"How can I be —"

  I stopped. It wasn't the control room any more. It was a small, dark room I didn't recognize, with a little bed, a wide desk, and a window looking out onto an evening garden. I was wearing something different, and uncomfortable around the chest.

  A mp on the desk was illuminating a little notebook and ballpoint pen. I sat down and looked at it, catching my skirt around the edge of the chair and then getting confused about why I was wearing a skirt. Professor de Rochambeau's device had sent me to another dimension and then also changed my clothes?

  This is what was written in the notebook:

  3/16 62198 52517 10900 96440 22916 13438

  3/17 17704 62950 30412 72715 34059 22638

  3/18 99911 06764 13338 21197 00133 10191

  3/19 41660 84402 61220 62757 96488

  Consecutive dates and five-digit numbers with no obvious pattern. I flipped through the rest of the notebook, and it was all like that. The first date was six months ago, and the st date was today, March 19th.

  I stood back up carefully to avoid hooking the skirt on any other part of the chair. The room didn't have a normal door, but I moved the rug and found a trapdoor with a handle. I pulled it open and a staircase folded out to the floor below.

  "Oh, honey, are you going out? I washed your rabbit hat," said mom.

  "Wait. Mom?"

  My mother was looking at me from the base of the stairs, holding a rge cotton beret with floppy ears sewn onto it.

  "Why are you here?" I asked.

  "I got back from the pnt long ago. You're losing track of time in that attic."

  I climbed down the stairs, and she brushed my loose hair behind my shoulders and put the floppy hat on my head. "There you go." She was unusually tall today.

  And my hair shouldn't have been as long as it was. And now that I was down on this level, it looked just like the second floor of my house. I turned and looked back at the stairs. They were the ones from our attic. But we had never used the attic, and I'd only seen the stairs unfolded once when we moved in.

  I really would have liked to get more of an expnation, because I was unable to understand what was happening. It was like the first few minutes of a Star Trek episode where Counselor Troi is a vampire and she's starting to bite into Captain Picard's neck, and you don't understand why she is doing that, and then the music rises and it cuts to the intro with the Enterprise flying around in figure eights. Do shadow universes normally have my mom in them? Or is she not my mom, but some kind of rger, shadow mom? Was I in the shadow attic of my shadow house in the numbers dimension?

  "Is something wrong, dear?" my mom asked.

  "No, it's um, it's great. I'm gonna go out for a little."

  "Honey, it's getting pretty te. If you go, come back before nine, all right?"

  "What, I have a curfew all of a sudden?" This shadow dimension sucks.

  "Promise me, sweetie?"

  I sighed. "I promise."

  My shadow mom wrapped her arms around me and hugged me tightly. This was uncomfortable because my normal mom asked permission before hugging, and also physically, because it squished me against the uncomfortable chest thing. A bra?

  "Am I a girl?" I asked shadow mom.

  "Yes?" she replied.

  "How does that work?"

  "It's, um... It's really up to you, honey."

  Shadow mom hugged again. Once that was over, I went down the stairs, put on a checkered coat that seemed to be my size, and went out the front door.

  It was evening, and the flowers outside were wet from the rain earlier. Had it rained earlier? I walked through the garden and pushed open the gate into the dark streets. I felt like a secret agent, or, in this coat, a detective.

  There was enough wind left over from the storm to blow a lot of hair into my face. When I tried to brush it out, it just fell back in the same pce, and when I tried to tie it into a loose ponytail, I could only make a rough wad that came undone after a minute or two. Finally I managed to squash most of the hair into the rabbit hat.

  Most of the town was closed this te, and the streets were quiet, but I walked around anyway to look at the buildings. I was supposed to explore the shadow world and report back with my findings. So far it looked just like the real world.

  After a few blocks, I arrived at the mall near my house with the outside food court. The shadow outside food court, near my shadow house. The benches were still damp from the rain, so I wandered around the stall area in a circle.

  I could smell a fire burning somewhere down on the beach, and savory meat cooking in the kebab stall. It all seemed the same as always. I had gathered no information at all so far except what it felt like to wear a bra, which I was absolutely not going to share with Professor de Rochambeau.

  There were a few groups of people gathered in the court, despite the te hour and the heavy humidity as the rain evaporated. I stood and stared into the cloudy evening sky, trying to listen in, but it was hard to pick out voices from the chatter, and some of the talk seemed to be about my coat and hat. Embarrassing.

  Three women near me were calling for someone named Merry, although I did not see who they were talking to. I tried to pay attention to details, like Sherlock Holmes. The kebab stall had taken down its video menu. Was that information?

  "Hey, Merry!"

  Some tall woman came over and pulled down my hat over my eyes. Aah!

  "What are you doing?" I pulled the hat back up and gred at her.

  "Didn't you hear us calling you?"

  One of her friends added, "You looked really distracted."

  Every single one of these people is tall. Wait, maybe it's me who is short.

  "Um..." I stared at them silently for several seconds, gears turning in my head. "Yes. I've been thinking about some things. I'm sorry I didn't hear you."

  "That's okay." Katie leaned over and then hugged me, also without permission, tight enough to lift me slightly off the food court flooring. "It's nice to see you out like this. You seem happier than usual. And less, uh... worried about the... thing."

  "What thing?"

  "Uh..." began a second woman.

  "You know what, never mind. Let's actually not talk about that," said Katie. "I'm gd that you got your mind off it for a little."

  "I'm so confused about this," I said.

  "Maybe she's having a psychotic break," suggested the third dy in the group.

  "Emily!"

  "I didn't say it was a bad thing. Sometimes you need to have an episode."

  "Merry is not having a psychotic episode. She is too small and adorable," Katie said and put her hand down on my rabbit hat.

  "Please take your hand off my head," I said.

  "Oh my god," said Katie, lifting her hand. "You never say that."

  "Uh..." the second woman tried to say again.

  "Yes! Fight the power!" said Emily. Thank you.

  "I don't know what I usually say or do but today I would like you to not do that, please," I said. "I'm having a whole thing and it is making me very uncomfortable."

  "I know you don't like it," said Katie. "But you never say so."

  "Uh..." the second woman started to say for a third time.

  "Yes. Jamie. You. Go. Tell us your wisdom," said Emily.

  "I was just wondering if maybe." Jamie hesitated and looked at her friends before continuing. "This is actually the thing Merry has been worried about?"

  "Wow, that's dark," said Katie.

  "The point is well taken, but I don't think we can conclude she's been taken over by aliens just because she's a little more assertive than usual," said Emily.

  "What are you talking about?" I said. "Aliens?"

  "Aliens aren't the only hypothesis for the invaders," Jamie pointed out, "but she does, um... not really seem to know anything about the..."

  "The thing," interrupted Katie.

  "...which would suggest that she has a little amnesia or is blocking out the subject? Maybe she has a concussion. Merry, do you have a bump on your head?"

  I took off my hat and checked my head for bumps, but my hair flopped out again and went everywhere. I tried to get it back in. Jamie looked at me, concerned.

  Katie crouched down in front of me and stared up into my eyes. "Merry, do you have amnesia?"

  "I don't know," I said.

  "Do you know what this is?" She held out her ice cream cone.

  "Ice cream."

  "Do you want some of it?"

  "Okay."

  "Take a bite."

  I carefully took a bite of chocote ice cream.

  "She seems pretty normal to me," said Katie.