Chapter 4: Fading

Lars woke up with a gasp, his heart pounding in his small chest.

The dream had been so vivid, so real. He’d been at school - not his school, not the college he’d attended, but a different school. Middle school, maybe? He’d been younger, smaller, vulnerable. A girl. He’d always been a girl in the dream.

A group of older kids had cornered him in the bathroom, laughing and calling him names. “Crybaby Emmy,” they’d taunted. “Little baby Emmy, gonna run home to mommy?” They’d taken his backpack, dumped out his things, scattered his carefully completed homework across the wet bathroom floor.

He’d been terrified, frozen, unable to defend himself. The fear had been overwhelming, paralyzing.

And then Sarah had appeared. Sarah, taller and stronger and fierce, pushing through the group of bullies. “Leave my sister alone!” she’d shouted, and there had been such protective fury in her voice that the bullies had backed off, muttering excuses and slinking away.

Sarah had knelt down and helped him gather his things, had wiped his tears with gentle fingers, had walked him to class with an arm around his shoulders. “It’s okay, Emmy. I’ve got you. I’ll always protect you. That’s what big sisters do.”

The memory - no, the dream, it was just a dream - had felt so real. The fear. The relief. The overwhelming love and gratitude for his big sister who always, always kept him safe.

Lars lay in the darkness of Emmy’s pink room, trying to steady his breathing, trying to separate dream from reality. It had just been a dream. None of that had happened. He’d never been bullied like that. Sarah wasn’t his protector; she was the one who’d done this to him.

Except ... the memory lingered with a weight that felt different from a normal dream. It felt like something that had actually happened. Like a real memory, not a dream at all.

But that was impossible. That had been Emmy’s memory, not his.

Lars turned his head to look at the clock on the nightstand - a pink plastic alarm clock shaped like a cat, its tail swishing back and forth as the seconds ticked by. The glowing numbers read 5:47 AM.

He was awake. Fully awake. At 5:47 in the morning.

That was wrong. Lars never woke up this early. He was the kind of person who snoozed his alarm five times and stumbled out of bed at the last possible moment. He’d been late to work more times than he could count because he couldn’t drag himself out of bed.

But Emmy woke up early. Emmy was a morning person who got up before her alarm, who liked to have time to pick out her clothes and eat a proper breakfast and maybe draw a little before school.

Lars tried to go back to sleep, tried to close his eyes and drift off, but his body wouldn’t cooperate. He was awake, alert, ready to start the day in a way that felt fundamentally foreign to who Lars was.

Or who Lars had been.

With a resigned sigh, Lars - Emmy - sat up in bed, dislodging Mr. Hoppers, who tumbled to the side. The stuffed rabbit’s button eyes seemed to look at him in the dim pre-dawn light filtering through the butterfly curtains.

Lars picked up Mr. Hoppers automatically, straightening the rabbit’s floppy ears before setting him carefully against the pillows. The gesture was tender, habitual, something Emmy did every morning.

Wait. How did he know that? How did he know Emmy’s morning routine?

Because it was his morning routine now.

The thought sent a chill through him.

Lars slid out of bed, his small feet touching the soft pink rug. He padded to the window and pulled aside the curtain slightly, looking out at the quiet street. The sky was just beginning to lighten with the approaching dawn, everything still and peaceful.

He tried to remember his apartment. The view from his window there - what had it looked out on? A parking lot? Another building? The memory was fuzzy, indistinct, like trying to remember a place you’d visited years ago rather than somewhere you’d lived just two days ago.

Two days. It had only been two days since Halloween night.

It felt like longer. It felt like Emmy had been living in this room, in this life, for much longer than that.

Lars shook his head, trying to clear it, and moved to his dresser. Emmy’s dresser. The top was covered with little girl things - hair clips shaped like butterflies, a jewelry box that played music when you opened it, a framed photo of Emmy and Sarah at the beach from last summer.

Last summer. Lars stared at the photo. He had no memory of going to the beach last summer. Lars had spent last summer working at the electronics store, hanging out with Jake and Marcus, avoiding responsibilities.

But Emmy remembered the beach trip vividly. The sand between her toes, the cold water making her squeal, Sarah helping her build an elaborate sandcastle that had won second place in the resort’s competition. She’d been so proud. They’d gotten ice cream afterward, and Emmy had gotten mint chocolate chip, her favorite.

Mint chocolate chip wasn’t Lars’s favorite. Lars liked ... what had he liked? Coffee ice cream? Rocky road? The memory slipped away before he could grasp it.

But Emmy definitely liked mint chocolate chip. That was certain, solid, real.

Lars opened a drawer and pulled out clothes for school. A purple shirt with a sparkly butterfly on it, pink jeans, socks with little hearts on them. He laid them out on the bed, then headed to the bathroom to wash his face and brush his teeth.

The house was quiet, everyone else still asleep. Lars had the bathroom to himself, and he went through Emmy’s morning routine automatically - washing his face with the strawberry-scented face wash, brushing his teeth with the pink toothbrush, running a comb through his long hair to work out the tangles.

Looking in the mirror, Lars barely recognized himself anymore. The face looking back was completely Emmy’s - soft, young, innocent. A little girl’s face. The bold princess makeup from Halloween was long gone, leaving just the natural features of a ten-year-old.

But the eyes. When Lars looked closely, he could still see ... what? Himself? Some remnant of Lars Morrison, twenty-three-year-old man, trapped behind those big hazel eyes?

Or was he imagining it? Was there any Lars left at all, or was he already just Emmy, trying desperately to hold onto memories that were fading like morning mist?

Lars - no, Emmy - no, LARS, he had to remember he was Lars - went back to the bedroom and got dressed. The clothes fit perfectly, felt comfortable, felt right. That was the problem. Everything about this life felt increasingly right, increasingly natural.

By the time his mother knocked gently on the door at 6:30, calling “Emmy, time to get up for school, sweetie,” Lars was already dressed, his bed made, sitting at his little desk drawing in a sketchbook.