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around our legs. We’d playact
Lassie
and
Charlie’s Angels
with gusto, serenaded by the distant hum of the downstairs television. With an older sibling’s sense of entitlement, I always made Laurie be Kate Jackson, reserving sexpots Jaclyn and Farrah for myself.
    “And now we’ll take questions from the studio audience,” Laurie says, her voice naturally bright as she lets my latest ill-advised comment float, mostly harmlessly, in space.
    Last night I had my first death dream.
    I know, I know,
so
cliché. But here’s the thing: It was so real, so
ordinary.
You know that ethereal, cinematic quality dreams have? The wishful note that takes the edge off the scare factor, that tells some subconscious monkey part of our brains,
Hey, this isn’t real, so why
don’t
you take twenty pounds off our plucky heroine and upgrade Ren to Viggo. Aim high, girlfriend, ’cause you’re going to wake up sooner or later!
    This dream wasn’t like that at all.
    It starts out okay. I am walking the halls of my high school, not my teenage self, but me now. I’m wearing a backpack slung over one shoulder the way only too-cool sixteen-yearolds can, heavy with books but without visible back pain. The distinct chorus of several thousand hormonal teenagers teeming in an enclosed space, of lockers slamming, of scudding sneakers and screechy stabs at popularity, fills my ears. The smell—bubble gum and sweat and testosterone with a whisper of pot—froths in my senses. It makes that detached monkey part of my grown-up brain pipe up:
Remember this?
    Slut queen Christie Mueller and her minions are gathered around their locker mirrors, applying Lip Smackers and lasagna-like layers of eye shadow. Back then the favored color was an unreasonable blue, the exact shade of Robby Benson’s eyes (I should know, having seen
Ice Castles
fifteen times). I hunch by them in full Quasimodo mode, mindful to avert my eyes lest they accuse me of trying to initiate contact with my betters. Christie’s birdcall laugh seems to chase me down the corridor. I am borne into Mrs. Rossi’s conversational-Spanish class by the bell, my heart pounding out a stuttering flamenco along with this thought:
Congratulations on surviving one more day without being humiliated.
    A scene change: The asbestos-tiled walls of the classroom morph into our house in Palo Alto. Well, sort of our house. The basics are the same, but it seems to me like other people live there, because the lawn is freshly mowed and someone has finally reinforced the saggy rain gutter I was nagging Phil about for at least three years. It doesn’t smell like our house, either, the usual perfume of molting teen, dog, and interior paint replaced by a suspiciously pleasant lavenderish concoction.
    I take a quick peek in the living room. The Bonafacios from next door are perched stiffly on kitchen chairs, their identical turkey-gobbler necks quivering. Phil’s boss, Ross Trimble, checks out Robin Golden’s rack while pretending to focus on a loosely rolled deli slice. Friends and family mill about, whispering. Nobody laughs. The dining room table is buried under an avalanche of casseroles, triangular sandwiches, and that to-die-for mayonnaise-artichoke dip that I have always secretly wished to bathe in.
    A restless blonde with jiggly buns whom I vaguely recognize as a volleyball parent corners Phil. “I’m so sorry. If there’s anything I can do,
anything,
you call me, okay? I’m
so
sorry, hon. Call me.” She hands Phil a card. Phil—the traitor—slips it into his jacket pocket and nods. His green eyes are either pinched with fatigue, or he has been on one of his TV marathons; his face is the definition of haggard.
    I float into the bedroom wing. One of the basset hounds has dragged a platter of tuna casserole into the hall and is hastily slurping it down. Nobody intervenes. Music flows under the closed door to Taylor’s room. Inside, a circle of teenagers cling and sway together, as if at a rock concert