I escape dad's place two and a half hours later with my prepared excuse and a bit of improvisation. Even the improvisation goes well, and I'm pretty proud of myself for that. It's a more recently gained skill of mine.

I even manage to ask about the furniture on the front lawn before I leave. It's up for grabs; dad is getting rid of it. I still hesitate at first, but it's nicer furniture than mine, and honestly? If leaving stuff on the curb is so common in this neighborhood, I doubt anyone will look at me sideways for poking over side tables and dining room chairs at four o'clock on a Friday afternoon. I'm more peeved that dad might be watching me from his front window. I know what he'll see.

I take extra care with how I conduct myself because of that. No head bobs. No wrist-rubbing. No random drumming on the furniture. I keep my hands in my pockets and my attention locked on what my body is doing, sculpting the perfect image of myself to counter dad's likely assumptions. The street is empty again. I'm still glad, but I care less about the other people than I did when I arrived.

I catch that thought before it progresses. No, I need to care about the other people. The other people are the whole point of this, not dad. I'm getting too wrapped up in what I think about dad and vice versa, when this is really about my life as a whole... and about Ophelia.

I redouble my efforts. It means inspecting furniture goes slower than it should, because I'm distracted, and balancing multiple competing brain tasks is hard. I manage it in the end, though, and score a find that makes it all worthwhile. It's a little bedside table, solid wood with a brass handle on its single, closed drawer. I need a bedside table. I've been setting my water glass in a corner of my bookshelf for years, and I'd really like it to be further from my books.

The drawer is duct-taped shut. The tape is heavy and old, stuck firmly enough that I'm not getting it off here without a lot of faces I don't want to make in public. I know myself too well. I also don't have anything to cut it with, so I resolve to open it later, and heft the little table back to the bus stop where I asked the nervous woman for directions. I grimace at how this will look to strangers. At least I'm wearing a nice jacket and a nice-ish hat, so I might escape the stereotype of poor student.

Who am I kidding? I'm a twenty-something hauling furniture home on public transit; I'm not fooling anyone. But I really want this bedside table, so I resign myself to the image and board the bus with the little wooden blocky thing digging into my hip.

By the time I'm halfway home, I'm beginning to suspect there's a reason the drawer of the bedside table is duct-taped shut so thoroughly. The table is top-heavier than I would expect if that drawer were empty, and I catch myself tipping it back and forth on the subway to try and gauge the weight of whatever is inside. When I glance up, there's a man across the subway car watching me. I set the table back on its feet with a sigh. Nothing I do now will make much difference, so I ignore the man and am thankful when he gets off at the next stop. The stop after that is mine.

Lugging the bedside table up to my apartment leaves me bruised and sweating. I check the time. There's a missed text on my phone, and it's most of an hour until my games-group meets up. We're at a different location this time; our usual one was booked out for a wedding afterparty this evening, and the new one is half an hour away. I shove the bedside table to the other end of the entryway, swap my fall coat for a warner jacket that I'm going to want this evening, and head straight back out the door again.

The sun is already below the houses. I have to stop for a moment at the end of my front walk. The break in routine caused by the change of location disorients me, and for a moment, my mind blanks on which way I have to walk. I shake my head to clear it. Then I catch myself and shrink into my jacket, glancing up and down the street. There are a couple of people who might see me acting like a lost dog with water in its ears, but none seem to be paying attention.

Left. The map I checked this morning had me going left instead of right, followed by a long enough walk in a straight enough line that it'll give me a chance to get my bearings.

A brisk walk through the chilly, gathering October dusk is enough to get my mind back on track. I evaluate the main roads I could take to reach my destination, but their rush of cars and glare of headlights is unappealing, so I turn down side streets instead. The whole city is laid out in a grid, so I won't lose my way so long as I can keep track of whether I'm walking west or south. It doesn't take long to ditch the traffic noise, and the neighborhood around me falls into ghostly autumn silence. There are a lot more Halloween decorations here. Lit-up plastic ghouls and blow-up spiders, elaborate spiderwebs, and dozens of gourds, pumpkins, and squash.

It's not until I reach an intersection with a single, dead crossing light hanging in the middle of it that I realize I recognize this area.

I stop. I've walked here in the daytime, I'm sure of it. I turn on the spot, taking in the houses, the road, the yards. The familiarity fades if I look at them too closely. Before I can second-guess myself, I start into motion and let the pull of something draw me left, right, left, steps quicker than before. I nearly panic as I lose the trail at the following intersection. But then I remember a crossing guard... a stout old woman with an orange vest and a cheerful smile, who always brought a chair and music to her job.

There are no cars in sight, so I check both ways at the crosswalk and cross alone without pushing the button.

My path continues from there. I make another turn, and suddenly the road opens up in the gathering darkness. It leaves me face to face with a schoolyard.

A low, rectangular brick building hunches ahead of me. Most of its windows are dark, but some still glow despite the hour. The schoolyard yard sports two playgrounds, a concrete pad, and a grassy field, all ensconced in a chain-link fence with Halloween decorations tied through it. The fence is the only thing that doesn't feel shrunken.

I take a step back. I went here, so long ago that I barely remember. The place feels familiar, but distorted, like I'm seeing it through a warped mirror or broken glass. The school is too red. The field is too small. There's a tree in one corner with one dead trunk and one living one, but the dips between its roots aren't grassy like I remember: they're bare and full of junk. I remember a fence that turns out to be a baseball diamond. I don't remember the baseball diamond. I circle to the front of the school. Nothing about its front door is familiar.

I stand there on the sidewalk with my hands in my jacket pockets and let my eyes wander up the windows. Dark to lit. Lit to dark. Maybe this will make more sense if I put names and faces to the memories. Classmates. Teachers. Projects that had me out in that schoolyard. The latter springs to mind immediately. The baseball-diamond fence is where I hid my playthings when recess was over. Sticks and stones made up to be little creatures I played with. I would take them to that dip in the fence, that twisted shrub, that bench... the shrub is overgrown now, but it's still there.

And then there was the wall where other kids bounced tennis balls, while I stuck magnets to the metal strip running between the door and a nearby corner. The magnets too were something: starships on a celestial current that they could not leave before their destination, or the rays of the universe would fry them alive. Or sometimes I would take those magnets to the sand beneath the playground and run them through it until they bristled with particulate iron, which I saved. Its weight gave it value even though it was useless.

With these memories, the school un-distorts a little. Or maybe it's just a different distortion. The recess yard is empty; I was only ever the only one there. The building itself blanks out, devoid of hallways, classrooms, windows, doors. Its floor plan is a gap in my memory. I withdraw from my fantasies and try to bring anything else to mind. Things I learned. Things I made. One project from grade five, but grade six is a void, and grade three is little better. At least I would recognize my grade-three teacher. I remember the cliques my classmates sorted themselves into. I search for their faces, but am met with faceless entities, the space between their chins and hairlines filled with nothing but a blob of misty grey.

Did I ever know my grade-six teacher's name?

Sound behind me. Someone is approaching along the sidewalk, but even as we eye each other, they cross the street to continue on the other side. I realize I'm rubbing my wrist again. I stare at it for a long moment, and there's something here, too. Something missing. But I don't remember what it is.

The streetlights wink on one by one. I pull myself from the school with difficulty, as if I'm tethered to that darkened schoolyard with a great elastic band. Something about it compels me. I want to know what. But I'm running out of time to be early to the meet-up spot, so I turn my back and leave those half-lit, half-dark windows and the half-real space behind them behind.