“Or whatever his name was.”

“And then?”

“We had the radio up, and we were laughing about...I don’t know what. I know we were having a great time. But I can’t remember the prom itself. I remember every little detail leading up to the big event. But I don’t remember the arrival or taking the cheesy prom photo that everyone takes or if anyone spiked the punch or if ‘Stairway to Heaven’ was the last song or if the gym teacher was chaperone and if he danced or if the DJ played the ‘Electric Slide’ or any of it. I was in my prom dress when I came here. I still have it.” She opens the suitcase again and pulls out a brown paper bag. It’s stuffed with pink satin. She pulls out a dress and shakes it so the skirt hangs down: hot pink, sequins, puffed skirt, exactly as she’d described. Wrinkles crisscross the entire dress, and it’s yellowed under the armpits. It could easily be from 1986. It’s not proof, but...does it matter how old she is or isn’t? She’s lost, and there’s a nonzero chance that I could help her like I helped Victoria and Sean.

Seeing the dress, Claire claps her hands. “Ooh, can I try it on?”

Tiffany tosses it to her.

Squealing in delight, Claire squirms out of her princess dress and pulls on the 1980s prom dress. It hangs loose around her. She twirls, and the satin flaps. “Can I have it?”

Tiffany looks at me. “She hasn’t said yes yet.”

Claire turns her puppy eyes toward me.

“Fine. Yes.” For Claire. For her to find her parents. For her to have what she lost. And for me, to know if the star sapphire ring was a fluke or if I really am, as Peter would say, “interesting.”

“Yay!” Claire throws her arms around my neck.

I hope I don’t regret this. “If I’m not back in a few hours, tell Peter to save me. Maybe without the train wreck this time.”

Chapter Sixteen

I walk into the ocean.

I could walk east or west and enter the dust on foot, but I can’t resist the pull of the water. Tiffany has brought me a bathing suit. Even though the motel’s pool is cracked concrete coated in algae and filled with scummy water, she says she still finds new swimsuits, tossed into the bushes, draped on the diving board, bunched on the rusty deck chairs. She thinks they’re drawn there, and she isn’t interested in any theories why. She presented me with several sizes and styles, and Claire insisted that I try them on and fashion-model them for her. She selected a hot pink bikini, but I vetoed it in favor of an athletic-looking blue one-piece with a green racing stripe on the side.

I’d had a swimsuit like this once. Mom had bought it for me in high school when I’d decided to join the swim team. I’d quit after three weeks. I liked the swimming; I hated the accessories. I loved to swim as fast as I could, but I hated the pools and the stench of chlorine and the slimy feel of the showers and the odor in the locker room and the feel of the swim cap and the nose plugs and the goggles. So I took my racing swimsuit and lazed in the ocean with my waves and blue sky instead. I’m sure that this swimsuit isn’t that same one. Fairly sure. My high school swimsuit wouldn’t still fit. But this one reminds me enough of it that I can’t help feeling as if I am stepping into my old skin as well as my old suit.

Up to my hips in the ocean, I scan the waves, searching for my dolphin, but he doesn’t appear. I dive under the water, feeling it flow around me, and then I swim. I haven’t used my arms like this in years. It comes back fast, the stretch of my arms, the power of my legs kicking through the water, the feel of sucking in air in between the splashes. I don’t have the strength or stamina that I used to have, but my muscles remember that they are supposed to. My side cramps, but I keep swimming. The water is so very cool and sweet on my skin. I lose track of time and distance.

After a while, the water is replaced by dust, and I am swimming through it. Oddly, I don’t fall to the ground. It’s as if I’m still in water, but I know I’m not. I am swimming through the air. I keep going, not sure what will happen if I stop, not sure if there is a ground to stand on.

Eventually, though, my arms shake and my legs feel like rubber. I slow and feel my body drift down. My feet touch ground that I can’t see. Water drips off of me. I look in every direction. Like before, it all looks the same.

I don’t know what I was thinking coming back here.

It will swallow me.

Absorb me.

Destroy me.

Stop it, I tell myself. Stay focused. Help Tiffany. I picture Tiffany, her prom dress, her Goth outfit, her pile of suitcases. I think of her prom night. It sounded like it began like any other. I don’t know what could have changed to cause her to end up here. But something must have happened that night. Maybe someone was cruel, and she left the prom upset and wandered here. Maybe someone hurt her. I don’t know why she can’t remember, though. I can remember every instant of my drive here from the moment I chose to go straight through that light to the moment I ran out of gas inside the dust storm. Maybe Tiffany fell and hit her head. Maybe she was drunk and passed out.

I pivot slowly in a circle, looking in all directions. I don’t think it matters which way I go. Or if I go at all. Choosing a direction, I walk.

I had fun at my prom. Close friends. Bright future. All that. I’d worn a hideous yellow dress that was supposed to be a bridesmaid’s dress, though I hadn’t realized it at the time. It squeezed me so tight that it cut my breathing in half, and every picture of me has a half smile, half grimace. My friends and I had split the cost of a limo to drive us the three quarters of a mile to the high school. If we had to have our prom in the school cafeteria, then we were at least going to arrive in style. The prom organizers had laid out a moth-eaten red carpet (a prop from one of the school musicals) and decorated the cafeteria with life-size stand-up cutouts of movie stars and strung cardboard yellow stars from the cottage cheese ceiling. Toasting the fruit punch, we swore that we’d never drift apart and that we’d never become our parents and that we’d be stars or change the world or whatever our dreams were...I see a hint of color up ahead. Yellow. I pick up my pace and then I’m running toward it. I stop. It’s a pile of yellow fabric. I pick it up, and my hands are shaking.

My prom dress.

I feel shivers creep over my skin, as if a thousand eyes were watching me. It read my mind, like it did with the ocean. God, what the hell is this place? It’s...incredible.

“Um, thank you?” I clutch the dress.

I don’t know when I lost it. I’d assumed that it had been dumped with other clothes that I’d donated when I moved out of Mom’s and into my own apartment. But maybe it had stayed in the back of that closet, forgotten, until it ended up here...until my thoughts summoned it. I wish it could summon my old friends, as well. I’d let so many friendships slip when Mom got sick and life got difficult. It was too hard to balance everyone’s needs, too hard when they didn’t understand and equally hard when they did.

“I’m looking for Tiffany’s memories, not mine. Do you have a memento from her prom?” I try to picture her prom, everything she told me that she remembers. “Maybe a photo? Her corsage? Something to help her remember? It was 1986.” She looked the same age, and I remember her joking about being a perpetual teenager. I try to imagine that for a moment, never growing a day older than I am right now. Maybe never dying, at least not of old age.

I think of Mom.

If the void can produce whatever I think about...

Deliberately, I think about Mom. Last summer, we had movie nights every Saturday. We made popcorn, the kind in a popper not in a microwave, and we melted real butter. Mom always ate the pieces with butter first, carefully selecting her kernels, leaving the naked and plain pieces for me. Drove me crazy. You should grab a handful and eat what you get, buttered or not. We took turns picking the movies and often ended up choosing the same ones. We must have watched When Harry Met Sally at least a dozen times, also The Princess Bride. Also, every episode of Gilmore Girls.