I wondered about a lot of things.

  Mostly, it made me want to find Trevor and ‘finish’ the story of this dream, just to see if that was enough to wake me up.

  “There is,” said Harry. He sniffed and blinked and rubbed at his lip with one finger. Then he started away from the balloons—still totally normal looking—and back towards that race-car bed. I brought the needle with me when I followed; it seemed like something that would be helpful.

  You know, Trevor was going to be found eventually, and when I found him… Maybe I would just stitch that heart of his back up, since he had a hard time keeping it working right.

  Harry led the way over to the bed. He climbed into it, fished a pair of brass keys from his pocket, and shoved them into the latch. The engine revved and rumbled to life, and then he pulled the bed forward, like it was a real car!

  The wheels bounced over nothing. Were they made of balloons? I couldn’t tell. They were definitely more pushable than a normal tire was.

  Harry stopped the car several feet away and cut the engine. He slung an arm over the top of the door and leaned outward, looking over his shoulder. “There’s the door!”

  “Where’s the key?” Molly asked.

  Harry opened his mouth, then closed it again. He looked sheepish. “It’s here somewhere. I just… Don’t remember where.”

  Molly braced both hands on her hips and frowned at him. “Well, you had better start looking!”

  “What’s the key look like?” I moved my gaze from Molly to Harry and back again.

  “It’s blue and red,” said Harry. “You can’t miss it!”

  “We should all look for it,” I suggested.

  Molly nodded. “We don’t want to run out of time. Come on, Harry. You’ve got to help fix this issue.”

  And so we all split up, looking through the weird house under the cabinet; high and low, up and down, left and right. It was the strangest place I’d ever been, even in comparison to other parts of the house.

  It looked a bit like he had tried to turn it into a circus all on his own, but there wasn’t much that could be done about the fact it didn’t have any walls. As I walked around, I heard a sound. It was a sort of creaking, and then a squeaking.

  I looked around, and found that there was a large mouse on the pipe!

  The mouse was about the size of a house cat, and it was lounging on one of the big L-shaped brackets of the pipe. The mouse’s tail hung off of the end, swaying through the air. It held the key in its mouth; red and blue with a metal flower as the topper.

  I frowned. “Guys?”

  No one answered me. I could see Harry rooting through a pile of clothing, mostly made out of way-too-large socks, and Molly was tip-toeing through the balloons, peeking upward like she expected to see it tied to one of the strings.

  The mouse had intelligent eyes. Was that the same mouse I could sometimes hear scurrying around in my bedroom?

  Curiously, I started to use the brackets in the pipes to climb up toward the creature. It was a little bit like climbing up a tree. There were enough divets and brackets and connectors that I could get a fairly good amount of hand and foot holds.

  The mouse didn’t move.

  Up I went, step by step.

  Then I heard Molly gasp. “Quinn! What are you doing?”

  Her voice sounded like it was coming from a great distance away. I ignored it and kept going, up and up, up and up! And then I was on the same outward-stretching pipe as the mouse, who just reached up and took the key from its mouth with one big hand.

  “Hello,” I said cautiously.

  The mouse blinked. “You’re making a mistake.”

  “Oh! You can talk?” I didn’t know why that surprised me. I knew this was a dream; I was more than certain of it now. And animals almost always talked in dreams, unless they were the sort of animals that chased after you and tried to sink their teeth into the meat of your thighs.

  This mouse was clearly not the bloodthirsty sort, so it only made sense that it was the talking sort instead.

  “Is that really the question on your mind?” The mouse asked, sounding amused. It had thick, dark gray fur that was scattered through with brown in spots, and a single white dot on the outside of his left ear. Each of his toes was topped with a long claw, which he clicked and clacked against the pipe.

  I frowned. “That key doesn’t belong to you.”

  “How would you know?” The mouse demanded. “Maybe this cabinet has always been my home. Maybe you just gave my house to someone else.”

  “I didn’t give this place to anyone.”

  “You put the clown here,” argued the mouse. “I saw it happen.”

  I gasped. “How do you know about that?” And then I narrowed my eyes. “Never mind. Of course you know about it. This is my dream, and I know about it.”

  “Your dream?” The mouse let out a laugh. It was a high pitched, warbling squawk. I didn’t like it; the hair on the back of my neck stood up at the sound and it made my skin give a squiggly kind of crawl.

  He stood up. There was dust on his fur; he shook himself out. It wasn’t just dust. A few pieces of confetti from Harry’s room fell off of the mouse, too.

  His upper lip curled, showing off his teeth. The two sharp ones at the front glistened. “Don’t be a stupid girl, Quinn.”

  I resisted the brief urge to ask how he knew my name—but then it was obvious.

  For one, Molly had just shouted it out. For another, this was my dream. I couldn’t let real-world logic get me all befuddled and confused, when there wasn’t actually anything going on that was worthy of being confused about.

  The mouse rose up onto his hind legs. When he did that, his shadow seemed to double in size. It loomed behind him, like a full-grown man, a mouse made of the same darkness that lurked outside of my window.

  A thought hit me. “I didn’t make you.”

  The mouse asked, “Did you make the clown?”

  “I saw him…in the house. Molly and Tabitha, too. My mind just made them up based on that.” I then let out a shuddering breath. I stood up too, taller than the mouse and shorter than his shadow. “That means it made you up because I’ve heard you in my room. That’s all.”

  “I’m not made up.” He held up the key. “And the sooner you come to understand that, the better everything is going to be, for you and for me, little girl.”

  The world had faded away around us. The mouse held his paw out to the side, the key dangling from the tip of a single claw.

  “Give me that,” I demanded, jutting my hand out toward him.

  The mouse tilted his head to the side. “The manners on you, girl. Not even a please? You just expect it. Is that why you aren’t getting along well with your grandparents?”

  I froze, eyes wide.

  The mouse continued, “You want them to be just like Mommy and Daddy.” He gave a low chuckle. “And they want you to be just like their son. Isn’t it funny, when that doesn’t happen? Is the ballerina the sweet little thing that you had been expecting? Is the boy as loving as you wanted?”

  “Shut up,” I hissed, the words wrenched out through clenched teeth. I could feel anger washing over me, turning my skin hot and flush.

  Golden eyes glinted at me. “You expect the same food, and you expect the same rules, and you just expect everyone to understand you. No one understands anyone else, little girl. The whole world is just one big game of pretend!”

  “I said shut up,” I snapped again.

  He ignored me. “And this—this isn’t a dream!” He flung his front paws out to the side. The key dangled. “It might be a game of pretend, but that doesn’t make it less real!” A nasty look crossed his eyes. “Do you think it was fake that your father died?”

  Smoke curled around his fur. I pulled backward, the scent of something burning filling the air. The pipe suddenly seemed so, so high above the ground; I couldn’t understand it. The world was darker. The flags that were wrapped around the metal were draining of color, literally.

  It ran down the pipes in streams of paint, and the air seemed to crackle with electricity.

  It was storming that day, when the house burned down. People think that rain is enough to put out a fire, but if it’s big enough…

  A lump formed in my throat. It felt like something was curled up in it, hairy and small. I reached up, pressing my hands to the soft of my neck.

  Lightning flashed behind the mouse. He shouted, “You don’t know anything about this place, Quinn! You don’t know anything about that house! If you don’t stop acting like you’re in control, everyone is going to end up just as dead as that father of—”

  I pushed him.

  Honestly, it wasn’t a thought. It was a knee-jerk reaction. As the mouse spoke, he had grown larger, so now he was the same height as me. And my body moved forward all on its own, hands slamming into the front of his furry sternum.

  Shove.

  The mouse squeaked. His paws waved through the air, and then he staggered backward and off the edge of the pipes. I stepped forward and watched as he plunged down to the ground, the drop far longer relative to what the climb up had taken.

  Thump.

  He hit the ground—hard. His head was twisted at an odd angle. One golden eye slid about in its socket so that it was looking up at me. Even though its neck was snapped, the mouse blinked. Then, slowly, with a crick-crack of bones, the rodent pulled himself up.

  He grabbed onto his snout with both hands, and snapped his own neck back into place. There was a bit of blood on the corner of his mouth, matting his fur into something slick and dark. The mouse wiped at it, then bent down and picked up the key.

  For a moment, I thought that the mouse was going to run off with the key in hand—but then it just threw it to the side, onto the ground.

  He spoke. It was too much distance, but I heard him all the same; the words a whisper.

  “Lost cause,” he growled. “Just like all the others.”

  He dropped down onto all fours and shrunk back until he was normal mouse size again, then turned and darted away. Molly and Harry finally came over; had they just been frozen? They didn’t seem to understand that the mouse had just been there.

  “You found the key,” said Harry, picking it up.

  Molly hopped a little. “Come on down, Quinn. Jump, and I’ll catch you!”

  “Jump?” I breathed out. My hands were shaking. I could still feel the solid weight of the mouse when I shoved it. The fur had been soft against my palms. He had looked at me, and there was no fear in those golden eyes.

  There was disappointment, though.

  Well—tough luck to the rodent! Whatever, forever. People were always disappointed in me. I wasn’t bright enough, or happy enough, or charming enough. I wasn’t smart enough with math, or good enough at making friends, or quick enough to figure out that people like Trevor would never actually like me.

  So what did it matter if some dream mouse was disappointed in me, too.

  “Come on,” Molly prodded. “Don’t worry, I’ll catch you!”

  She held her arms out to me. I hesitated for a moment, not wanting to jump to my death…but I did trust Molly, in a strange way. And I had just seen the mouse get up and walk away, too. It was a dream.

  If I died in my dream, I would just wake up in real life anyway. It was a no-lose situation.

  I took a deep breath, took a step forward, and then I jumped. As I flew through the air, my clothing changed, turning into the tattered dress of Ghost Girl. The skirt billowed out around me like a parachute. It twisted, the fabric rippling, the hem of it slowing my fall just enough that I wasn’t plunging down at high speeds the way that the mouse had done.

  My legs curled up behind me, and her arms reached out toward me. She caught me, just like you would catch a dancer heading toward you. Her hands curled around my waist and we staggered backward, only for Harry to catch hold of Molly’s shoulders and brace her.

  We both settled on the ground laughing. The fear and anger and misery that the mouse had filled me with seemed to have vanished completely, replaced with the giddy joy of being around Molly; the only real friend I’d ever made.

  And, of course, with finally, finally finding the key.

  Long Stairs

  If I thought that the key was strange looking, the lock on the door beneath Harry’s race-car bed was even stranger. It was a big purple padlock, covered in all kinds of curling flowers that seemed to open and close as though they were real and not made of metal.

  And they were made of metal.

  I knew that, because I had already tried reaching out and touching them. My fingers had brushed over the petals, and they were definitely totally steel.

  Molly handed me the key. “I think you should do it.”

  “Oh, cool. Thanks.” I took hold of the lock with one hand, and shoved the key into it with the other. The colors leached from the key and were absorbed by the lock, which turned an even-more-vibrant shade of purple.

  Then the flowers all fell off! They clinked onto the floor like a bunch of spilled tacks, and the lock came open in my hand. “Why does this door have so much protection on it?” I pulled it off of the door. “None of the other doors have been locked.”

  “I put it there,” said Harry matter-of-factly. “I don’t like the idea of there being a monster that could come out from under my bed. Or a boy. Or any of those other strangers.”

  “I took care of the rest of the family,” I tried to reassure him. “I’ll get the rest of this problem taken care of too.”

  “And then you’ll make a circus for me?” Harry tilted his head to the side. There were tears brimming in his eyes. Gramps always looked like that too, like he was on the very verge of crying.

  Grandma said it was allergies. I kind of thought maybe it was because I looked so much like my dad.

  Okay, wrong. I hadn’t thought about that until the mouse started talking about my grandparents, but whatever, forever, right? The point was, I thought that maybe it didn’t actually have anything to do with allergies or anything like that.

  And that the clown sort of reminded me of Gramps, which meant that I kind of wanted to make him smile.

  With the promise of drawing him a circus, that was exactly what I got. A wobbly, watery smile spread across his face, making his cheeks bunch up and his eyes squint. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” I turned and pulled open the door to the room beneath the bed. It led to a set of stairs, which looked awfully similar to…

  Molly breathed out, “The basement,” finishing the thought for me.

  Harry shuddered. “I don’t like the basement. I hate when I’m put down there.” A pause. “I’m not going.”

  Stubbornly, Molly continued, “We weren’t going to ask you to go, Harry. I’m the one helping Quinn. She doesn’t need you down there bumbling about and crying over everything.”

  Harry looked a bit hurt at that. He spun on one big squeaky shoe and then started storming away from the basement, back toward where the balloon was tied. I adjusted the grip that I had on the big, big needle and took a deep breath.

  Then I started down the basement stairs, and Molly went with me.

  “Do you think Harry’s going to be mad I took this?” I asked, showing her the needle.

  Molly shook her head. “He probably won’t even notice it.”

  “What was wrong with the balloons?”

  “Nothing. He gets like that sometimes.” Molly reached out and tangled her fingers up with mine. “He thinks that they’re eyes.”

  “Eyes?” I made a face, trying to picture it. Great big eyeballs, inflated up like balloons. The string would have been from eyelashes and when he pressed the needle into them to pop them—eugh! Gross! Thanks but no thanks, that was a hard pass right there!

  As it turned out, there were some things that even whatever, forever couldn’t gloss over, and eyeball balloons were one of them!

  “Silly, right?” Molly laughed.

  “I wouldn't have used the word silly. Disgusting, maybe.” My nose wrinkled. “And definitely creepy.”

  Molly said, “Those things too.”

  “These are really long stairs.”

  “Why does that sort of stuff bother you so much? So what if the stairs are long? It just means we get to spend a little more time together.”

  “But time isn’t our friend, right?” I pointed out. “You said that it’s a full moon tonight. That means we don’t want to spend all of our time here on the stairs. Trevor isn’t going to be on the stairs.”

  Molly frowned, but she didn’t argue with me. It didn’t matter either way, because the stairs weren't something either of us could control. When I first came to the house, I tried to make it change by thinking about things and using old pencils and crayons on scrap paper to draw new rooms and features, but none of it had actually appeared in the house.

  So I had just—stopped trying.

  The stairs stretched on and on. I narrowed my eyes, giving it one last shot.

  The stairs are shorter, I thought. And Trevor is waiting for me right there at the bottom, looking away from the stairs. I can have this solved in sixty seconds flat, and then it’s going to be good and golden from there on out, and that’s just the facts. The stairs are shorter. The stairs are shorter.

  But thinking that didn’t help. The stairs kept going. They got worse and worse the further down them we walked, until the wood was creaking and swollen from moisture beneath our steps. We clung more tightly to each other’s hands then, each a little worried that we would go down through the wood

  The floor finally came into sight; no Trevor, though.

  My lips pursed into a frown. The basement had a lantern hanging on the wall at the bottom of the stairs. Molly pulled it down from its hook and handed it to me. She smiled, and her eyes were so bright that they looked like little stars.

  “This has been a lot of fun,” said Molly. “Scary, but fun. I’m glad you got to be my friend, Quinn.”

  “I am too,” I told her. “I wish that you could come back with me to the other world.”

  I didn’t want to call it the real world. Molly always got huffy when I did that. It made sense, I supposed. I wouldn’t want someone to say that I was made up, either.