I’m in the dungeon. Five years ago, something terrible is happening.

I quench my body, hot with excitement, on the fresh sheets. I sigh and reach for Nate. Our balcony

overlooks cobbled streets, and the sound of the Prague nightlife throbs outside. He’s reading on the bed,

hiding the cover against arched legs. He’s effortlessly comfortable in the pyjamas from his last birthday,

always divinely held in space, never awkward.

I’m still in my dress, reminiscing with Ruby over the phone. “And I was praying you’d be in.” She giggles

from back home. “Imagine, your mum opening the door to me, dripping like a wet dog.”

“I really thought I could hide you in the house. E.T. made it look so easy.”

“Drew Barrymore didn’t have your parents. Your dad has never missed anything in his entire life. In

fairness, they handled it well.”

I crease and grapple for my husband’s elbow, “Nate was convinced we were getting arrested when they

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showed up to take you back to the hospital.” He winces and rubs his face. “He still came to the house

though.” I beam at him.

We just got to be kids again, hanging out in my room like everything was normal until they took her back.

The sun shone and we talked about all the important things we had to say at 10 years old. The perfect day.

She never did tell us how she escaped back into town.

The phone goes silent. The balcony window gets darker, the night outside threatening to press through and

spill into the room. It’s as if the stars have blinked out of the sky and the entire world has broken down. I

feel like a ghost. Ruby grows cold.

My best friend speaks, “Those kids never left that room.”

I wake in a room with curtains drawn, the hands so poised with experience moments ago grapple the sheets

with shaky denial. My fingers draped in the overspilling sunlight of an afternoon kept at bay too long. I’m

back in my childhood bedroom, and no one is home. Just as it was both 25 years, and 15 minutes ago. The

phantoms of my constructed life fade away like any other dream.

I grapple with as many moments as I can, but a lifetime is slipping through my fingers. Our wedding day

tumbles to the ground and shatters. All I can grasp are the inconvenient facts I’ve had to reacquaint myself

with more and more often as of late.

I’m fifteen again.

It was all a dream.

Ruby is dead; we haven’t spoken in 5 years.