The last thing I remember is sitting at my desk in my home office, trying to get some work done. Not exactly a singular memory.
I force my lungs to fill with air.
I was irritated, annoyed. Someone had done something to piss me off.
Again, not exactly an unusual set of circumstances.
I’d been on a date right before. Another one of Grandmother’s setups. This one was cute, but not cute enough to distract me from the work I should have been doing instead.
We said our goodbyes and headed home. I went through my normal nightly routine, slipped in between my five-thousand-thread-count sheets, and fell asleep.
And after that, everything goes blank.
I cautiously raise my head, pretty sure I’m not going to pass out.
Examining the facts always helps, so I review them in my mind once again. I was annoyed by my date, went home, tried to work, went to bed. And then?
And then I woke up in the bedroom of some ’90s teen sitcom.
“Phone. I need my phone.”
I rush back into the bedroom, surprised it’s taken me this long. Most days I wake up already reaching for my cell.
Nothing sits on either of the nightstands. I frantically search the floor surrounding the bed, under the pillows, in the crack between the mattress and the headboard.
Nothing.
There isn’t even a charger plugged into the wall, waiting patiently for its companion.
I dash back into the kitchen. Surely a place like this has a landline. This kitchen screams for a yellow phone attached to the wall, the kind with the long curly cord and the spinner thing instead of buttons.
But there’s no phone there either.
No brick-sized cordless phone rests in a station in the living room. Another cursory search reveals no home computer. No laptop. The only piece of technology seems to be the large flat-screen TV, evidence I haven’t gone back in time to the dark ages. I quickly find the remote and turn it on, desperate for some kind of connection with the outside world. But no Netflix or Hulu icon appears. There’s no guide directing me to more than a thousand different channel options. There’s one channel, playing a movie with a dog and a preacher and a woman in a knee-length swirl of a skirt.
I shove my feet into a pair of fluffy bunny slippers and race to the front door. The outside of my prison is just as prettily pristine as the inside, a green lawn that must take buckets of water to keep alive and flower beds filled with blooms that are actually blooming—something I would never be able to manage in real life.
I turn my head first to the right, then to the left, only tofind rows of matching houses on either side, as far as the eye can see.
Pushing open the white picket gate—of course there’s a white picket fence—I cross the street, heading toward what looks like signs of civilization. A block away is a street lined with shops best described as “intentionally charming.” Striped awnings and hand-lettered signs and café patios with tiny tables and matching chairs and umbrellas.
I stop the first person I see, a woman in her midthirties with the same cheerleader curls I now have hanging down my back—someone should tell her she is too old to pull off that hair, but then again, so am I. “Hi, yes, excuse me. Who is in charge here, please?” I don’t normally go full “Karen let me speak to the manager” the moment I encounter a problem, but desperate times and all that jazz.
“Well, hi there!” The woman beams, her voice lilting with the barest hint of a Southern accent. “You must be new in town! Welcome to Heart Springs!”
My mind quickly scans a mental Google map, but I know well enough to know I’ve never heard of any place with such a ridiculous name. “Heart Springs? Is that upstate?”
“Upstate?” Her laugh tinkles pleasantly. “That’s too funny!”
“Is it?” Although this whole thing certainly does feel like a sick joke. “I’m sorry, it is very nice to meet you or whatever, but I really do need to speak with whoever is in charge.”
“You mean the mayor?”
“Sure. Yes. The mayor. Where can I find them?”
“She works in the coffee shop, right over there.” The woman points to the nearest building.
Without stopping to question why the mayor works in the coffee shop, I about-face and rush to the door.
