Gray clouds loomed above the concrete box of a building — a metaphor for the murky, vaguely mundane life of high school. I stood, staring up at them from behind the smudged glass of Harper High’s front doors. You can make it, I said to myself, splitting the doors open and shooting into a jog. You can make it. You can…a sharp drop on my arm, one in my hair...and then the torrent followed. Dammit.

I didn’t mind rain, in fact I rather liked it. But New England winter rain…that was a biting, half-frozen mess. My feet pounded against the wet pavement, water soaking through my sneakers and drenching my jeans. I had to stay late at school. Detention. Again. From being late. Again.

At least I brought a book this time, and this weather made me feel like I’d fallen into wintry Bath from the well-loved copy of Northanger Abbey I hugged close to my chest. I prayed it didn’t get too ruined by the rain. Yes, I know: detention for being late, a reader of classic literature (Austen, no less)…what a cliché. I’ve thought that since I was fourteen. Murky, vaguely mundane, remember?

My coat sat unused on the passenger seat of my car. Typical Amy, forgetting it that morning in my rush. My entire body was shivering by the time I reached my driver’s side door. While fumbling for my keys in the fraying backpack I’d had since I was a freshman, I looked up and saw a woman in a long, Victorian-style nightgown walk by me. Well that’s a…look.

She seemed unaffected by the storm, which was weird in itself, but then she stopped to read one of the many stickers on the back of my car. The obscure band references and pleas to save the Earth already decorated the bumper when I bought Little Blue used the year before. I spent two summers staring longingly at Blue parked on the side of the road with a sun-faded “FOR SALE” sign in her windshield. Finally I saved enough money teaching horseback riding at a camp to buy her.

Unlocking the door, I watched the woman warily for a second. Her nightgown matched the light color of my car almost to a T. Unsure if I should ask if she needed help or just wait for her to leave, I stood staring with the door half-open. The woman looked up at me, sadness swimming in her eyes. They were green, like mine, with a small ring of hazel around the pupil. My heart dropped: I’d seen her before. Never while awake, but in the fantastical, wartorn nightmares I used to have as a kid. She only appeared in a few, but those eyes were unmistakable. My stomach contracted, an eerie fear washing over me.

She turned and started walking away. The idea of calling out to her crossed my mind, but what was there to say? Instead I slid into my car, soaked to the bone, then stuck the key in the ignition and gave it a turn. The engine rumbled to life. A grin spread across my face, good old Little Blue - the best car I could ask for. Blue jerked in protest after I put her in reverse and hit the gas, but she went backwards nonetheless.

Stopping before the sign standing guard at the lot’s exit, I looked both ways to find nightgown woman had disappeared…she wasn’t in the parking lot, or on the street around it. An electric chill shot down my spine - where’d she go? I tried to shake the anxiety as I pulled into the road and began my drive, which consisted mostly of tree-lined country roads. No highway in the little New Hampshire town of Harper Falls.

A few miles from home, my front wheel hit the pothole I typically steered around. It had been there since before I started high school, and would likely be there long after I left. I grunted, frustrated I’d forgotten. Little Blue jolted and something fell from her undercarriage. The muffler, no doubt. Wouldn’t be the first time. Pulling over, I reluctantly climbed out into the downpour.

I picked up the rogue muffler and shot it a disapproving look: cocking an eyebrow and lifting one side of my mouth, as if it should be ashamed in return. When I glanced up, the woman in the blue nightgown stood behind my car. I jumped. Didn’t expect to see that. How’d she get out here?Little Blue was the only car on the road. The nausea began to return. My hands started shaking, and it wasn’t because of the cold.

“Hey!” I yelled, making my way toward her. She flinched, turning to meet my eyes. Hers were so familiar, that coloring, that gaze. Curiosity jumped into my throat.

“You look just like her,” she told me, and her voice sat in an almost ethereal octave, high and light, but with a gravity that pushed the sadness through. The sides of her lips turned up in a small smile, like she knew me. She turned and started to cross the road toward the woods.

“Wait, who?” I shouted, jogging after her. “Hey!” I called again as she stepped through the threshold of trees. Following, I found myself alone under a canopy of naked branches. The woman in the nightgown wasn’t anywhere to be seen. My heart plummeted, fear and an inexplicable sadness tearing through me.

Oh, not again. Nightmares as a kid are one thing. Day-dream-nightmares at seventeen? Please, no. Wake up, come on. I balled my right hand into a fist and dug my nails into my palm, something I used to do when I was little to wake myself up from a nightmare.

Ow.

Nope, definitely awake.

I turned, the muffler in my other hand, and sprinted back to Little Blue. Her driver’s side door sat wide open, allowing the rain inside.

“Damn. Nice, Aims,” I cursed under my breath, tossing the muffler onto the passenger side. The seat squelched as I sat. Sighing, I began loudly driving the rest of the way home — Little Blue sounded like a low-flying aircraft without her trusty muffler.

The clock read well past five when I finally pulled into my driveway. The rain couldn’t possibly make me any wetter or colder than I already was, so I stepped out of Blue without a shiver and entered the code to the detached garage. As the door lifted, the familiar collar jingle of my pit/husky mix (a pitsky, if you will), Magnet, met my ears. He ran over to me with his brown and white skewbald fur soaked from playing out back. He loved playing in the rain.

I gave him a few quick pats before pulling Blue into the garage. Magnet laid next to me as I worked to refit the muffler. It came off all too often, and Carl (er, my father. I don’t like referring to him as “dad”) taught me how to fix it earlier this year. Only thing he’d ever been good for in my humble opinion.

After Magnet and I climbed the porch and stepped inside the house, I dried him off and fed him before heading to take a warm shower. Several pictures of Mom and me on various outings adorned the hallway walls. My favorite was taken in Oregon last year, we were goofing off on horseback. We looked more like sisters; she was young, and we shared delicate facial features, full lips, and long, thick brown hair. The only difference was that Mom had slim hips, while mine were wider. My least favorite feature. I inherited them from Carl’s side - of course.

Something odd in the picture caught my eye, someone in the background I never saw before, because who looks at the strangers in their pictures? Removing the photo from the wall, I grinned at my mom — she was sticking her tongue out dramatically, eyes crossed. I was sitting up incredibly straight wearing a faux, overly posh look on my face. Having never taken the time to notice anyone in the background, my heart did a somersault. In the corner, far away from where we were posing, a woman wearing a blue nightgown stood, staring in the direction of the camera. My breathing stopped for a second. A sense of anxiety, dread even, crept through me.

My eyes must’ve been playing tricks on me, there was no way the woman from earlier and this woman were the same person. Her eyes were hard to make out from so far away, but she filled me with the same curious empathy the woman from earlier had.

Her lips moved. Yes, moved, turning up in that same, small smile. My heart leapt into my mouth and the photo slipped from my grasp, falling to the floor. Luckily, the glass of the frame didn’t shatter when it hit the ground. Bending down to pick it up, my breath barely made its way out of my lungs. Had the woman really been there? Had her mouth moved? I slowly turned the frame over in my hands. No, the glass hadn’t shattered, but there was a long crack from one corner to the other. Mom’s going to be pissed, she loves these.

What was there to tell her? Not the truth, she hated putting me through that sleep study when I was younger because of my dreams. People whispered about “the girl in the psych ward” for weeks. It wasn’t a psych ward. But that trivial fact didn’t matter to the small-town gossip mill of Harper Falls. I finally gained enough courage to look past the crack to the photo itself. The woman in the corner was wearing long riding boots and a pink jacket. There was no woman in blue. I’m losing it.

Placing the photo back on its nail slowly, I told myself to relax. It was worse to harp on her. If I couldn’t get my mind off it, I’d see her everywhere. And that was my biggest fear.

After taking a shower and shuffling down to my bedroom, I pulled on the faded Boston World Series Champions t-shirt my mom bought me after they won a few years ago…but I still couldn’t shake that woman’s face. My best friend Kyle would have cracked some joke about her. His deep, familiar laugh echoed in my mind, his slightly crooked smile, the scar on the left corner of his upper lip, the black hair he refused to cut (I liked it that way), his piercing, clearish blue eyes…and the woman momentarily vanished from my thoughts.

See, I couldn’t call Kyle. He moved to New York six months ago, and nothing but radio silence passed between us since. The thought of him made my hands automatically pick up my phone and scroll to our last texts, the ones from the night before he left, the ones from the night we stopped talking,

Him: Archer’s Bluff tonight?

Me: Where else would we go?

Him: Good point. You’re always one step ahead.

Me: Maybe you’re just one step behind ;). You want me to drive or do you want to?

Him: Pick you up at 6. I’m gonna miss you, gingerbread girl.

And boy, did I miss him.

Gingerbread girl: the nickname he gave me when we were six. I cried when I broke a gingerbread cookie of his. He’d laughed and shrugged, saying he didn’t like cookies shaped like people anyway. I’d proceeded to break it further and tell him it didn’t look like a person anymore. We shared that cookie, and from then on, most of our time.

Sighing, I tossed my phone away. Was he feeling the same as me? Too proud to say anything? If so, this silence would never end. Nightgown woman popped back into my thoughts. Well, that was a nice thirty seconds without her.

After Mom got home, tired from a long day at work, she tossed her navy blazer onto a kitchen chair. I offered a hug that seemed to revitalize her a tiny bit. Truth be told, it revitalized me a bit, too. We made dinner, and I confessed that I’d cracked the glass on our favorite picture.

“And you took it off the wall…why?” Mom asked, a hint of a smile on her face. Maybe she wouldn’t be too mad after all.

“Just to look at it. It was an accident.” The apology dripped from my lips. “I’ll replace it.”

“Amelia Frances, you are the clumsiest person I know.” She shook her head.

“Uuuuuugh, don’t call me that, I hate it, Ma.” I hit the last word just so, because she hated it equally as much as I hated the use of my full first and middle names. We shared a smile.

After dinner I retreated to my room to get some homework done, but somehow never got started. Yup, it was just a normal night in Harper Falls…except my mind kept circling around to the familiar eyes of that woman in the blue nightgown.

After a bit, I flicked off my light and turned on some low music, inviting drowsiness in. My heavy eyes fell as the synthesizers and guitars of Explosions in the Sky filled my headphones. It felt like I’d just drifted off when three distinct crashes pierced my ears. I leapt from bed, throwing my headphones off in the process. Silence.

Maybe I just dreamt it…

A scream erupted from outside.

Definitely didn’t imagine that.