was crowded with stickers, some stuck half over others when she’d run out of room.
One corner of the room was given over to art and “experiments.” A little plastic table with two chairs—one blue, one red—bore the ghost of countless projects in stains and faint outlines: watercolour rings, glitter sealed into the paint, glue swirls, the occasional smear of something suspiciously like spaghetti sauce. A plastic caddy on top held stubby crayons sorted by no discernible logic, blunt scissors with safety tips, a glue stick without its cap, and a few dried-out markers whose lids had gone missing months ago. On the wall above, a piece of butcher paper had been taped up and only half filled with marker explosions: loops and lines, a lopsided house, and something that, if you squinted, might have been a robot cat.
Opposite the door, near the closet, a row of cheap plastic hooks sat at JJ’s shoulder height. Her favourite hoodie hung there—a too-big one with a cartoon rocket blasting off the front, sleeves rolled at the cuffs. Next to it dangled a little cloth bag with a drawstring, decorated in fabric paint with her name (slightly smudged where a finger had brushed it too early). Inside were secret treasures: marbles, beach pebbles, a bent bobby pin, a tiny toy gear she insisted she would “use ‘gain later when I fix robots.”
The closet door itself was plastered in stickers. Some were faded remnants from when she was barely two, slapped on diagonally and now peeling at the corners. Newer ones fanned out over them: foil stars, cartoon gymnasts mid-cartwheel, a glittery sticker of a girl wearing a superhero cape. In one lower corner, where she often sat to put her shoes on, someone had drawn a very serious face in pencil: round head, dot eyes, a straight line mouth. Next to it, in Jess’s hand, the word “JJ” with an arrow, like an early self-portrait that required a caption.
The air of the room had its own particular smell: a mix of baby shampoo, clean cotton, crayon wax, and the faint salt of ocean air that snuck in every time the window was cracked. Under it all lingered a hint of Jess’s perfume from bedtime kisses and laundry detergent from carefully folded pajamas—a scent that would, years later, still mean “safe” to JJ even if she couldn’t name it.
Sound moved softly here. Outside, Miami murmured—the low whoosh of cars a few streets over, the occasional motorbike revving, distant laughter from neighbours sitting on balconies in the warm night. Inside, the ceiling fan thumped quietly at its loose joint on every rotation, and when the air conditioning kickstarted, a gentle rush spread through the vents like a sigh. Sometimes, when the house settled, the IKEA shelf creaked faintly as if it too was stretching before bed.
It was a small room. If you measured it, it would not impress anyone: one bed, one window with slightly crooked blinds, one cheap shelf and one closet, toys spilling over their allotted borders. But layered into the objects—the taped balance beam, the sticker chart, the mismatched sheets and battered toys—was the map of a four-year-old life: her obsessions, her experiments, her first stabs at who she wanted to be.
“Is Auntie Alice coming?” she whispered, already tucked under a duvet patterned with cartoon planets and smiling moons.
“She said she’d be in after I turn the light down,” Jess replied, stepping back from the bed to lower the lamp to a soft, golden glow. “Special surprise story, remember?”
JJ’s eyes went wide. “Is it th’ rocket one? Or th’ bunny one with the… the sad bit?” She scrunched her nose. “No sad bit tonight.”
“No sad bit tonight,” Jess promised, leaning down to kiss her forehead. “Just one chapter of something fun, and then sleep. Deal?”
JJ made a solemn thinking face, then nodded. “Deal.”
Jess smoothed the duvet one more time, flicked the little astronaut night-light on, and crossed to the door. She opened it to find Alice already there, book tucked behind her back like contraband.
“Perfect timing,” Jess murmured.
“I try,” Alice said. Her voice carried the soft, musical edges of London even after all these years, vowels rounded by another hemisphere.
She stepped into the room, careful not to tread on a small plastic screwdriver lying abandoned on the rug. JJ craned her neck, trying to sneak a look at what Alice was hiding.
“Okay,” Jess said, backing out. “I’m off. One chapter only, troublemakers.”
“We shall attempt obedience,” Alice said solemnly.
JJ giggled. “’Tempt means maybe,” she informed her mother.
Jess showed a smile and a light hum then turned, pulled the door nearly closed, leaving it ajar so a sliver of hallway light drew a line across the floor.
When they were alone, JJ focused all her attention on Alice. “’Kay,” she said, pushing herself up against the pillows. “What’s the prize story?”
“Surprise,” Alice corrected gently, settling herself on the edge of the bed. “And if I tell you, it’s not a surprise, is it?”
JJ considered this, then conceded, “No.” Her eyes dropped to Alice’s hands. “Is it long?”
“A little bit long,” Alice said, “but we will only do the first chapter. As we told mum.”
She held up her finger, JJ instinctively gripped with her own. A warm smile as Alice gave a nod of approval.
She brought the book out from behind her back.
The cover was worn smooth at the edges from decades of being pulled from shelves and pushed back again. The old illustration of a girl in a dress, surrounded by strange animals, shone softly under the lamplight.
JJ’s mouth fell open. “Whass that?”
“This,” Alice said, placing the book carefully on her lap where JJ could see, “is one of my favourites.”
“What’s it called?” JJ scooted closer, knees bumping Alice’s thigh. Her hair—dark and wild from the humidity and from headstands attempted before bath time—caught the lamplight in messy halos.
Alice smoothed the first page open, the paper whispering. “We’ll see in just a moment. Scoot in, small rabbit.”
“A gym-nast girl,” JJ corrected, proud. The word came out as “gim-nass.” “An’ also robot girl. An’ also—” She spread her hands to indicate everything else she might possibly be.
“A girl of many professions,” Alice agreed. “Right. Look here.”
She laid her index finger along the first line of text and tilted the book so JJ could see clearly. JJ’s small hand, sticky with the faint residue of toothpaste and mango shampoo, came to rest just beside Alice’s, her fingers hovering over the printed letters.
“Alice…” she read, and there it was—the name, right at the beginning, like always. JJ’s head snapped sideways. Her eyes, already big, seemed to double in size. “Tha’s you,” she breathed.
For a heartbeat, Alice saw herself as JJ must: grown-up Alice sitting on the bed, book in lap, and inside the book another Alice tumbling after rabbits. She heard, almost as an echo, her grandmother Joanna’s voice in a cramped sitting room in London, the first time she’d seen that same name on a cover and felt it click inside her like a key turning in a lock.
Alice didn’t try for a special performance voice; she let the rhythm of the sentences carry their own music. She spoke clearly, each word distinct, as her finger moved along the line. JJ’s gaze clung to that fingertip, bouncing forward when it did, lagging a little then catching up in small, concentrated jerks.
She smiled and let out a quiet chuckle. “It is my name,” she agreed. “But in this story, it belongs to a different girl. Shall we see what happens to her?”
JJ stared at her for another second, clearly trying to decide if something magic was happening. Then curiosity about the story won. She dragged her eyes back to the page, leaning in until her shoulder pressed into Alice’s arm.
“’Kay,” she said. “We see.”
Alice went on reading.
JJ’s body responded almost as much as her face. When the girl in the book—this other Alice, this ink-and-paper namesake—noticed the rabbit with the watch, JJ’s legs kicked under the blanket.
“He got a watch!” she exclaimed, outraged and delighted. “Bunnies don’t got watches.”
“In this world,” Alice said, “apparently at least one does.”
“Is he late?” JJ demanded. “He gonna miss his… um… his… thing?”
“His very important date,” Alice supplied.
“Yeah.” JJ sucked in a breath, solemn. “Dates are ’portant. Mama says so.”
As the book-Alice peeped into the rabbit hole and tumbled after him, JJ’s fingers tightened in the duvet.
“She’s fallin’!” JJ squeaked. “She’s fallin’ a long time! Why she not go splat?”
“That is an excellent scientific question,” Alice said, not missing a beat. “Perhaps the hole is enchanted. Or perhaps the story is more interested in what she feels than in what would really happen if one fell that far.”
JJ frowned, thinking this through with the seriousness she brought to puzzles Jess set her. “So… so it’s not wrong,” she decided slowly. “It’s just story-wrong.”
“Exactly,” Alice said, and felt a quiet satisfaction bloom in her chest. Story-wrong was as good a term as any.
When the book-Alice tried to pluck jars from shelves as she drifted past them, JJ piped up, “She gonna drop it! She gonna make a mess.”
“There’s a lot of that in this book,” Alice said. “Mess and upside-downness and talking to creatures who aren’t terribly sensible.”
“Like Aunt Tori’s cat,” JJ said gravely. “He scratch my socks.”
“Very much like Aunt Tori’s cat.”
Her bright, stuttering commentary punctuated each page. She reacted to everything—a mouse in the pool of tears, the odd politeness of the creatures, the bizarre logic—eyes darting between the printed words and Alice’s face as if to check whether the grown-up found this as ridiculous as she did.
Sometimes she giggled; sometimes she frowned and chewed her lower lip, concentrating. Every so often she’d glance sideways at Alice and just look at her, as if verifying that the woman beside her remained solid and ordinary and hadn’t secreted away any white rabbits or mysterious bottles.
Alice felt the weight of the warm little body pressed against her and adjusted the book so her arm wouldn’t go numb. Somewhere in the house, a pan clattered faintly, then Jess’s laugh floated down the hall. The fan kept circling, circling, its blades a soft whirr above the quiet music of her voice.
JJ’s eyelids drooped now and then, then flew open again when some new absurdity landed. Her hand crept along the page so that her fingertips almost touched Alice’s, as if she were helping to drag the sentences along.
When the first chapter came to its gentle, slightly bewildered end, Alice let her voice slow and soften, giving the last line room to settle. Then she stopped, closing the book around one finger to hold their place.
JJ exploded.
“That’s it?” she squealed, sitting bolt upright, hair springing loose from her pajama collar. “Tha’s the end? But—but what ‘bout the bunny? An’ the mouse-swim, an’ the—an’ the… cookie thing? An’—”
“Biscuits,” Alice said automatically, then corrected herself with a small smile. “Cookies. And it’s not the end of the whole story. It’s only the end of the first chapter. Remember the rule?”
JJ huffed, tiny chest rising and falling. “One chap-ter,” she muttered, clearly regretting every contract she had ever agreed to.
She folded her arms and thought, face scrunched, then her attention snapped back to the cover of the book.
Her gaze bounced from the printed “Alice” on the page to the real, breathing Alice on the bed. Her eyes narrowed with sudden, intense curiosity.
“Auntie,” she said, all in a rush. “Did your friend write it ’bout you?”
There it was—the question that had apparently been building all through the rabbit hole and the bottle and the pool of tears, waiting for the right opening.
“My friend?” Alice echoed, even though she knew exactly what JJ meant.
“Your friend who’s a writer,” JJ insisted. “Like you’re a writer. Did they say, ‘Oh, I know a lady named Alice’—” (she pointed at Alice’s chest, small finger firm, “—‘and I’m gonna make a story ’bout her fallin’ an’ chasin’ bunnies’? Is that what happen?”
Her words tumbled over each other, some syllables dropped, some mangled, the grammar lurching—but the idea underneath was sharp and bright. Of course, in her world, if you knew someone and you wrote stories, you might write them into magic.
Alice’s first instinct was to give the full answer. The one with the dates and the history, the explanation that Lewis Carroll had lived and died long before she was born, that he had written about another child entirely, that the book had travelled across decades to land in her grandmother’s house and then in her hands, that she herself had chosen the name afterwards because it felt like the right skin for her thoughts.
She opened her mouth—and then stopped.
JJ was watching her with such naked, earnest hope that the edges of logic softened. The little girl’s world was still elastic. Time wasn’t a fixed line; “a long time ago” and “just now” lived side by side in the same hazy space.
Alice smiled, feeling the familiar weight of responsibility that came with shaping a story in someone else’s mind. She was careful with violence, with war, with the stories she told adults who might use them to justify things. Here the stakes were smaller but strangely sacred.
“Well,” she said slowly, “the person who wrote this book lived a very long time ago. Long before I was born. So they didn’t know me.”
JJ’s face fell a fraction, but she stayed listening.
“But,” Alice went on, tilting her head, “when I was a little girl, I read this book. And I liked this Alice so much—the way she asked questions and didn’t just do what everyone told her—that I decided I wanted to share her name. So I took it. For myself.”
JJ’s eyes widened again. “You stole it?”
Alice laughed, a soft ripple. “Borrowed. Very politely. Names can be shared, you know. There are lots of Jessicas in the world; there are lots of Raquels. And there can be more than one Alice.” She touched the cover lightly. “Her. And me.”
JJ sat with that for a moment, breathing through her mouth, hair falling into her eyes until she shoved it away impatiently.
“So… she’s not you,” she said at last, squinting at the illustration. “But she’s… like you.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” Alice said. “She’s a girl who likes to ask why. I’ve always thought that was a very good way to be.”
“You aks why too,” JJ said promptly. “Mama says you aks why ‘bout all the wars on TV an’ make the men on the news look… look—” She searched for a word and came up with, “Thinky.”
“Do I?” Alice’s lips twitched again. “Your mother is very kind.”
“She said it with her ‘you’re in trouble’ face,” JJ added helpfully.
“Ah,” Alice said. “Then perhaps not so kind.”
JJ’s gaze drifted back to the cover. “Did you… did you know her?” she pressed, pointing at the drawn girl again. “The ’nother Alice?”
“In a way, yes,” Alice said quietly. “From spending time in her book. Books can make you feel as if you know someone you’ve never met.”
“Like… like a pretend friend?” JJ asked.
“Almost,” Alice said. “But she doesn’t have to be pretend. She lives in here.” She tapped the page. “And in there.” She tapped gently against JJ’s forehead. “In your imagination.”
JJ went very still, taking that in with disproportionate seriousness. You could almost see the idea slotting into place somewhere behind her eyes: people living inside stories, stories living inside people.
“So… your friend didn’t write it ’bout you,” she concluded, slightly deflated but still hopeful, “but you pick the name ‘cause you love her.”
“That’s exactly right,” Alice said.
“An’ maybe…” JJ’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “Maybe she knew you was comin’ anyway. A long time ago. Magic way.”
Alice hesitated.
The theologian in her wanted to say something about time and narrative and how meaning can travel backwards as well as forwards. The adult in her knew that if she said “yes,” JJ would believe it with the same intensity she believed in rabbits with watches and cats that vanish. The pacifist in her, who tried not to wield her authority like a blunt instrument, recognised that she did not need to hammer this into a clean, rational shape tonight.
She opened her mouth to explain gently about writers who never knew their future readers—and then she stopped again and just looked at JJ’s face.
Maybe, just this once, it was enough to leave the question hovering like a firefly instead of pinning it down.
“It’s a lovely idea,” she said instead, voice soft. “What do you think?”
JJ considered this. A slow smile curled at the corner of her mouth, all conspiratorial mischief now.
“I think…” She scooted closer until she was practically in Alice’s lap. “I think she was sittin’ in a book, waitin’ for you. An’ then you came and you pulled her out and you go ‘I’m Alice too!’” She acted this out with her hands, one imaginary girl pulling another upright out of nothing. “An’ now you both live here.” She tapped the book, then Alice’s chest, then her own.
“In your room?” Alice asked.
“In the world,” JJ corrected, very grand. “Even if she’s, um…” She glanced at the ceiling, hunting for a phrase she’d only half understood from grown-up conversations. “Even if she’s all the way dead.”
Alice’s breath caught on a sound that was almost a laugh and almost a sigh. Jess, she suspected, would blame herself for that phrase, or perhaps one of the more blunt older cousins. The Robinson family had never been great at euphemism.
“That,” Alice said carefully, “is one of the kindest ways I’ve ever heard it put.”
JJ beamed, clearly delighted with herself.
For a moment, Alice considered telling her whole story. How she had once been called something else entirely. How she’d found this book in a room full of leaning shelves and ash-smelling curtains, and how, that day, the name “Philippa” had started to feel like a school uniform she was tired of wearing. How she’d written “Alice” in the margins of her notebooks until it felt more like her than anything on her birth certificate.
She imagined JJ listening with huge eyes, trying to understand why anyone would ever give away one name for another. But that was a story about being dissatisfied with the skin you’d been handed, about pushing against structures and expectations; it belonged to a later age than four.
So instead she just said, “I’m very glad the book exists. And that I got to share its name. And that I get to share it with you.”
JJ’s expression softened. “Me too,” she said, then immediately bounced back to urgency. “Can we read ‘nother chap-ter? Just teeny one? Tiny baby chapter?”
Alice shook her head, though it clearly cost her a bit. “Deal was one chapter tonight.”
JJ flung herself backwards into the pillows, arms out, the very picture of despair. “But I got so many questions,” she groaned, then promptly rolled onto her side again and started firing them off in a burst.
“Does the bunny got a house? Is it tiny house? Is there more cookies? Why she cry so much? Is there a dragon?” She gasped. “Is there a robot dragon? Can we make robot dragon?”
“Slow down,” Alice said, laughing now. “One question at a time.”
JJ tried, she really did. “Okay. Um.” She screwed up her face, choosing. “Does she… does she get home?”
“In the end?” Alice considered. “Yes. She does.”
“An’ she’s okay?”
“She’s quite all right,” Alice said. “A bit more confused than before. But in a good way.”
JJ accepted this. “Does the cat talk?”
“Yes.”
JJ squealed. “Is he nice?”
“That,” Alice said, “is a complicated question.”
“’S easy,” JJ argued. “He say nice things or he say mean things?”
“He…”
Alice paused, remembering the Cheshire Cat’s grin, the way he teased and guided and confused. “He says… clever things. Sometimes helpful. Sometimes not. But he’s not cruel.”
JJ nodded, filing this under “acceptable.” “’Kay.” She yawned, sudden and wide, surprising herself. “’Scuse me.”
“You’re forgiven,” Alice told her. She slipped the ribbon of the book’s attached marker between the pages and closed it gently, setting it on the bedside table next to the astronaut night-light and a half-assembled plastic gear toy.
JJ watched the book as if it might scamper away on its own.
“Auntie?”
“Yes?”
“When I’m big,” JJ murmured, blinking slowly, “can I write a book ‘bout you?”
Alice blinked. “About me?”
“Yeah.” JJ’s words were starting to slur at the edges. “You bein’… you bein’ in wars on the TV but sayin’ ‘stop it, stop it, be nice’… an’ tellin’ ’bout bunnies with watches. An’… an’…”
Her eyes slid shut mid-sentence, lashes resting on her cheeks. She rallied once more. “…an’ I call it… ‘Alice in… in… my house.’”
“That’s a very good title,” Alice whispered.
She shifted down the bed a little and gently tugged the duvet up around JJ’s shoulders. The little girl’s fingers, which had been fisted in the edge of the blanket, loosened and fell open. Her breathing settled into a slow, even rhythm, her mouth parted slightly.
Alice watched her for a long moment, feeling that familiar, complicated twist in her chest—the tangle of tenderness and responsibility and a faint, ever-present grief for all the children in all the places who went to sleep without this kind of safety.
She reached out and brushed one escaped curl off JJ’s forehead with the backs of her knuckles. JJ didn’t stir.
“Goodnight, small rabbit,” Alice whispered, conceding the nickname even if JJ wouldn’t. “Sleep well. Dream strange things.”
She stood, the mattress sighing as her weight left it, and took the book in her hand. At the door, she paused and looked back.
JJ had already turned onto her side, clutching the stuffed rabbit to her chest like a totem. In the half-light, with the glow-stars faintly catching, the room felt half real, half story—a place where girls could fall down impossible holes and still end up back in their own beds, where names travelled across centuries and landed in a four-year-old’s wondering questions.
Alice left the door ajar, just as Jess liked it, and stepped back into the hallway.
In the bedroom behind her, JJ dreamed—of white rabbits with ticking watches, of girls called Alice climbing out of books, and of the secret possibility that stories, somehow, already knew the people who would someday love them.