“I sometimes have this dream that I’m going through the door,” Olivia said. “Yours, the one in the field. And each time, I have this big feeling like waking up in the middle of the night, and the next day is Christmas, and I’m overwhelmed thinking everything I wanted could be in the house right now. But what’s there is nothing. A void. I see nothing, not even space-dark, but my brain still tells me it could be something. After I have this dream, it feels like I’m being called to the door. And then I go online, and I read all these internet posts about them. How they’re a hoax, and they feel bad for the people who still treat them as special. How they’ve been around through history, appearing and reappearing at will.”

In a way, this wait was even more excruciating. There were so many things Ayanna wanted to say. She wanted to interrogate Olivia more about the dream. What did she mean by “called to the door”? Sometimes, these were signs of a vision to come. Or to be more aware of someone’s behavior: people in the community who talked about these feelings were the ones most likely to enter and suffer grave consequences. The doors-throughout-history theory was one she believed. Ayanna wondered if she and her sister had actually been going back and forth with each other on Reddit about that idea without realizing they were talking to each other. Would she have named herself cornburger420? No, Ayanna knew her sister was not someone she was arguing with on Reddit, but she wondered what they would have made of each other in a digital space, no sense of their relationship, just words on a screen.

“Can I comment?”

“Permission denied.”

“It’s not fair that you get to break the rules and also police them.”

“Is that your thought?”

“No, it’s me giving you a yellow card.” Ayanna lifted an imaginary card. She made her voice gruff and said, “Listen up, number five, we’re here for a clean match, if I see you play like that anymore, I’ll send you off.”

“I think I’m scared because I like soccer better than school, but I don’t think I’m good enough to keep going. And it’s not like women can really make a living off it.” Olivia laughed, and to Ayanna, the laugh sounded painfully adult. “Mom thinks I would be an excellent radiologist or lawyer.”

“I can’t imagine you doing either of those things.”