And just like that, Maddy felt more grounded than she’d felt in a long time. Grounded in the softness of her duvet beneath the tips of her fingers. Grounded in that discreet smell of vanilla and flowers that had always seemed to seep through her clothes, and shampoos, and candles. Grounded in the realization that she was somewhere she’d always felt happy.
A wave of nostalgia hit her like a brick to the chest. But before she’d had more time to sink further into her wistfulness, a quiet knock sounded at her bedroom door, just before the curly, magenta-haired head of her mother appeared through the sliver she had cracked open.
“Maddy?” she whispered. “It’s time to get up, sweetheart. It’s seven already.”
Realizing Maddy was already awake, her mom smiled and walked in fully, heading straight to her bedroom window and opening the shutters. Early morning light shone through the curtains and bathed the room in the shadowy figures of its patterns.
Ellie Pierce had always been a ball of energy trapped in the body of a very compact woman. Always on the move, always on the lookout for things to do and never one to slow down and take a breather.
Maddy really loved that woman. Probably because she was her exact opposite.
Maddy had always found her comfort in the quiet moments, even as a child. Being tucked in the corner of a room with her nose buried in a story or picture book was practically an oasis among the chaos that her classmates created in school, or during play-dates she’d really had very little interest in.
But watching Ellie sweep inside the room, ready to kick-start Maddy’s day made her lips tilt up in a fond smile. Maddy and her mom had always been very different, which meant they both engaged constantly in epic bouts of bickering, snarking at one another, always good-heartedly. They were like two mules butting heads.
Seeing her mom’s reddish hair was startling. She didn’t remember when her mother had stopped dyeing it red and had reverted to her original blonde highlights but it still took her by surprise seeing it again. With time, she had forgotten that detail.
Maddy felt her pulse speed up. She was noticing too many details.
What on God’s green Earth was going on?
Was this deja-vu?
Did deja-vu even happen in dreams?
“Is everything alright, Maddy?” her mom asked, interrupting her spinning thoughts.
“Of course, Mom,” she blurted out, a little too quickly perhaps. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
Yes, why wouldn’t it be, indeed, she mused.
Maybe because she was a 35-year-old woman experiencing a trip to the past in not just the metaphorical sense, but also literally? Waking up in what felt like velvet pajamas and what looked like her favorite cartoon characters?
Maddy looked over to her bedside table, and spotting her glasses–her roundish, metal-frame glasses she was sure she had sat on and broken at some point in her life–she put them on. Her mom now came into sharp definition, and Maddy struggled to reconcile the image of Ellie in her late 40s in front of her, with what her mom’s current image and age was supposed to be.
“I don’t know, you just seem a bit distracted,” her mom said, looking troubled.
“Nope, just sleepy, that’s all,” Maddy rushed to reassure her, in the hopes that she would also reassure herself.
Yes, she was doing a stellar job at that. Maddy only hoped that she had summoned some sort of poker face because she was seconds away from a spectacular freak-out.
A beat passed before her mom relented saying, “Okay, baby, come eat your breakfast then or you’re going to be late for school,” she said, smiling. And she left, just like that, with not a single care in the world about the absolute bomb she had just dropped on the thunderstruck child she had left behind.
Maybe Maddy’s hearing was also malfunctioning, along with her vision that had never been the best.
Because she could swear that it had sounded like her mom had said that Maddy was supposed to go to school.
What kind of fresh hell was this? Because Maddy was sure that going back to school when you were already a fully-grown adult must feature in the top three of recurring nightmares. Along with being stuck in an elevator that’s falling with no breaks, and having to pee while there are only toilets with no doors around.
Maddy sighed loudly and rubbed the frown that was beginning to form between her eyebrows. So early in the morning and she was already mentally exhausted.
Since there was no way out of it for now, she threw the covers off her.
She was going to school.
two
First things first, Maddy needed to do some serious adjusting.
