It was Claire Montblanc’s twelfth birthday, and three years until the end of the world. Not that she, her classmates, or anyone else knew that. It would happen all the same. She tried to stay awake during her last class of the day. Mr. Hart talked directly to the chalkboard, the same way he always did, scribbling as he went. He paced back and forth, reading from the same tome of notes he must have used for decades.
“The green eyes, represent the eyes of God, of course,” he spoke in a raspy old voice with a slight southern drawl on God. His bald head matched the rest of his withered skin, slightly reminiscent of a raisin.
“But - not just that. Green. Green is the color of money, but not just any money - the new, high up watching money. Soooo, we can say that the two are synonymous." Claire had already read the book - and the next one for the class. She felt lucky that he, like most of her teachers, allowed her to do homework before the rest of her peers; if she had to move at their pace, it would be unbearable.
The merciful bell excused the class, releasing them back into the world. Claire suspected Mr. Hart timed his lectures to end the second the bell rang. She allowed most of the class to file out before her before proceeding through the door. One, two, three. She touched her thumbs with her pinky, ring, and middle fingers on each hand before pushing the door open.
She quickly put her bag in her locker and moved to go home. Her mother had made the point several times not to be late, there were preparations that needed to be done right away.
“Hey Claire, happy birthday.” a boy nudged her. She wished he wouldn’t do that. She squeezed her arms against her sides three times before acknowledging him.
“Are you coming over tonight?” She asked. Spencer stood taller than her, all awkward limbs and stretched-out proportions. His arms seemed to have grown before the rest of him and his torso was catching up. He participated in the math club, the mathletes competition as the school officially called it, though he was a grade ahead.
“Yeah, I’m going home and then we’re picking up the rest of the nerds.” She had not heard that. Her mother would be ecstatic.
“Oh?”
“Might be a bit late though.” Another thing that would please her mother.
“Ok, well,” she knew the protocol for ending conversations without sounding abrupt, but timing it just right always tripped her up, “bye then. I’m going home.” It came off as more of a dismissal than a farewell, but he just nodded. Classic Claire. He acted as the captain of the team only because he was so personable, Claire often took the most difficult questions as their heavy hitter so it paid to put up with her.
The double doors exiting the building were crammed with the chaos of fleeing children. Claire took a breath before continuously touching her thumbs to her fingers counting one, two, three as she did. Free of the choke point, she could breathe again.
The walk home never took long, just a few blocks to the library, then to the park, the church, and then home. It formed a little zigzag across her neighborhood. She would often spend her after school time at the library, not just for the books, but for the building. Large grey stones formed the circular wall with archways curving to the top of the building - each filled with a bronze lattice of glass squares. A matching bronze lattice that made the whole building look like a greenhouse capped the top of the grey wall. She had asked the librarian there about it once and she had told her light makes the plants grow as the books here make you grow.
Claire would visit the park sometimes, if she wanted to be outside. There were benches and several crisscrossing walkways that formed a star pattern. March had finally warmed enough to allow for such things. Mostly, it marked the halfway point home. The road leaving the park moved up a shallow but large hill where the church sat. She had been inside a handful of times, but mostly just when her mom took her for Christmas service or similar. She had been raised Catholic, but not much of it stuck. Claire didn’t complain.
Her house was sky blue, second street after the church. She stepped inside as she counted her fingers. one, two, three.
“There she is.” Her mother’s sister greeted her. She hovered over the kitchen table laying out plates, cups, and napkins.
“Finally,” her mother called out from the kitchen. Her mom stood tall and skinny to the point of looking unhealthy. She did everything with precision, progressively completing task after task. Claire set to work, looking for places to assist without getting in the way. Had she forgotten to greet them? Was it now too late to do so? Would it be strange to say so now? She decided to remain silent for now, that seemed to be the safest option in general.
The party goers arrived a few at a time. A handful of extended relatives filled the living room. Her father’s brother and his wife sat on the couch. Her mother’s sister continued addressing imaginary concerns about the cake / present table. Spencer and a few of the Math Nerds, as they called their team, were here. They too were clearly pushed out of their soon to be weekend routines to attend. Claire’s mother fluttered like a stagehand at the edge of the performance. Her father always played the joyful little bulb moving from group to group, looking for new conversations to light up.
For her part, Claire would have preferred the day pass unmarked. She didn’t hate birthdays; she just didn’t see the point. Ignoring it would have been easier, quieter. Tolerating these types of social obligations required following a set of rules and procedures like anything else, it just seemed so contrived. Every little detail of the thing had its own ritual. The candles, the song, the presents, the wrapping. It seemed like a lot of work to put into something like this.
A small pile of unwrapped gifts waited for her attention. While not trying to be difficult, she disliked the present opening ceremony. The whole concept of getting things from people that didn’t know her particularly well stressed her out. There weren’t that many people here – and most had brought just a card. There were a couple of book-shaped packages. What should she do with the things she didn’t want? Besides, someone always got impatient with her present opening style.
Her mother appeared behind her, voice bright but taut. “Make a wish, sweetie.” Her pitch betrayed her anxiety. It was too high, the smile too precise. Everything about her mom strained under tension, the tight professional ponytail, the thin well-rehearsed smile, even her fingers were like mousetraps ready to act the moment they were called for. SHe checked items off her motherhood checklist one at a time: have a child, check. Host the twelfth birthday, balloons, decorations, guests, and cake all accounted for. Blowing out the candles signaled the next step in the ritual and Claire was delaying it.
The candles sagged, wax dripping onto the frosting. Claire leaned forward and blew them out, not bothering with a wish. Possibly a small act of rebellion, but one that no one would ever know about. She had learned early on that being cooperative made life smoother for everyone, herself included. Friction burns both objects after all.
Her mother diced the cake with brisk efficiency, plating cubes while motioning her husband to ferry them to guests. Another checkbox completed. Next would come the presents, then polite chatter, then cleanup. Claire opened her gifts methodically, beginning with the envelopes. She found that people tended to find her emotional display flat, so she ensured that she exaggerated her gratitude so it could be properly received by the guests. Meant as a celebration of her life, the day instead unfolded like a list of obligations to those around her.
Happy birthday, love Aunt and Uncle Montblanc. The card had a bouquet of flowers on the outside and twenty dollars folded inside. She had expected this, but she didn’t want to show that she expected it, or that she only cared about the money and not the card. She read it aloud, quietly tucking the money in her pocket.
“Thanks for the card,” she looked at her aunt and uncle, “it’s really pretty.” Her aunt gardened often and always had fresh flowers in her house, so she knew the card came from her right away.
The next card depicted a cartoon dog on the front wagging its tail. I heard it’s your birthday… the front read. She opened the card and showed the cartoon dog hugging another dog in an exaggerated way – squeezing the dog into a comical shape. HAPPY BIRTHDAY! The dog exclaimed. I hope you have a wonderful 12th birthday, love Aunt Aubrey xo.
Claire laughed as genuinely as she could, “Thanks. And,” Claire showed the bookstore giftcard, “thanks for the books.” Showing the gift of money amounted to being taboo - but giftcards were fine. They were different from money somehow. Perhaps the secretive value of the giftcard prevented the faux pas.
“Of course.” Her aunt beamed, she took it upon herself to be the fun aunt despite being the older of the two. She had a thing for snoopy and other cartoon dogs. The gift bag had no card, but the tag simply said Gma Montblanc. Her grandma was something else. Stern, to a degree, but also loving – at least to her. Her dad would tell stories that made her seem like a tyrant, but Claire never saw that. She took Claire with her to church sometimes, but in general they weren’t super close.
“Is grandma here?” Claire hadn’t seen her
“No,” her dad said, “she wasn’t feeling too good this morning, but she said she’d come by this weekend to make up for it.”
She opened the bag to reveal a pink hoodie and a black and pink striped skirt. She didn’t have to feign it this time; she did love it.
Spencer presented her with the last gift on the table. It looked like a book, “Happy birthday, from all of us.” He motioned to the cluster of awkward nerds waiting until they could go home. Peeling the wrapping off one piece of tape at a time, she uncovered a codebreaking book, which was actually pretty cool.
“Oooh, thanks,” she giggled slightly, “then we can encode messages in class.” She hugged him to say thanks without thinking about it. He awkwardly returned the hug with just his arms – being careful almost to not touch her fully. Maybe it had been unexpected in the situation. Oops. She pressed her arms to her side before straightening her shirt a little.
“Yeah, that would be funny,” he smiled, moving away from the hug.
The final gift, a surprise gift her mother produced from their bedroom. Claire felt her face go pale. Anyone who knew her understood that stationery, books, journals, paints, and pencils opened the way to her heart. Money, though accepted only after a ritual display of humility, counted as an acceptable gift. Her parents had chosen something large - so large it barely fit on the table. Pink and white hearts covered the package, wrapped with medical precision, her mother’s touch unmistakable. That never boded well.
She peeled the tape from each flap with care, slowly uncovering a shape beneath the wrapping—no box, but a structure. A house. A dollhouse. To be fair, a lovely one: white exterior, pink interior, tiny rooms filled with delicate accessories. The kind of toy her mother would have cherished as a child. Still, she pressed her hands to its sides, smiled, and said, “It’s great, thank you.” After a pause, searching for something more to say, she added, “I can’t wait to paint the walls.”
“Of course, sweetie, I hope you like it.”
“You can even make tiny little books for the dolls.” her father jested. She wondered at that moment if he had any hand in the house, or if it was entirely her mother’s doing. She had a way of getting what she wanted.
The evening unfolded as expected. Guests rotated through the rituals You’re so big now, Happy birthday, etc. and Claire endured them politely. She found the sugary thickness of cake to be unbearable and managed to find enough snacks to substitute. She waved goodbye to her friends as they left. Undoubtedly, they were brought here the same as her– in the name of socialization. With the occasional stiff farewell nod, she drifted through the party like a guest in her own life.
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The harsh gargle of a motorcycle tore through the quiet, pulling her attention to the door. A thin man in black leather swung off the bike and lit a cigarette, moving with a wiry restlessness. His skin carried a collage of cartoonish tattoos - some a bit too risqué for public, let alone a twelve-year-old’s birthday. A mop of blond hair, the same shade as her mother’s, fell over his forehead. Her dad’s other brother. Claire didn’t know him well, but she liked him. Wild, sure - but kind.
He smoked fast, tossing the butt aside before stepping in. A cloud of breath trailed him as he leaned through the doorway and bounced inside.
“Heeyy, kiddo!” He pulled her into a hug on his way to the table of cake and snacks. Sweat and cigarettes clung to him. His arms bore a patchwork of burns, scars, and freckles. Without hesitation, he piled food onto a plate far past what it could reasonably hold, then bobbed back toward her. He always had that little bounce in his step, like a boxer waiting for the bell.
“So, seventh grade?” he asked casually, as if he’d been there all along.
“Eighth, actually. I’m a grade ahead.” She got that question a lot, and it usually came with some teasing about being a know-it-all. She never meant to brag—it just happened to be true.
“I’m trying to skip ninth, but that depends on whether the school lets me.”
He squinted at her, amused, chewing another cracker. “You ever have any fun? Or is it just work, work, work?”
Claire figured he’d had plenty of fun once. She knew about the stints in jail, the bar fight that ended in a stabbing, the motorcycle built from scrap. He stood as the family’s wild card—the cool one. She, very clearly, did not.
“I draw a lot,” she thought for a second, “and do math competitions – we are actually going to state this year.”
“I’m just saying,” he took a bite of cake, but continued talking, “You don’t get another shot at being a kid, y’know” He moved food around his mouth between words, “Don’t be in such a big hurry to grow up. This is your only chance to be a kid.” He smacked his lips, sucking the suck bits from his teeth. “You know what I’m say’n?” He was small but he sure could eat fast; the impressive plate had all but vanished in the few short moments of conversation.
“Yeah – I get it.” The things other kids called fun - malls, nail polish, celebrity gossip or whatever. It all felt dumb. She liked learning things and the pursuit of perfection, frankly. She excelled at school – at learning – and thus enjoyed it.
“I guess I don’t really like… fun stuff. The mall, dolls, whatever. I like learning new things. It’s like exploring a whole world, finding little treasures.”
“Hmm.” He wiped his mouth. “I can’t say that I understand. I hated school and spent a lot of time getting in trouble with my friends.” He sat for a moment, allowing the nostalgia to wash over him, “but, to each their own.” He stood, picking something out of his jacket pocket.
“Well, I’m outta here. Gotta pick up some parts for the bike” He handed her a folded hundred-dollar bill. And winked at her obviously surprised face.
“Spend it on something you wouldn’t have otherwise, huh?” She loved that about him, he was straight up. No ceremony. No hidden motivations. With him, you knew exactly where you stood, which she appreciated.
Claire tucked the bill away. She had never thought of her drawing or studying habits as adult things. She simply followed what came natural to her. People often misunderstood her reasoning for wanting to skip grades; everyone talked about how driven she must be. In truth, she just couldn’t stand the slow drip of lessons when she could devour the whole feast at once. Maybe, she hoped, if she climbed high enough, school would finally stop feeling so dull.
By the time she excused herself to her room, she was tired of the pretense. Her room served as her sanctuary: neat bed, organized shelves, clothes put away. The walls were crowded with drawings and paintings, layered like sediment. She examined some of the drawings, did she do it for fun – or did she pursue perfection? She didn’t feel like a perfectionist, she liked the process of improving, not really the end result.
But still, he did feel motivated by the sense of improving and not really by play – did that say something about her motivations? Did she obsess with defining its exact nature as part of this “perfectionist” mentality? Her eyelids grew heavy as she introspectively daydreamed. Reliving the art she had done, or various pursuits she had accomplished. Did everyone worry about this that much?
Feeling herself starting to drift off to sleep, she stood to return to her mother’s party when the room lurched sideways. A hot wave rolled through her gut, sharp and sour, and her vision spun before she had time to blink. A cramp radiated from deep within, buried down in her marrow. Something stirred within her core, she couldn’t quite place the feeling. The same feeling knowing someone is watching you before you catch their glance.
The space between each breath stretched thin. Her lungs swelled, and with them, it felt as though had expanded beyond the confines of her body, past the house even. Her eyes blurred with the hazy swirling-colored splotches of the room around her. Even though she registered herself as standing, all sense of orientation or equilibrium was lost, she felt everywhere and nowhere. Salt in the ocean of time, aqueous in the fibers of the universe before inexplicably finding herself once again standing in her house. She dry heaved, holding onto the wall for support.
"Jesus." She wiped her face and the drool from her mouth, heaving again. The wall supported her while she gripped it, rubbing her head against it. Had she had a seizure? Where did everyone go?
She leaned on the wall for a moment before slowly realizing she was in someone else's house. This room had some free weights, a treadmill, messy hamper, towels etc. How did she even get here? She didn’t remember leaving her house.
"Hello?" she ventured out into the strange house, her voice cracking a little. She cleared her throat, reentering the living room. The house had the same small layout as her house. The kitchen, living room and bedrooms were all where she expected them to be, though that’s where the similarities ended. Where the carpet had been, this house had redwood. THe pictures on the wall and couches in the living room were different - depicting different people and nicer quality
She looked out the large bay window. Her house had definitely not had that, but she liked it. Then she saw it, the neighbor’s house across the street. She recognised the stoney garden and their mailbox in the shape of a pickup truck; if that was her neighbor’s, then that would make this her house.
She opened the front door to look at the address of the house. She didn’t know too many areas well enough to walk home from, but she would have to figure it out. She looked at the house for a good while. This was her house. 138 2nd st. It couldn’t be - that didn’t make any sense.
She tried her house key in the front door, but it didn’t even fit in the lock. She tried jamming it in a few times before something started nagging at her. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but something about the front yard bothered her. She looked over her shoulder. The tree. The oak she had sat against reading many times. The one she had even climbed part way. It was missing. The whole tree - gone.
She stood in the open door for a minute or two, dumbfounded at her situation. What even was her situation? She had already been thinking about how she could navigate the city back home but she was here already. This should be her home. Should she just wait for these people to get back?
Maybe she had fallen into a coma and just woken up. It made as much sense as anything else - which is to say, not much at all. The idea unraveled as soon as she tried to make it fit. If she’d been unconscious, who had taken care of her? How had she ended up here, in this unfamiliar version of home? And why did everything feel so ordinary - she felt very much the same as she did a minute ago, yet the world around here differed entirely.
She left the door open but finally returned inside the house. She walked very carefully into the bathroom. Nothing looked familiar, not the perfumes, toothbrushes, or even the shower curtain. She turned the light on, seeing her reflection look back at her. No matter what angle she checked, she looked the same. Her round face, big plastic glasses, short brown hair, and the familiar freckles across her cheeks. Somehow, she was unmistakably herself, and yet it felt strange, almost wrong to be the one constant amid the wash of change.
If not a coma, then maybe she had died, and this marked her mind’s final flicker before the dark. Of course, she didn’t want that to be true, but the theory didn’t hold much weight either - it reduced everything to a dream, a last echo before silence. Death, she imagined, carried more strangeness or at least suddenness than this.
She leaned close to the mirror until her breath clouded the glass. Memories of arriving here drifted back - impossible to pin down. One moment everything felt ordinary, her body stretched out on her bed; the next, she floated, weightless - or perhaps shapeless fit better - like water spilling across the floor.
If her mind truly drifted toward its end, the curtain would fall soon enough. So she sank into the couch and waited, nothing else coming to mind.
Maybe this was Hell; her punishment for never taking her grandma seriously. Maybe she should just sit down, wait for the people to return, and take it from there. This may just be her new life and getting used to that idea might be good. One , two, three. One, two, three. She tapped her fingers on her thumb in succession nervously.
“Hello?” She asked again, looking over the objects of the house. She recognized nothing. The large flannel bed with a deer mounted above the headboard told her instantly that her mother did not live here. She wouldn’t be caught dead with that in her house.
She knew something for certain, this couldn’t be a dream, nor did it resemble her life as she knew it. Something extraordinary had happened in the last few minutes, though she couldn’t figure out what. Her mind stayed sharp, each thought landing with the clarity of waking life. Dreams toy with concepts, fragments, and memories; this place held the weight of the real world. Not to mention the mundane details that dreams wouldn’t bother with like the dirt under the couch, hair behind the door , the dust bunnies under the fridge.
There was a rational explanation for this, there had to be. Someone clearly lived here, and they would be back at some point. Would they recognize her? Would she recognize them? Would they even be the same people on the walls? She wormed her arm into the couch cushions, feeling the cool compression on her arm. Her fingers recognized the feel of a quarter, so she instinctively drew it out.
Her dad collected coins and had gotten her in the habit of checking her change for treasures. This only further confirmed her father didn’t live here, no change would so carelessly be left behind. It resembled a quarter, but the engraving didn’t look right. The coin depicted a figure who looked like it could still represent Washington, but it wasn’t like any quarter she had ever seen. She frowned, turning the coin over, the date stamped on the coin was ten years into the future..
Proving to herself this wasn’t a dream, she sat up and pinched herself as hard as she could, wincing as her fingernails dug deep into her arm. She froze, opening her eyes realizing she felt no pain. She could feel the pressure of her grip, the pulling of her skin, she knew intellectually that something held her skin firmly, but it just didn’t hurt. The sensation struck her as wrong, like her nerves had been muted. Not quite real, but not imaginary either. Maybe she had been drugged.
Now unable to sit idly, she decided to search the kitchen for clues. She tore open drawers to find silverware she didn’t recognize, cabinets with appliances she had never seen. She began searching more and more frantically, tossing dishes to the floor. They exploded as they hit the ground. She continued the search, spilling drawers, utensils and knives onto the ground. Tears started rolling down her cheeks as she dismantled the kitchen. She tore the contents of the fridge onto the floor too, taking some satisfaction at the broken glass and soggy mess that resulted.
She slid to the floor, crying. She grabbed her ankles close, rocking slightly. What else could she do? This insane place felt just as real as anything else, and yet nothing made sense. Still crying, she opened her eyes safely in the fetal position. It looked like she had cut herself on something during her outburst, she noticed a long red line on her palm. It looked like a deep cut, yet no blood came out. As she looked at her injury it began to slowly fade back to the familiar pink hue as though it had never happened.
Her therapist had gotten her to try box breathing. Breath in. hold it. Breath out. Hold it. Repeat. This should help with anxiety, and it was the only thing she could think of to prevent a complete breakdown. The length of her holds steadily increased as she felt herself calming down. More than that, as she waited to inhale the hold grew to such an extent that she suddenly felt like she hadn’t taken a breath in quite some time. Her heart slowed to a crawl like the tick of a clock. The thump, thump, thump slowed and lessened. Her body didn’t insist on inhaling, so she didn’t. It felt like a choice. Her heart pulsed, less with each beat, until. It stopped.
The room bled a deep red, shadows pooling and shifting across the walls. Shadows lengthened across the messy kitchen floor as the sun rose slowly, then fell, then rose again, each cycle stretching and bending as if time itself were a liquid, folding around her senses. People came and left, milling around her in a slowly accelerating fashion. The sun cycled faster and faster blurring the day and night together into a muddy meat color. The figures similarly picked up speed, whirling around the house in a blur.
The house started to look like she remembered; through the blur of motion the walls suddenly changed back to the wallpaper her mother had picked out, the carpet reappeared - even the bay window disappeared. The red light started to lift as the people milling around the house took on a more reasonable speed. They were all strangely walking backwards – like a movie in reverse. And there she stood – Claire watched herself backwards walk into her room, and Spencer backwards followed her. He carried a chessboard, she realized.
She watched herself, from the outside, contemplating again if this could be a dream. She hadn’t played chess with Spencer in a while, and never at her house. She didn’t have a good record of success at the game, and she knew Spencer did. She started to feel the urge to breathe as her lungs started to burn with longing. She opened her eyes with a start, gasping for air.
“Ohggh”, she sat upright, her feet over the edge of her bed. Her face felt wet with sweat. Her head swam, and her stomach turned over like a fish escaping its bowl. As she reoriented herself a knock pushed her door open slightly. She tried to get her eyes to refocus through the blur of tears as she heard a knock at her door.
“Hey,” Spencer poked his head part way through the door, “saw you bailed, thought you might want to play a game.” He opened the door a little more to reveal the chess set she already suspected he had with him.
“Yeah… I just,” Claire frowned, still breathing erratically, “I just need a moment.”
“I can come back. If you’re eh busy I mean.”
“No, I’m ok,” she got up to let him into her room as the gurgling feeling slowly rose in her throat, out her mouth and directly onto the captain of the math nerds.
