Olivia apologized immediately, as she had her entire life. She swallowed what she wanted to say. The night before, she had dreamed she was at prom, walking through a crowd of women all in blue dresses while holding silver high heels high and dramatic in her left hand. It’s here for you, it’s here for you, people kept saying to her. An actor who played a melodramatic vampire boyfriend on her favorite TV show was there eating a baked potato with his bare hands. It was burning him, but he kept eating. Between steaming mouthfuls, he begged her to stay with him. But the door was open. She could hear violins and rhythmic handclaps and three voices harmonizing her name. Then, a woman she did not recognize, but whom her heart knew, came to her and said, “I need you to find Marlie Evans for me. I need you to tell her that I would never just leave her.”

It was foolish, Olivia knew, to feel like a dream actually spoke directly to reality. You were supposed to chunk pieces off and think sideways. Losing teeth was a fear of change, not just am-I-afraid-of-getting-older? A snake was almost always sex. Et cetera, et cetera. But it was hard for these dreams not to feel like someone or something was talking to her.

Her dad was telling a story, something convoluted she couldn’t follow because she hadn’t been paying attention. Ayanna and her mom were listening, and Olivia noted how their facial expressions were exactly the same, head tilted in a way that showed off their half smiles, eyes a little squinted as if they could physically look for holes to poke in the story they were being told. Was it the same in all families? she wondered. Were there millions of people like her, watching two people united by blood who could barely agree on things like whether the sky was blue but who had the same exact eyes? She took a sip of water. Wiped her mouth with a paper napkin. Was love, at least familial love, allowing yourself to be tied to these people no matter how little you could understand them?

Then, the opportunity to tell them what she was thinking had passed because everyone else was talking about driving to the ice-cream stand they liked so much to get soft serve and maybe walk it off in the park. The fireflies were finally awake again. For so many years, Olivia had wanted this. The whole family laughing and talking and complaining about how quickly their ice cream was melting, and laughing harder at the mess. Someone walking past and thinking, Wow, the Owens-Morgan family likes one another so much. Let things be normal, she told herself, then shook the dream off and headed to the car.

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