I have no idea what time it is or how long I’ve been sleeping—only that my head aches and my stomach is hollow with hunger. I reach out and pat around on the coffee table until I find my phone. The light is weak but better than nothing.

Pushing myself up off the couch, I switch some lights on and go into the kitchen, pull a bottle of water from the fridge, and gulp it down. Standing there shivering, I cram a couple pieces of bread into my mouth to placate my stomach.

I need a hot bath. I haven’t been back upstairs since this morning. Maybe it was seeing my mother’s clothing hanging there, or the fact that somehow, after all this time, her smell still lingers—like she only just left the room.

I rub my eyes hard with the heel of my hands. “Get a grip, June,” I say out loud, as if that will help. A cold draft swipes across my bare skin, and I care more about that hot bath than anything else. Grabbing my suitcase from beside the couch, I boldly ascend the crooked staircase.

Once up there, I turn on as many lights as I can to chase off the shadows. The breeze coming in the windows has blown away the stuffiness, and now it smells mostly fresh and green like it did when I was a kid. I wipe the tub out with my damp towel—not clean, exactly, but it will do. With more effort than I thought I had in me, I unstick the taps of the bathtub and get the water running, then watch it transform from a rusty brown to nearly clear.

As the tub fills, I wander down the hall and into my old room. The lightbulb buzzes to life, and I’m thrown back in time yet again. Wandering around the small space, I touch everything to make sure this mausoleum of my youth is real. The red-and-white quilt is still folded neatly on the end of my bed, the books I read every summer still lined up on my bookshelf.

A gallery of photos ripped from my Teen Beat magazines are still tacked to the wall above my bed. Wrinkles run up and down the pages and the ends are curling, but Johnny Depp, Rob Lowe, and River Phoenix still smile seductively out at me. Untouched by age.