Chapter 65
There’s a moment just between sleep and full consciousness where reality bends.
Pieces of the world are there, but known facts and truths are forgotten.
That’s what happens for me the next morning, when I awaken in my mother’s bedroom.
For a brief moment there, I may be six years old and recovering from a cold, maybe fifteen and freaked out from a weird dream, sixteen and sleeping in the big bed because she wasn’t home.
Maybe some other time that never happened.
Sometime in the last ten years when I would have fallen asleep in there after rewatching The Sound of Music and eating ice cream in bed with her.
All of these realities exist at once in the few seconds it takes for me to remember.
The person beside me is my sister, not my mother. My head hurts.
Another few seconds of rubbing my face and slowly sitting up in bed, and I come fully into waking.
It’s not sunny outside, not like it has been every morning. It’s raining, the French doors are open. My sister … has bangs.
I gasp aloud and dash to the balcony, almost slipping on the dewy floor. As I do this, my head sloshes painfully like a ball full of water. I press a hand to my forehead. “Ow.”
I’m hungover.
Holy shit. It’s—
“It’s over, isn’t it?”
I turn at the sound of Sammie’s groggy voice and nod. “I think so.”
She makes an unpleasant face. “Does that mean I have bangs?”
I wince. “You do.”
She falls flat back on the mattress, her body bouncing a few times as she does. “Why did you let me do that?”
A few days ago, that might have made me stiffen, so frustrated by the idea of being expected to be responsible that I couldn’t even let a joke go by. Instead, now I just bite my bottom lip and laugh, saying, “I like them.”
She throws a pillow at me.
We slip into jean shorts, step into the rain boots in the front hall closet, and take the Bronco into town. I notice the red pickup truck with the jacked-up tire is gone.
There’s a bustle around the small church as people pour out. We go to Brew Lagoon and see a chalkboard sign that reads:
Sunday Special: Zebra Domes and, surprisingly, Babe’s Brew!
We ask what Babe’s Brew is, and the barista explains that a woman in town had recently died and it was her favorite drink. An iced macchiato with fresh cream, and a salted vanilla-honey syrup.
We order four.
Believing it’s Sunday doesn’t take nearly as much convincing as believing in all the Saturdays.
After all, this is what’s supposed to happen. The trick of the Saturdays already, amazingly, beginning to get stowed away by the overworked rational side of my brain.
We come back into the house, running in from the rain and kicking our boots off in disorderly piles before padding into the kitchen, where we find Austin and Matt.
“No run today?” I ask him.
He makes a face and shakes his head slowly and dramatically. “Absolutely not.”
“Good to know you’re not actually superhuman,” I say.
He comes over and picks me up by the thighs.
Sammie makes an aww sound as he looks up at me, sleepily, and then drops me slowly back to the ground.
“Say it,” he says.
I look into his tired eyes. “Fine, you’re superhuman.”
“Thank you.” He pinches me on the waist, and I smack him away playfully.
Matt and Sammie both laugh at us.
“So … it looks like it’s Sunday,” Sammie finally says.
The guys both nod. “Yeah, we put that together.”
There’s a sound behind us and we turn to see that Migla the cat has dashed in through the gap in the open sliding door. She shakes her fur of the dampness in her coat and goes somewhere else in the house, completely disinterested in us.
Then there’s a knock at the door.
We all go together like a sitcom family, and open it up to see Ms. Collie.
“Happy Sunday!” She holds up the basket holding our phones and Matt’s laptop. “I’m sure you’ve been missing these!”