Early Saturday morning and even the sun refused to wake. Groggily, Miranda crammed the last box of random essentials before stalking back into the house.

Nothing was left except for empty rooms that held faint traces of fond memories and burdensome secrets. The memories wanted to remain in the house where they belonged. The secrets would always be with her wherever she went.

With her head low, she hopped into the passenger seat of her mother’s minivan and looked back at the house. The sun was finally creeping up, casting shadows over the house and large tree on the front lawn. It’s falling leaves left the limbs exposed. The branches’ shadows clawed their way towards the car with the rising sun. Miranda blinked her eyes at them, and they remained still once more.

“Ready to go?” The last time her mother wore that face, it was when they visited Miranda’s new doctor when they first moved in. She kept it reserved for special, nerve-wracking occasions only.

As they pulled out of the driveway, Miranda traced the curious shadows all the way back to the small hole formed in the base of the tree. It was tiny, only large enough for her to fit her hand. She remembered having once entertained the idea of it being a rabbit hole and her the unwitting Alice. What would happen if the hole were actually large enough to fall through. Would she give in to the imaginative madness that she always saw?

“You’ve been pretty quiet.” Miranda peeked a lavender eye open to see her mother’s tentative expression shift between her and the road. They had only been driving for a half-hour, but Miranda was already drifting off. “Are you sure you're alright?”

“Yes, Mom. I'm fine.” She shut her eyelids.

“I'm pretty sure it was Frankie who told me that ‘fine’ never really means ‘fine’.”

“I’m just tired.” She fidgeted in her seat to try and get comfortable, but there was only so much room between her and the dashboard and the leather car seat was starting to grow uncomfortable on her back.

“You sure you don’t want to talk about it? This is a big change, bigger than the others... And with your friends and having just broken up with Jack – “.

“Mom!” There was a four-second gap of silence before she bit back her tongue. “It’s fine. Ok?” She crossed her arms and braced sideways with her back to her mother, hopeful that she could just close off the world. She felt a gentle hand rest on her shoulder and fought desperately not to shake it off. The gesture didn’t feel like an act of comfort, only as something to affirm to her mother that she was doing the right thing as a parent. Soon enough, Miranda felt her mother retract her hand, followed by the sound of leather pinched together beneath flesh – her mother’s tight grip on the wheel.

A minute or so passed in silence, and then the blaring jangles of tambourines and pounding drums made her jump up. A sharp, high-pitched voice erupted from the speaker, accompanied by her mother's own tone-deaf singing:

“KAY-SAY,” they cried. “KAY-SAY!”

Oh God, Miranda thought. It’s her favorite freakin’ love song from her favorite freakin’ movie. Miranda rested her forehead in her palms as the drums pounded in beat with jingling bells that normally would be shackled to the dancer’s ankles.

“Chuna na mujhe aaj sajna,” went the song, her mother heavily accenting the “chuh” and “juh” sounds, as if simultaneously he were chewing and blowing air through her closed teeth simultaneously.

Without even turning, Miranda knew her mother was swaying her hips in her seat, flicking her wrist in the air as if she had bangles to cling and chime with the bells. And then the male lead bellowed out his lyrics, lyrics that talked about love and happiness, no doubt. The whole lot came off like a Hindi version of the ending scene of Grease, except instead of everyone saying “Shoo-bob”, they're squealing “Dhoom Taana” and “Kaysay” - whatever the heck that meant.

Not even sixty seconds could be tolerated of her mother butchering Hindi to the Bollywood song. “Mom, could you not, please!” She jammed her finger into a button, silencing the tassa drums that caused her a small headache.

“Well if you're not going to talk, at least let me listen to some music.”

“Talk about what? There’s nothing to talk about.”

“I just said about your friends and Jack and – “.

“Why does it matter?” Miranda propped herself up, pulled off her sweater and kicked off her shoes. The entire van was starting to feel disgustingly cramped. Why did her mother go about poking at things? Why couldn’t she just leave things be - always worrying, as if the trait was some incurable disease.

“Miranda, anything with you matters. You know that. And I want you to not let what happened start you off on a bad note.”

“I already took care of it and said my goodbyes. Why do we have to talk about it when I already dealt with it?”

“Because Miranda, I know this is probably hard for you. Heck, it’s hard on all three of us. But, I just want to make sure that you're ok. And if you're not, then tell me so I can help.”

She sucked in a breath. “I just don't see the point in us having to move for the sake of an old house.”

Miranda caught how her mother pressed her lips together. “Well,” she said between breaths, “this time it's about us as a family. Grandma Maybelle was the only family your father had aside from us. Distance kept us apart, and your father feels badly for that, you know. This is the least we can do to make up for that, and you know we couldn’t afford both houses, Miranda. We talked about this.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

She was pouting at the window. Maybelle Russe. The ghost that had come to her in the dead of night, but never before in the flesh. That night three weeks ago was the only tangible memory she had of this estranged woman.

She shook her head. “Sorry, Ma. I get that part, but what I don't get is why we're doing this when we've never spoken or seen the woman.”

“The Woman?”

“Sorry again,but, you know what I mean!”

“We’ve spoken to your Grandma Maybelle before.”

“Mom, we’ve spoken to family in India more than her and they only call once a year for Diwali and only came once to ‘bless the house’.” Rainbow veils and embroidered silk quickly filmed over her vision. Six years ago they had a house blessing – a jhandi – it’s called. She remembered her too-big sun yellow choli, a two-piece dress that was a definite hand-me-down. Aunties and Uncles had poured through the doorway, each of them carrying the smell of ground-spices and hot sweat with them. Another was sure to be in store in the next few weeks to come.

Oddly, in all of these housewarming ceremonies Miranda had never once met anyone on her father's side. Yes, Kevin was an only child and his father died when he was young, but what about cousins? She set her stare on the road ahead, imagining what an uncle or nephew from the Russe clan would look like. Would they have her father's deep dark eyes or his scruffy brow?

“There really is no one else on Dad’s side?” She felt the car slow as they merged into I-95’s morning rush.

“Great - and here I thought we were going to beat the traffic.”

Another eye roll. She bent down to fumble inside of her bag for something to aleve the headache. “Thanks for not answering me, again,” she murmured. She popped two Advil in her mouth and then switched the bottle for her phone. Without a word, she dragged her finger along the screen to view the dozens of old photos she had stored. Several of them were of her and Jack just three weeks ago before her parents decided on the move. His cheeky grin was always a comfort for her. Funny how quickly things can flip on you.

“This is good for all of us. Your father and I are both going to be working much closer in Fairewell,” this was the next city over, “and we'll get to see more of each other.”

She kept her face turned, not wanting to hear yet another recitation of the pros list. It felt like the same spiel as the move before. “Ma, this has nothing to do with me seeing Grandma Maybelle, does it?” The car jerked to a stop. It flung Miranda's body forward, the seatbelt restraining her harshly. “What the heck, Ma!?”

“Sorry, sorry! He just jumped in front of me! The idiot...”

“Mom?” Miranda's voice sounded pleading, even to her own ears.

“That ghost you saw was a dream, Mira. Just a bad dream!”

Just a dream. She sensed a lie.

“This has nothing to do with that.”

Her mother was well aware that Miranda had had several encounters with ghosts before. Ghosts, for some reason, was an accepted belief by many even if it was a hard thing to accept. The lights were a different story.

She couldn't see any outside of the car or in the side mirror. Perhaps they would remain in Connecticut, she slightly hoped. These puny, glowing creatures had been a part of her norm as early as age three. Each one seemed so huge back then, like a bright sun in the palm of her hands. “A sparkling sun” she would cry out. Nova and Kevin insisted that it was her imagination at play, as it usually was for kids at that age. But Miranda spent the next five years crying on and on about it, evolving the name from “sun” to “firefly” and then to “faerie.” She got bullied for it in school. Her teachers whispered about her condition. It all prompted her parents to transfer her from school to school, from Maine to Manhattan, wasting money on institutions that claimed they could help her stop seeing this “faerie”.

They settled into Connecticut when Miranda was ten and her fantastic proclamations had ceased. But it wasn’t due to the institutions and the PHD psychologists, or the plastic tasting pills assigned for schizophrenic children – pills that she spat out secretly and regularly – it was due to simple, conducive rationality. No one in their right mind would ever believe her. Family relatives helped her figure this out. She overhead whispers during the last jhandi about the state of her “condition”. It pushed her into solitude. What was the point then, in talking about the “firefly-faerie” that delighted in her laughter? If everyone was so desperate to insist that it didn’t exist, then why not keep her friend all to herself? She fooled her parents into believing that she had grown out of the habit and hid it from every other person she encountered, Bailey and Frankie included.

“This is just about honoring your grandmother’s last wish.” Nova had been going on, rationalizing no doubt, all of the positives behind the move. Getting more involved with school clubs was on her mother’s list.

The car ahead of them stopped-short again, causing another jerk out of the van. Miranda’s phone slipped from her hands as the seatbelt choked up against her chest. The grip was too tight. She yanked the belt forward, but it had locked in place.

“Ugh!” She clicked it off and reached down for her phone, the motion now bringing up a wave of nausea that clambered at her throat.

“Are you okay?”

The car was too tight, the pace too slow, and she was almost choked to death by a device was that was meant to protect her from these haphazard New York City drivers. And she had to deal with the expectation of being a normal kid who could freely join a school club because it was that easy to be normal while hiding an abnormal secret. No, she was not okay.

But she gritted her teeth anyway and fell back into the seat, plugging in her earphones to drown out the world.

“Seatbelt!”

She sucked her teeth at her mom, though obeyed.

Two and a half Escape the Fate songs later and their car was racing past others.

“Jack was an idiot.” Her mother didn’t say anything. “Good person, bad boyfriend...”

Memories rose up faster than the butterflies in her stomach had that day he had kissed her. It was in school, in front of the lockers. Everyone had gathered to watch them talk smack about each other. “Low-Key flirting” they had called it. She didn’t remember the details of their little smack-talk just that she bet he would never actually care to get involved with a girl like her. She was too different from all the other girls who fawned over jocks. He proved her wrong right then and there.

“If I were interested, would you let me kiss you right here, right now?” he had challenged.

Miranda gripped her stomach in light of the memory. “Maybe I was just part of some game to him,” she whispered.

“Mira...” Her mother exhaled. “Some boys are exactly that... Boys.” Miranda clicked her volume low in exchange for her mother’s voice. “I’m sorry he made you feel like this.”

Her eyes stung with fresh tears. She closed them off before they could leak out, unwilling for a single drop to fall. “My life’s too complicated for games, and boys...” she whispered to herself, not sure whether her mother heard her or not.

She opened back up her eyes and cars fell back in the distance. Miranda wished she could just fall back too, just grow wings and escape the compacted minivan, join her lights and hurl backwards past all of the cars and just fall up into the sky.