She turned onto Desert Elm Drive, a name which was evocative of nothing real. She drove past the Antiques Mall. The antiques in the window were especially cute, wrestling with each other and playfully snapping at each other’s tails. But she could never seem to justify the money for an antique, and besides she was rarely home, so how would she care for one?

Her mother lived in the neighborhood of Sand Pit, which was between the developments of Palm Frond Majesty and the Weeping Miner. It was a neighborhood of single-family homes, with small front yards, mostly kept gravel by water-conscious residents, and backyards that rose steeply into hills unsuitable for planting without extensive and time-consuming terracing.

Her mother’s house was like any house that was pink with green highlights, or any house with a manually opening wooden garage door fallen half away to splinters, and any house with a rosemary bush slowly encroaching its way into every other plant in the yard, and a front gate that sagged into rusted hinges, and a thick green lawn that frustrated her water-conscious neighbors. Her house could easily be mistaken for any other house that happened to be identical to it.

Jackie felt unease she could not express with any sort of coherent gesture or incoherent word when she eyed the house. Something about the house was unfamiliar to her. Her heart was beating in her chest, which is where it usually beat. She got out of the car and thought about all else that she could be doing now. Like driving through the desert in that Mercedes that was in her pawnshop, destination unknown (or no, glancing down at her hand, she knew exactly the destination, didn’t she?), with the top down, searing air and dust running through her hair, pretending that the discomfort of driving with the top down was enjoyable because it, as an action, signified enjoyment. Or finally treating herself to a nice prix fixe dinner (with wine pairings and complimentary antivenoms) at Night Vale’s hottest foodie spot, Tourniquet. Or standing very still out in the dunes at night until the lights came down around her and she felt herself lifted by cold alien hands, taken away somewhere secret and far away for research, never to return. All the fun she could be having, except she had never done any of those things, and if she were honest, and she sometimes was, she had never wanted to. What she liked was routine. Her routine was her life.

If she thought about it, her life hadn’t added up to much at all, but she never thought about it. Except now, every time she saw that paper in her hand, she thought about it. It was ghastly, all this thinking.

Her mother was waiting at the open door.

“Oh, Jackie, I’m glad you came.”