My Wonderful Disaster

Chapter Two — I Must Be Dreaming [Part One]

The first thing I noticed was the silence.

Not the bad kind. Not the kind that follows a slammed door or a conversation that went too far. Just — quiet. Morning quiet. The kind that exists before the world remembers to be loud.

The second thing I noticed was that nothing hurt.

I lay very still for a moment, waiting for my body to catch up. Waiting for the joints to start their morning announcements, for that specific ache in my shoulder to clock in for its shift, for the familiar weight of existing in a body that had never quite forgiven me for something.

Nothing.

I moved my wrist experimentally. Then my knee. Then both hands, fingers spreading wide like I was testing equipment that belonged to someone else.

Nothing. No pain. No stiffness. No inventory of damage.

I sat up so fast I got dizzy.

My cheeks. I pressed both hands to my face — the place where the rash lived, where it had lived for so long I'd forgotten what my skin felt like without it. Smooth. Just — smooth. Warm and normal and completely, entirely smooth.

I said, out loud, to nobody: "What."

"Mavis! Baby, come on, we're losing daylight!"

I froze.

That was my mother's voice.

That was one hundred percent my mother's voice except it was — warm. Bright. The voice of someone who had slept well and woken up happy and was not, in any capacity, holding a rejection letter.

I looked around my room.

My room that was — not my room.

Same layout. Same window. But the walls were a warm cream instead of the sad beige I'd repainted three years ago because sad beige was the only colour Mom would approve. There were fairy lights strung along the headboard. A cork board above the desk covered in photos — me laughing, me with people I didn't recognise, me looking like someone who had friends and went places and existed in the world in a way that was apparently documented.

And the trophies.

I stared at the trophies.

There were — a lot of them. A whole shelf of them, gold and silver, various sizes, all engraved with things like Regional Championship and First Place and MVP and they were all — track and field. Running. Hurdles. Relay.

I picked one up carefully.

Mavis Delacroix. 400m. First Place. I put it back down.

"My knees," I whispered, to no one. "How did my knees do all of this."

I looked at my knees. They looked normal. Unimpressive, honestly, for knees that had apparently been winning regional championships.

"MAVIS."

"COMING." I said it before I thought about it, automatic, and then stood there in the middle of my not-quite-my-room feeling like a person who had just agreed to something without reading the terms and conditions.

Which. Fair.

The framed letter stopped me cold.

It was right there on the wall above my desk, matted and framed like a piece of art, cream coloured with the Hartwell University crest in the corner and the words We are pleased to inform you visible even from across the room.

I walked to it slowly.

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted to Hartwell University's Bachelor of Accounting program —

I read it twice.

Accounting.

I was apparently going to university to become an accountant...

I stood with this information for a moment.

"Okay," I said, very quietly, to the framed letter. "Okay. That's. Fine. That's completely fine. Accountants are very important people."

The letter said nothing.

"This is a dream," I told it. "This is obviously a dream and I'm going to wake up any second and everything is going to be terrible again so I might as well just — enjoy it. While it lasts." The letter continued to say nothing, which I took as agreement.

Mom was in the kitchen.

She was wearing a yellow dress. Diane Delacroix, who owned exclusively grey and navy and the occasional muted burgundy on a special occasion, was standing in my kitchen in a sunshine yellow dress with her hair down, making what appeared to be pancakes, and humming.

Humming.

I stood in the doorway and genuinely considered the possibility that I had died.

She looked up and her whole face did the thing — the thing I had never, in my eighteen years of living, seen it do. It just — lit up. Like seeing me was the best part of her morning. Like I was something she was glad existed.

"There she is!" She pointed her spatula at me.

"Moving day, baby. How are you feeling? Excited? Nervous? Both? I'm both, I'm completely both, I cried in the shower this morning —"

"You cried in the shower?," I repeated.

"Happy tears! Obviously happy tears." She waved the spatula. "Sit, sit, I made your favourite."

I sat down at the kitchen table like a person who knew what their favourite was and was not currently running a full internal investigation into every aspect of their existence.

"Mom," I said carefully.

"Mm?"

"What — " I paused. Recalibrated. "How long have I — when did we — "

She was looking at me now. Spatula lowered. Head tilted slightly.

"You okay, baby?"

"Yes," I said, very normally. "Totally fine. Just. You know. Moving day feelings."

She accepted this. Turned back to the pancakes. I exhaled slowly through my nose and made a mental note to be significantly less suspicious going forward.

My phone was on the counter.

I picked it up while Mom hummed and flipped pancakes and continued to be a person I didn't fully recognise, and opened my contacts.

I opened my contacts.

Three hundred and forty two contacts.

I scrolled through them with the energy of someone defusing a bomb. Names attached to a life I apparently lived but couldn't remember living. A contact saved as Coach Reeves 🏃‍♀️. One saved as DO NOT ANSWER with no further context, which honestly raised more questions than it answered.

I put the phone face down on the table and breathed.

No Jade. No Priya. No anyone from Westbrook who had ever made my life miserable.

I put the phone face down on the table and breathed.

"Pancakes," Mom announced, sliding a plate in front of me.

They were perfect. Golden, fluffy, with blueberries pressed into the surface in a way that suggested someone had taken their time. Mom sat across from me with her own plate and her cup of coffee and looked at me with that warm, open expression I still hadn't figured out how to receive without flinching slightly.

"I found your planner while I was packing your desk," she said, sliding it across the table. "Didn't want it to get lost in a box."

I picked it up.

My handwriting. Unmistakably my handwriting — the slightly lopsided l's, the way my sevens had a little cross through them — filling page after page with a schedule I had absolutely no memory of making. Training sessions. Class times. A note on a Tuesday that just said don't be late in all caps with four underlines and no further context.

Late for what? Late for whom? Apparently past-Mavis knew and didn't feel the need to elaborate.

"You okay?" Mom said again.

"Mhm." I turned a page. Found a to-do list. Pack spikes. Email Coach. Call Mom before 9 she goes to bed early. I looked up. "Do you — go to bed early?"

Mom blinked. "I literally always go to bed at nine, Mavis."

"Right." I nodded. "Right, yes. I know that."