She hung up. It’s been less than two weeks, she thought. How can everything change in less than two weeks? But she saw that it had. No, that wasn’t true. Some things hadn’t changed. Bree and Sam hadn’t. They were the same people she’d been so reluctant to leave behind. Now she wondered why.

She poured herself a glass of orange juice and sat at the kitchen table, which still held the remnants of the breakfast she’d shared with her father a few hours before. In a moment of weakness, she’d offered to wash the dishes. Now she stared at the egg- and jam-stained plates and wished she’d put them in the sink to soak. Now they would require scrubbing.

She returned to examining her situation. Her sudden dissatisfaction bothered her. She’d always thought of Sam and Bree as the center of her universe. They’d had such fun together, and being with them had always made her feel like she was somebody. Had that all been a lie? Had she just thought she was having fun with them and that they cared about her?

No, she told herself. It had been real. She really had felt that way. At least at the time. But maybe that time is over, she thought. Maybe you’re different now, and they’re still the same.

She picked up a piece of half-eaten toast and played with it, tapping it on the edge of a plate. How could she have changed so much that her best friends now seemed like people she’d known a long time ago? She set the toast down, wiped her fingers on a balled-up paper napkin. She didn’t have an answer to that question.

She thought about rolling a joint; she still had some pot left. Then she heard Sam’s voice in her head, laughing stupidly at his own cleverness, and she felt a little sick. She vetoed, too, taking a Valium. For once, she didn’t want to escape, at least not that way.

“This is so fucking weird,” she announced to the empty room. She stood up and, stacking the plates on top of one another, took them to the sink. Locating the dish soap, she squirted some into the plastic tub placed on one side of the wide sink and added hot water until the resultant bubbles reached halfway up the sides. The dirty dishes went into their bath, where she left them to soak while she went upstairs to take a shower.

An hour later, both herself and the dishes scrubbed clean, she left the house. She hadn’t called Brian, but she might just stop by the aquarium and see if he was there. Maybe, she thought, she would surprise him during his early show in the kelp forest exhibit. For now she was content just to walk around town.