Chapter Text
My head hurt.
I kept my eyes closed and reached toward the edge of the bed for my phone. My hand moved over a comforter, then another few inches over nothing. The nightstand should have been there. I tried again, farther this time, and nearly rolled off the mattress.
Somewhere nearby, bass played through a wall. A man said something I couldn't make out. His voice was low and loose. Floorboards creaked, and the sound stopped.
I opened my eyes.
The ceiling had brown water rings on it. Paint had lifted around a crack and hung down in a narrow strip. I looked to my right for the nightstand.
There wasn't one.
There wasn't a phone either.
For a moment I thought I was in a hotel. It was the first explanation available, and I held on to it longer than I should have. Then I saw the horse posters, the laundry on the floor, and a plastic glow-in-the-dark star stuck to the wall near the closet.
I had gone to sleep in my apartment in Capitol Hill. I remembered unlocking the door with my Thai takeout tucked against my hip. I remembered putting my laptop on the bed. I remembered the refrigerator humming from the kitchen and a comment bubble in the Meridian draft that I had meant to answer.
I did not remember leaving.
I sat up too fast. The room tilted, and the pain behind my eyes spread into the base of my skull. I put my hands down to steady myself.
They were small.
I turned the left one over. Pale palm. Short fingers. Bitten nails. There was purple ink along the side of the middle finger.
I knew it was attached to me. I could feel the comforter under it. I bent each finger anyway and watched them move.
"No," I said.
The voice was high. A child's voice.
I said it again, louder. Same voice.
The comforter was pink and covered with unicorns. I pushed it off and stood. Cold came through my socks. The dresser across from the bed looked strangely large, and then I realized the dresser was probably normal.
A mirror hung above it at an angle.
The girl in it had tangled blonde hair and a thin face. Her eyes were blue. Eleven, maybe. I looked behind me, which made no sense, and then back at the mirror.
She was still there.
I touched my cheek. So did she. The skin felt warm. My teeth felt wrong against the inside of my mouth, though I couldn't have said how. I pulled my upper lip up and stared at them. Small teeth.
Yesterday I had been twenty-six years old. Dark hair. Brown eyes. Five foot six. I had a Washington bar card with my photograph on it and three pairs of nearly identical black work pants hanging in my closet because at some point I had decided this was an efficient way to be a person.
I grabbed the edge of the dresser. The laminate had started to peel from one corner. My legs were shaking hard enough to make the mirror shake too.
I tried to remember the last sentence I had read before falling asleep. It had been about the battery controller. Or the regenerative braking system. I could see the document on my screen, but the words wouldn't come. I kept trying because that seemed like a problem I might actually be able to solve.
It didn't help.
I sat on the floor.
The boards were cold under my legs. I counted my breaths until I stopped taking each one too early. Then I counted again because I had lost track at six.
My phone. I needed my phone.
I checked beneath the bed. Dust, a pink sock, two paperback books, and a plastic bead shaped like a flower. I pulled the comforter and both pillows onto the floor. I looked between the mattress and the wall. Nothing.
I had already known it wasn't there. I checked under the bed once more.
When I stood again, more slowly, I made myself look around.
Horse posters. A Romeo + Juliet poster with a young Leonardo DiCaprio on it. An open Backstreet Boys jewel case on the desk. A Tamagotchi hanging from the lamp. There were library books stacked on the floor and a brush full of fine blonde hair on the dresser.
The room smelled damp. Cigarette smoke came in under the door.
I opened the top dresser drawer. T-shirts, underwear, a folded birthday card with a cartoon cat on the front. The card said, Love, Mom, and had no date. In the next drawer I found jeans and a bathing suit. The desk drawers had glitter glue, gum wrappers, three friendship bracelets, and a dead calculator.
No phone. No wallet. Nothing with an address.
The calendar above the desk said August 1998.
I saw the year and looked away. Then I looked again. Yesterday had been August 22, 2026.
Cartoon suns in sunglasses ran along the top. The first three weeks had been crossed out in purple gel pen. A star marked a square nine days away.
First day of sixth grade.
It could have been an old calendar. People kept old calendars. I didn't, but people did. Maybe the girl liked the pictures. Maybe the current calendar was somewhere else.
I flipped to the month before. July 1998. The month after was September 1998.
I checked the back for a copyright date and found 1997 printed in tiny black type.
My stomach turned. I sat in the desk chair and missed the center of the seat, catching myself on the desk with one hand.
I thought, very clearly, I'm dead.
For about two seconds this seemed to explain everything. Then my head throbbed again. I didn't know what being dead was supposed to feel like, but a mildew-smelling bedroom and a headache seemed needlessly specific.
The backpack beside the door was faded blue, with one strap repaired in black thread. I pulled it over and opened it on the floor.
A laminated library card was wedged into the front pocket. The photograph showed the same blonde girl, a little younger. I read the name beneath it.
Lauren Mallory.
I read it once. Then again.
The name was familiar. I thought of school first—someone from college, maybe, or a summer program. Then work. An inventor? Opposing counsel? I could almost see the name typed in an email.
That wasn't it.
The answer came with the cover of a book: white hands, a red apple. A cracked paperback passed across a middle-school lunch table. Me later that week in my childhood bed, still reading after midnight and periodically putting the book facedown because I was embarrassed on behalf of everyone involved.
Twilight.
I stayed crouched over the backpack.
Lauren Mallory was in Twilight. She went to Forks High with Bella Swan. She didn't like Bella, although I couldn't remember whether she had a reason. I thought she liked one of the boys. Tyler? Mike? I wasn't sure. She was minor enough that the movies had left her out.
I couldn't remember her having a little-girl bedroom. I couldn't remember anything about her parents. Until ten seconds ago, I would have said I barely remembered her at all.
"No," I said again.
I pulled everything out of the backpack.
A pencil case full of chewed Bic pens. Two library books. A packet about sixth-grade orientation. Crumpled math worksheets. The same name appeared at the top of three of them, written in purple ink.
Lauren Mallory.
It didn't prove anything. I wasn't sure what would prove anything. If I was hallucinating the room, I could be hallucinating the papers too. I pinched the inside of my arm too hard and stopped when it hurt.
I put the papers back, then took them out again because I had forgotten to look for an address.
Glass shattered somewhere outside the bedroom.
I dropped the folder.
Pieces hit a hard floor and rolled or slid. One of them spun for several seconds before it settled.
"Goddamn it."
The man's voice came through the wall. Something struck a table, or maybe the wall itself. The bass stopped.
I waited.
No footsteps came down the hall. I could hear the blood moving in my ears and, underneath it, the low sound of the man saying something to himself.
The bedroom door had a cheap brass lock in the knob. I put my thumb against it.
If I turned it, it would click.
I took my hand away and listened again.
I didn't know his name. I didn't know if he had thrown the glass. I didn't know where the front door was, or whether the window opened, or whether there was a landline in the house. The thought of finding a phone made me look toward the bed again, as if my own might have appeared while I wasn't watching.
The folder lay open on the floor. I picked up the worksheets, trying not to let the paper shake. There might be an address on the orientation packet. There might be an emergency contact.
The cover said LAUREN MALLORY - ROOM 12. It did not give an address.
Two light knocks came from the other side of the door.
I stopped.
There was a pause, then one more knock. Whoever it was barely touched the wood.
"L-Lauren?"
A child. The voice was thin and close to tears.
I looked at the lock. My thumb had left a damp mark on the brass.
"Lauren?"
My fingers closed around the knob. I had no idea what I was going to say.