I kept my heavy eyelids closed when I drifted back into consciousness, rolled onto my back and recalled the dream that was still fresh in my mind. That guy was hot. I smiled and stretched my arms. The scent of chlorine still lingered on my hair. Then my bed was jerking up and down and the springs squeaked and groaned. I opened my eyes right as a small foot landed on my shin.

"Ow!" I roared.

The little girl kept bouncing and I scrambled out of the bed. I didn't recognize her or the bedroom. I looked down and realized I had slept in my bathing suit. I desperately tried to remember the last thing that happened before I fell asleep.

"June! Get out of there!" A male voice came from the hall, and then I saw his face through the partly opened door. It was the same face I pictured as I woke up, so maybe I was still dreaming. The girl hopped off the bed and ran past him.

"It's my room," she griped.

He lightly tapped on the door with one knuckle and said, "Good morning."

My arms flew up and crossed over my chest. I had backed myself into the corner of the room. I was absolutely mortified. Did something happen with this guy? If it did, why was I in a kid's room with a pink bedspread and a doll in a toy buggy in the corner? I didn't remember anything and I felt like I might puke.

He quickly turned his eyes to the floor. "Sorry, I-"

"Oh, nothing you haven't seen before, right?!"

"Well, no," he admitted as his face reddened.

"Where are my clothes?"

I searched the room from where I was standing. No clothes lying on the floor. No clothes on top of the wood dresser, only a single daisy standing in a white vase. In the corner of the room was a rocking chair, with a pale yellow dress draped over it. It was sleeveless with a rounded collar, pearly buttons running up the front, and a full skirt. It was definitely not mine.

"What you've got on is about all you have with you, but my mom left something for you to wear on the chair," he said. Then he pulled the door shut.

Two bright white items sat on top of the skirt. Underwear. Luckily they looked new, with tags on and attached to hangers. This guy's mom bought me underwear. I was going to have to consult some kind of dream decoder when I woke up. If I was actually dreaming. I wasn't really sure anymore. I reached for the bra, which looked overly ambitious, with its unnecessarily thick straps and pointy, formed cups. My chest definitely didn't require that much support. My heart sank as I tried and failed to pick it up. I tried for the dress and grabbed only air.

Since I couldn't get dressed, I briefly considered crawling back into bed and closing my eyes again, but I knew that wouldn't solve any problems.

I called, "Hello?" at the bedroom door and he immediately cracked it open slightly, as if he had been standing there waiting. "I need help," I declared.

He stepped through the doorway with his eyes politely focused somewhere about two feet over my head.

"Either I'm wearing this out of here, or I'm going to need help putting that on," I said, pointing at the dress.

"Well," he began, scratching his head thoughtfully, "you might be more comfortable in the dress." His eyes sparkled with laughter as he tried to keep a straight face, "I can help you put on those other things too, if you like."

"This is not a joke!" I snapped. "I physically cannot do anything. I can't get myself dressed or open a door. Oh, and my house is gone, and I'm not even sure how I got here! I am seriously freaking out, and you seem to think it's hilarious."

He crossed the room, picked up the yellow dress and bunched the skirt in his hands. "Arms up!" It took me a second to realize it was an order, and I reached my arms straight up in the air. He put the dress over my head and pulled it all the way on without a single smirk or stray eye. Then he grasped my hips and I inhaled sharply in surprise. He turned me ninety degrees and tugged up the side zipper.

"Okay, all set. Want some breakfast?"

I followed him downstairs to the kitchen, where he pulled a chair out from the table in a sunny breakfast nook. The kitchen was cute, with mint green cupboards and a window box by the sink with small potted plants. I traced a few squares of the black and white checkerboard linoleum floor with my toe and stole glances at him as he silently prepared breakfast. He was wearing a dark grey work shirt with a white oval patch over his heart. His name was neatly embroidered on the patch in cursive lettering.

"Pete," I said aloud without thinking.

His dark eyes shot up, looked straight into mine and all the way down to my toes, or so it felt. I quickly looked away and began intensely studying a pink teapot shaped napkin holder on the table in front of me.

"Yeah?"

I decided to ask the question that had been pulsating in my head since I woke up.

"So, what exactly happened yesterday?"

"Well," he took a deep breath and continued, "you were at the pool, and you couldn't find your things, and your friends had left you, so-"

"I remember that," I interrupted.

"Where do you want me to start?" He set a plate of buttered white toast sprinkled with cinnamon on the table and sat across from me. I was starving, but I dreaded trying to feed myself.

"I'm not really hungry."

He picked up a piece of the toast and held it in front of my face.

"No way," I protested. I pressed my lips together like a stubborn kid and shook my head. There was no way I was letting him dress me and feed me like I was a toddler.

"Hold your hand out then. Like the flower."

"What?"

"When I put the flower in your hand yesterday, you held onto it just fine. Let me give you some toast."

My right hand was resting on the table, clenched into a fist. He poked at it with a corner of the toast until I gave in and opened my hand. He was right. I took a couple bites and felt a little better.

"That's the last thing I remember. So what happened then?"

"You passed out cold and I brought you back here. We checked with the police yesterday, but nobody reported you missing yet. You've been sleeping since four o'clock yesterday afternoon." He rested his crossed arms on the table and leaned forward. He was looking straight at me, but I refused to raise my eyes, knowing if I did his might temporarily stun me again. A creeping blush began to sting my cheeks. His wrist watch said it was around ten o'clock.

"I am so sorry. You didn't have to do this. I don't even know you!"

"Listen, my mom is a nurse, so she's used to, you know, taking care of people. She said you should see a doctor once you woke up. She thinks maybe you hit your head in the pool and you have amnesia, which could be why you can't remember where you live. She's gone out to try to find that out now."

"Find what out?"

"She's asking around to find out who you are and how to get you home. Do you remember your last name? That would help."

I wanted to argue that I did know where I lived, but that didn't get me anywhere yesterday. There was nowhere else to look. Maybe I did have amnesia. Amnesia plus eighteen hours of sleep and I still felt dead tired. What was wrong with me? My mind wandered back to tenth grade health class. Pete held out a glass of orange juice for me, and something clicked.

"Oh my God," I muttered. I jumped out of my chair.

"What?" he asked, still holding up the glass of possibly drug-laced juice.

"Um, nothing." My voice was unsteady and I was trembling. "I need to go now." I walked out of the kitchen and passed through a formal dining room on the way to the front door. I felt him following me. "Open this," I demanded, after fumbling unsuccessfully with the doorknob.

"Do you remember something? I can take you-"

"No! No. I'll be fine. Just open the door. Please."

"Did I do something wrong?"

I felt his eyes on me as I stared at his hand resting on the doorknob. My ears and neck burned with shame.

"I don't know," I muttered, "did you?"

"What? I don't think-"

"Let me out," I attempted a cold, threatening tone, but my voice broke on the last syllable. He opened the door and I ran down the porch steps.

"Where are you going?" he called after me.

"The police, you shit head!" I yelled over my shoulder. Then I took off running barefoot down the sidewalk. I heard the screen door slap shut and then ran faster.

Once I had gone a few blocks toward downtown, cutting down side streets to lose him, I slowed down. Waves of nausea crashed over me and I rested my pounding head against a tree and dry heaved. I had to have been drugged somehow, which could explain my weakness and confusion in addition to all the sleeping. But I didn't remember drinking or eating anything before I fell asleep.

Was there also hallucinating? It seemed like I might have been hallucinating.

I was sure I directed Pete to the right houses. But I could still picture the yellow floral wallpaper and the lady with the green beans and the little cottage where my mom's house should have been. Why would Sophie and Laura leave me? Why didn't I recognize anyone else at the pool? Was Pete even a high school student? He looked a little older. Was that girl his daughter? What if there was actually no mom who bought me underwear and was trying to find my family? What was I thinking getting a ride from a total stranger?

I decided to stop by the coffee shop to see if Sophie was working. The thought of seeing a familiar face before heading to the hospital for a drug test and whatever else I might need was comforting. Maybe she could call my mom, or get out early and give me a ride.

The street names counted down as they got closer to the river, from Fifth Street to Main Street. Seeing the sapphire blue water of the river sparkling in the sun was slightly calming. The river flowed to Lake St. Clair and Lakes Erie and Ontario and eventually the ocean. It was a constant reminder that there was life beyond this town, and a way out. Though I considered college and a career to be my way out as opposed to floating downstream but I'd take whatever I could get.

As I walked along Main Street, the Palmer I knew wasn't matching what I saw. The cluttered antique store with the permanently dusty windows had become Weber Drugs, according to the shiny orange and blue sign hanging over the door. The thrift shop turned into a barber shop, complete with a swirling red, white and blue barber pole. A bookstore now occupied an empty storefront where a "For Lease" sign had been posted for as long as I could remember. Another empty space had become a men's clothing store. A man stepped out of the clothing store and the smell of leather and wool trailed behind him. The liquor store was now a butcher shop with cuts of raw meat displayed on ice in the front windows. Two women in full calf-length skirts and red lipstick walked toward me and their eyes flickered to my bare feet as they passed. I tried to suppress a suspicion that had been prickling at the edges of my fuzzy thoughts since the day before.

The sign for "Louisa's Cafe" had been replaced with one in a crisp, black script that said "Candyland". A white sign in the window read, "Soda Fountain" in thick black letters. Through the window I could see a few kids standing in front of a white countertop with rows of glass jars filled with colorful candy lining the shelves below. Root beer barrels. Yellow lemon drops. Swirled hard candy sticks. The man behind the counter was wearing a paper hat that looked like an open envelope turned upside down.

I had a sudden urge to tear his stupid hat off and rip it to shreds. The hat was one wrong thing too many. Everything was wrong. I spun around and leaned against the building. A startled man carrying a briefcase peered at me curiously from below the thick rims of his browline glasses. He was wearing a hat, too. Not a baseball cap. A classy one that made him look like he should have been on a television screen in black and white, taking off his hat and hollering, "Honey, I'm home!"

I forced myself to really consider everything I had previously tried to ignore. Every single car on the street was an antique. Everybody was into vintage fashion. The Palmer I knew had been scrubbed and resurrected. It was impossible that somehow I had wound up in a different decade, but it sure seemed like it. Maybe the downtown had been transformed for a movie set. Maybe I wasn't even in Palmer. I could have been taken to a town that strongly resembled Palmer, where the residents had extremely outdated fashion sense. But when I looked to the south, the salt factory was there, looking exactly the same. I turned up the next side street, but stopped when I heard a small voice behind me.

"Miss?" It was a seven or eight year-old boy walking alongside his bike. "Excuse me, miss. Did you drop this?" He held up a shiny quarter, and although I knew it wasn't mine, I couldn't resist having something solid placed in my hand.

"Oh, thank you." I forced a smile and he dropped the coin into my outstretched hand.

"You're welcome."

"Hey, what town is this?" I asked. I didn't think a little kid would care if I asked a weird question.

"Palmer, Michigan," he answered dutifully, then cocked his head. "Are you lost?"

"No, I guess not. Thanks."

He rode away and I turned the quarter over in my hand. The date on it was 1949, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. It was hot from lying in the sun. The heat from the coin, the aching in my feet, and the hollowness in my stomach all felt so real that I finally dismissed the idea that I was dreaming. Even though the theory forming in the back of my mind was impossible, a tiny twinge of excitement bubbled up through the confusion and fear.

The police station was only three blocks west of the river and all three blocks looked different. Tall trees lined both sides of the street, reaching across to create a canopy of branches. The leaves shushed in the wind and their shadows on the sidewalk rippled like water. There was a brick building with "Hospital" carved into an arched stone entryway, but there was no hospital in Palmer. There should have been a gas station there instead. As I approached city hall, where I expected a parking lot full of police cars there was a grassy lawn with a pine tree towering over a small pond surrounded by flowers and stepping stones.

My suspicions finally couldn't be ignored as I set my eyes upon a place that no longer existed. Instead of the unremarkable khaki-colored city building I knew, there stood a stately red brick structure with white columns that spanned two stories. The building I was looking at had been torn down long before I was born, but I recognized it from a picture of my grandparents.

The photograph was taken in the winter, and the pine tree branches slumped under the weight of a heavy snowfall. A 'Season's Greetings' banner hung across the front of the building between the two columns. My grandma and grandpa were bundled in scarves and long wool coats, smiling at the camera.

With that image in mind, I confirmed a few things: I was definitely still in Palmer, it was a long time ago, and it wasn't likely that anyone at city hall could do a thing to help me. I caught a glimpse of shining orange fish in the little pond and went over to watch them. The last time everything was normal was when I was in the pool, so it occurred to me that my best chance at getting back to normal might be to go for a swim.

Back at the pool, the sign over the check-in counter said the entrance fee was fifteen cents. Fifteen cents! I handed over my quarter and was given a dime for change. In the changing area, a woman tried to pull open a bottom corner locker but the door was jammed on the yellow tile floor. After pushing and pulling on the handle, she gave up and left it slightly cracked open. I pulled the yellow dress over my head, shoved it through the opening and placed my dime on top.

Thankful that the locker room had no actual doors to push through, only winding tiled hallways, I stepped out onto the warm concrete. I decided that maybe I could increase my chances of getting back to normal by re-enacting my high-dive cannonball. It wasn't very busy, but I noticed a few people turn to look at me in my comparatively skimpy bathing suit and I decided to get it over with as quickly as possible.

As I climbed the ladder, I thought of Sophie yelling my name from the water below and wondered what was happening in my time. I tried not to think about what I would do if I resurfaced still in- what? The 1950s?

But that wasn't going to happen. I had to go home. I was going home. Whatever this was- a dream, a hallucination, a nightmare, or a freak accident- would be over. And when I hit the water and the rushing wave came over me again, tossing my limp body in somersaults and knocking the air out of my lungs, I welcomed it.