I make sure the gate outside is shut, then let Maureen out. She does a little circle around the yard, squats, then trots merrily back in the house. She goes to a dog bowl and I search for her food, finding it easily.

While she eats, I go to the bathroom and check my reflection. Yep, I’m still this version of me. It gives me a strange surge in my stomach, and it takes a moment to identify it as excitement.

Now that I’ve had a good night’s sleep, I feel more equipped to take it all on. I look at a clock on the wall and see that it’s a little after eleven in the morning. I haven’t slept that long in actual years. I feel more awake than any nootropic, kombucha, bulletproof coffee, or HIIT workout has ever made me feel.

I get a glass of water and sip from it as I go back over to the couch to decide what to do next.

A memory niggles at the back of my brain.

Oh my God. Oh my God.

I look for the picture on the wall beside the couch. It wasn’t a dream, a hallucination, or my imagination. Or maybe it is, but if so, I’m still in it.

The picture is of me, Kiera, and Aimee.

I take the picture off the wall and look closely.

What the fuck?

Like all the photos in the phone last night, it’s a picture of me that I’ve never seen before of a scene I never lived. But this one, unlike all the others, has the added element of my old best friend being in my life today. Or at least … recently. Unquestionably too recently for it to be from my own reality.

I need to call my mom.

I scramble to the phone, look for her contact, and immediately press it to call her.

After a few rings, she answers, her voice urgent. “Meg, what’s wrong?”

I realize with a pang of guilt that there’s a time difference. I quickly do the math. In Florida, it’s six in the morning. She usually wakes up at nine these days and she’s a worrier. Of course she thinks something is wrong.

Which, I mean, I am possibly losing my mind, but other than that it’s not an emergency.