“Dad?” Mia asked to confirm the identity of the much younger version of her father.
“Since when are you calling me Dad? I thought you said Charles was more appropriate?” he asked, annoyed.
“Sorry, Father,” Mia said. “I’m just a little off script.”
“Well, there’s cereal downstairs. Get dressed and get outside. It’s going to be a beautiful day. Enjoy your school holiday while you can. I don’t know why Big Bear Lake decided to have their spring break this early. I think all the Chicago schools are in session. It’s damn inconvenient.”
“Yes, sir,” Mia said.
He shut the door, and Mia pulled the covers off and slid out of bed. Her room didn’t have any mirrors in it. Aside from the large bed that dominated the room, there was only a chest of drawers and a desk with hard wooden chair. Mia’s feet connected with a worn Turkish carpet. She moved slowly, not sure what other surprises awaited her in this dream. “I suppose this is somebody’s idea of a Mia version of It’s a Wonderful Life. “Can we just cut to the end where I confess that I truly appreciate all those around me and vow to be a better citizen of the world?”
No one answered her. She looked over at Misty, and she was fussing with Mia’s bedcovers just like she did when Mia was a child. Mia never made her bed. Misty had always done it for her. The only time Mia had anything to do with her sheets was when Charles insisted she wash her bedding or when the sweat smell got too much for her. This usually happened when Charles forgot he had a daughter. This happened a lot.
Mia opened the door and walked to the bathroom. It was where Mia remembered it to be. She entered the large bathroom that had been put in when Mia was a small child. Her godfather Ralph had kicked up a fuss when he discovered that his goddaughter had to run down the stairs to use the bathroom in the kitchen. He feared the tyke falling down the stairs in the middle of the night. It’s not that the Coopers didn’t have the funds to put in a bathroom upstairs; it just never occurred to them.
Mia turned on the light and took a step back as she confronted her image in the large mirror. Staring back at her was a child - more precisely, a young teenager. Mia touched her face and ran her hands over her flat tiny body and winced. “Damn, this dream is getting creepy. This is exactly how I remember me. I must be…” Mia paused and calculated the absence of pimples, budding breasts, the size of her feet, and came up with, “I’m twelve effin’ years old!” She groaned. Nothing good ever happened to her when she was twelve. “You missed the boat on this try at an attitude-enhancing dream,” she announced, hoping the culprit would call it a day and return Mia to her waking world of being a wife and mother.
She looked at the toilet, and although she knew the perils of peeing in a dream, the urge was too great. “I’m going to pee the bed,” she said. “Well, at least I’ll wake up.” Mia walked over and sat down. She peed and didn’t wake up.
A light tap on the door reminded her that she had promised to be quiet.
“Sorry,” she whispered.
“Take a shower. You stink,” Charles whispered back. “I’m going for the paper.”
“K.”
“What?”
“Alright,” Mia hissed, remembering her father hated Mia’s shorthand for okay. He didn’t even like okay; he felt there were better words to use.
“Maybe this is a dream about language skills…” Mia said, turning on the shower. She dropped her pajamas on the floor. “That should have been my first clue something was up. I don’t wear pajamas.” The pink flannel set was worn at the elbows and had a mismatched button sewn on the shirt. “I remember when Misty did that…” Mia said, stepping in and pulling the shower curtain closed. The water was warm but never really got hot, and if the dream ran true to her memories, she had five minutes tops to get washed before the warm water disappeared entirely.
She heard the door open and heard the drop of towels she had forgotten to bring in with her from the linen cupboard. Mia started sweating. She had forgotten how much Misty did for her. No one probing Mia’s mind would have picked up on these little details. If she was dreaming, it had to be directed by her twelve-year-old mind.
Mia finished quickly and wrapped one of the towels around her long white hair and the other around her tomboy body. She couldn’t look at herself in the mirror anymore because the fog from the unventilated bathroom obscured it. Mia walked back to her room and stopped, seeing Misty standing there with a hairbrush in her hand.
“I didn’t even brush my own hair. Who was I, Princess Peach? K, times up. Wakeup, Mia. Come on, girl, wake up!”
Nothing. She was still in her room. Mia dressed quickly in her traditional Saturday outfit of jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. She put on a matching pair of darned socks and the Skechers tennis shoes Ralph had deemed too worn for school. While she dressed, she looked at Misty Mom. It would be another two years before Mia would release her by burning down the house. The ghost was starting to show small signs of the insanity that happens when a ghost has had enough of being trapped inside the house they died in. Misty twisted her hands when still. She had a hunted look to her eyes when she wasn’t engaging with Mia.
“How can
