Chapter 1

When tjay slipped into that quiet space between waking and dreaming, something strange happened. Her eyes stayed closed, her body still, but her awareness drifted outward like smoke seeping through cracks. She could see the hallway beyond her door, the kitchen where her mother sat with a cold cup of tea, the ticking clock on the living room wall. It wasn’t imagination. It was watching—real and clear, as if she were standing right there.

That night, she saw her mother crying. Not loud, messy sobs, but the kind of quiet tears that fall when you think no one is watching. Tjay watched from a corner of the ceiling as her mother pressed a phone to her ear and whispered, “I don’t know how much longer I can do this.” The voice on the other end was muffled, but tjay caught the words “doctor” and “next week.”

Then, as suddenly as it began, the scene dissolved. Tjay opened her eyes to the dim lamp and the familiar ceiling cracks. Her heart beat fast, but she didn’t move. She had learned long ago not to jump up and tell anyone what she saw. The first few times, she had tried. She had told her father before he left, “I saw you pack your suitcase last night, but you weren’t in your room.” He had looked at her with a strange, frightened expression. Her mother had called it “an overactive imagination.” Later, the word “crazy” crept into whispers.

So tjay kept quiet. She acted simple. She nodded when people spoke to her and gave vague answers to questions. At school, the other children called her “the dreamer” because she often seemed distracted. They didn’t know that her mind was busy watching their houses, their kitchens, their arguments. She knew who had a sick parent, who was hiding a bad grade, who fought with their siblings late at night. She never told. It was safer that way.

Morning came gray and damp. Tjay got dressed in her usual clothes—a plain blue sweater and jeans. Her mother was already in the kitchen, moving with the forced cheerfulness that meant she was pretending nothing was wrong. Tjay sat down at the table and picked at a piece of toast.

“Did you sleep well?” her mother asked, not meeting her eyes.

Tjay hesitated. The vision of her mother crying still clung to her. “I saw you on the phone last night,” she said softly. “In the kitchen. You were sad.”

Her mother’s hand paused over the coffee cup. Then she laughed, a tight, hollow sound. “That must have been a dream, sweetie. I went to bed early.”

Tjay said nothing. She knew the difference between a dream and what she saw. Dreams were blurry, shifting, impossible. Her visions were sharp as glass. But there was no use arguing. She finished her toast in silence and left for school.

The walk was short—past the old oak tree, down the cracked sidewalk, across the street where the bakery always smelled of bread. Tjay counted her steps to keep her mind steady. She had learned that if she focused too hard on what she saw at night, the daytime world felt flimsy. The other kids didn’t understand why she sometimes stared at nothing. They didn’t know she was trying to untangle her two realities.

In class, her teacher droned about fractions. Tjay's pencil moved across the page, copying numbers, but her thoughts wandered. She thought about her mother’s tears. About the word “doctor.” About the way her mother had looked at her last night—not with love, but with something close to fear.

That afternoon, tjay fell asleep on the sofa in the living room. It happened sometimes, a sudden pull downward as if the world tilted. She didn’t fight it. She let her eyes close and her mind float free.

This time, she was not in her home. She was on a road she didn’t recognize—a long stretch of asphalt with trees on either side. A car sped past, red and sleek. Then another. Then a screech so loud it hurt. The red car swerved, spun, and slammed into a tree. Metal crumpled. Glass sprayed. And then—silence.

Tjay woke with a gasp. Her heart pounded. The clock on the wall said only three minutes had passed. But she felt as if she had been gone for hours. She scrambled up from the sofa, her hands shaking, and ran to the front window. The street outside was quiet. No red car. No accident. Just leaves drifting in the wind.

She didn’t tell her mother when she came home from work. She didn’t tell anyone. But that night, as tjay lay in bed, she wondered if what she had seen was real. She tried to sleep, but fear held her in a tight grip. Eventually, exhaustion won, and she slipped under.

The next morning, her mother was quieter than usual. She poured cereal without looking up. “There was a bad accident on Maple Drive yesterday,” she said, almost to herself. “A car hit a tree. The driver didn’t make it.”

Tjay spoon stopped halfway to her mouth. Maple Drive. Red car. Tree. The vision flooded back, crisp and terrible. She set the spoon down and stared at the table.

“tjay? Are you okay? You look pale.”

“I’m fine,” she said, and her voice sounded far away.

But she wasn’t fine. Something was shifting inside her. The night visions had always shown her what was happening in that exact moment, as if she had a window into the present. But this time, she had seen the accident before it happened. Before her mother even knew about it.

That afternoon, tjay went to her room and sat on the edge of her bed. Outside, the neighborhood hummed with ordinary life—a dog barking, a lawnmower starting, a child’s laugh. She pressed her palms to her knees and closed her eyes. She tried to will herself into that drowsy state, to see something else, anything else. But the daylight was too strong. Her mind stayed anchored in the here and now.

She opened her eyes and looked at her reflection in the mirror across the room. A girl with deep brown eyes and a serious mouth stared back. People called her crazy. They said she lived in her own world. But her world was real—more real than theirs, in some ways. She saw things they couldn’t see. She knew things they didn’t know. And now, perhaps, she could see things that hadn’t happened yet.

What else could she see? What other moments waited at the edges of her sleeping mind?

Tjay didn’t know. But as the afternoon light faded and the shadows grew long, she felt a strange thrill run through her chest. Not fear. Not exactly. It was anticipation, as if the night to come held secrets she had only begun to uncover.

She climbed into bed early, pulled the covers up to her chin, and waited. The lamp still glowed. The house settled into quiet. And in the stillness, Maya closed her eyes, ready to see what the darkness would show her.