I step forward and look at the corners of the framed print. There are countless little thumbtack holes.

This sends a strange flutter through me, and I don’t allow my mind to fully form the thoughts it wants to.

I notice more and more little familiarities of the place. The books on the bookshelf. Rear Window; an old, tattered copy of The World of Pooh; Something Borrowed and its other half, Something Blue; Call Me by Your Name; Fleabag: The Scriptures; I Capture the Castle; The Thorn Birds; and countless other spines I recognize inherently because I own them too. Or used to. I donated over half of my books when I moved in with Grayson.

I open the closet and see that the collection of clothes is all in my size. Not my LA size, but my real size. But there’s an old burgundy sweatshirt I once got from Etsy, with the Seattle skyline from the opening sequence of Frasier. There’s a pair of leather boots that I feel crazy for recognizing as the riding boots I had all the way through high school and college. Except I donated them to Goodwill many years ago when my closet was too small to hold them and no one was wearing knee-high boots anymore. I’d gone on to regret getting rid of them, as they were well-made Fryes and they would have lasted a lifetime and, as with everything, come back into style.

“Okay,” I whisper to myself, trying to stay relaxed, even though my heart and mind feel suspended in a state of … what, confusion? Dread? Excitement? Fear? Insanity? All of that?

In a way, this surreality feels satisfying and relieving. As if I always suspected that a moment like this would come. But the pragmatic, earth-bound side of me knows there must be an explanation. Knows that you don’t get the letter from Hogwarts, knows that you don’t wake up in Merlin’s court, knows that reality always hits. Even if something seems deeply bizarre, it never really is.

And yet.

Throughout the house, I am stunned to see that there are more trinkets I recognize but haven’t seen since I had them in Florida. An old paperweight from my grandmother’s house. A weird jade bookend I got at a thrift shop in Ybor City. An enamel mug from a Disney World hotel that says Happy Camper. It’s filled with pens, some stolen from restaurants and hotels, others the Pilot G2s which I learned to prefer when I worked in restaurants.