Nancy just stood there and smiled. Then she shook her head, and a sparkling of tears scattered from her eyelashes. She put out her hand, and it reached across the room from the balcony to Rose’s bed. “Could you come with me for a minute?” she said.

It felt warm and safe in bed, in spite of the stretched room and Nancy’s weird arm. It looked strange outside, and Rose suddenly noticed there was something wrong with Nancy. She was transparent. And she looked ridiculous. She was wearing a huge red flower on her pink down jacket. Very bad taste.

“I don’t want to.” Rose’s voice sounded like that of a whiny two-year-old.

“Please,” Nancy said. She took a step into the room, the moonlight shining through her body. “I’m in trouble, and I don’t know what to do.”

Rose got up then, feeling very grouchy and making a big deal of finding her blue jeans and putting them on, and then there was one of those asides that occur in dreams, where you do nonsensical things. In this case, it was about whether to wear gray socks or red socks. All the gray socks had holes in the toes, and all the red socks were too long, stretching and stretching until they went up to her waist. She decided on red finally, to match the stupid flower Nancy was wearing.

Finally they stood out on the balcony, looking down at the tops of the pine trees. Nancy took Rose’s hand and they lifted up, easy as pie, and flew off into the air.

Rose thought: I always knew I could do this. She tried some dance steps. Wouldn’t Muriel be surprised!

They flew for a while and it got cold and then boring. Finally they descended and landed in a forest. There were pine trees all around, and a prickly yet cushiony carpet of pine needles underfoot. Rose looked down and saw her red socks. She’d forgotten to wear shoes.

“So, what’s the big deal?” she asked in her squeaky, two-year-old dream voice.

“There,” Nancy said and pointed with her stretchy see-through arm at a small mound on the ground.

“I don’t see nothing,” Rose said and laughed. “Oops, bad grammar.” She shook her finger at Nancy, and it became long and wobbly and fell over onto the back of her hand.

Nancy gave her a sad, forebearing smile. “I’m in trouble and I need help,” she repeated. But Rose was noticing that the sun was coming up, with razor-sharp rays that cut her eyes. There was a sudden whiff of salt, a smell redolent of the sea and also of the brackish taste of blood. The red flower was leaking down Nancy’s jacket. The sun blasted them like a bomb, and the dream disappeared.