“
I must have fallen asleep on a rock. It’s digging into my shoulder blade. I scrunch up and start to roll over, but then freeze.
It’s not just a single rock. It’s a giant one. Like concrete.
I go numb as I realize what this means. It can’t be…I ease open my eye, and then in an instant I’m sitting upright and looking around. And all I see are cars. And people in blue jeans. And street signs. And I smell smog and I hear radios crackling in the passing cabs.
I close my eyes for at least ten seconds and then open them again, but it’s all still there.
The twenty-first century.
I can’t stop my face from falling. I’m back. Just when I’d realized I don’t want this at all, I’m back. My shopping bags are strewn around me. I’m wearing jeans. A T-shirt. My heels.
I glance back to realize the Prada shop is still a few yards behind me, just where I’d left it. I’m sitting in the exact spot I’d fallen down.
I never left at all.
I stay put for a few moments as a pounding headache fades.
Alex. Emily. Even Victoria.
They were all make-believe. Some figment of my banged-up brain. That means the kiss…God, I made it all up! Every single thing!
I want to lie back down, close my eyes, and go back. I want horrible soup and stiff corsets and lump mattresses. I’ll trade it all to see Alex again. To go to Emily’s wedding.
A man trips on my foot and then has the nerve to glare at me, even though he basically kicked me in the shin.
Yes, I’m definitely in the twenty-first century.
I scramble to my feet and wipe the dirt off my jeans and lean over to pick up my bags. And then I notice them.
My heels. My beautiful, damaged heels. I glance over my shoulder. Yes, the Prada shop is definitely still behind me. I’ve gone maybe four steps from the door. Nowhere near enough to ruin the heels like this. They’re scuffed, dented, and scratched.
I gather up the rest of my bags, my grin in full-force. It wasn’t fake. It wasn’t make-believe or a dream or anything.
It happened. As sure as the mud on the heels, it happened. There’s even a dent where the front door of Harksbury bounced off the toe.
I don’t know how or why or anything, but somehow, I was there. I danced with Alex and helped Emily. I played a piano for a duke and a countess, and I ate more exotic animals than I ever wanted to.
But it happened. I don’t understand it; I only know that the last month was real, and it was the best of my life.
I sling the bags over my shoulder and practically skip down the block. No matter what happens next, no matter what happens for the rest of my life, I have something no one else will ever have. An adventure to rival Indiana Jones. A crazy month that can never be replicated.
”
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