Page 6

They’re still there. Tiny white points painted across a dark blue ceiling, connected by thin silver lines. I follow one from star to star.

I don’t have stars on my ceiling. I don’t have a blue ceiling.

“What the fuck?” I push myself up.

Bad idea. The room tilts hard enough that I grab the mattress and wait for it to stop. My head feels stuffed with wet cement.

My boots are gone. That gets through the fog faster than anything else.

I look down.

Sweater. Skirt. Tights. Everything I remember wearing last night is still on me except my coat and boots. I run my hands over myself anyway, checking for anything that hurts.

Nothing. Just the headache and a mouth so dry I’d drink out of a gas station toilet right now.

My boots are across the room. Someone put them neatly on the bottom shelf of a white dresser. There are other shoes beside them.

I stare.

Black loafers. Ankle boots with silver buckles. Something with a heel high enough to qualify as a workplace hazard. None of them are mine.

I look around the rest of the room.

Midnight-blue walls. Dark curtains. A vanity crowded with little bottles and brushes. A wardrobe. A record player on a low cabinet beneath a row of albums.

There’s a mushroom-shaped nightlight glowing beside the bed.

This isn’t somebody’s spare room. Nobody has this much shit waiting in a spare room.

I swing my legs over the side of the bed.

The floor moves.

“Okay.” I stay sitting. “Fuck you too.”

I wait until the floor decides to stay where it belongs, then stand.

There are three bottles of water on the vanity. Thank God. I make it across the room and grab the first one. There’s a folded piece of paper propped against it.

I’m too thirsty to care. I drink half the bottle without stopping, then lean against the vanity and finish the rest in slower swallows.

My head still hurts, but at least my tongue no longer feels upholstered.

I pick up the note.

Jamie,

There’s more water if you need it. Knock if you wake up before I come get you.

There’s a little heart underneath.

I read it twice. Then a third time.

“Who the fuck is Jamie?”

I turn the paper over. Nothing.

Maybe whoever wrote it put me in the wrong room. “Cool.”