Dream

In my dream, girls from my middle school were everywhere. Someone had an open house, and people I had last seen when we were all eleven or twelve sprawled on beds, gathered in corridors, leaned against doorframes. Aged fifteen years, they still looked younger than I am, and uniformly beautiful, their hair still long, with no grey. I sat down on a giant bed with three of them, captivated by their loveliness, marveling at how time had rendered our former social strata irrelevant.

One of them, a girl I'd noticed in sixth grade primarily for her amazing hairsprayed bangs, looked up at me and smiled. "Oh, Gwen!" she said, clearly delighted to see me. "This is perfect. Tell us the secrets you wish you'd known about how to survive law school."

Disorientation gripped me. "You're... you're 1Ls?!" She nodded and grinned, showing perfect white teeth, no doubt the result of the braces I remembered her wearing.

What on earth was that dream about?

It woke me early, just after sunrise, and I lay in bed and listened to the rain pour down on the asphalt of the parking lot, and watched the grey-green light sneak around the corners of the curtains.