Turn 16 of 26

Get ready for bed with a nerdy graphic tee and pants and fall asleep. You wake up at 7 for the dentist appointment to have your braces wired permanently. You open the closet and put an outfit on. It’s a white button down, blue cardigan with a name tag that says Edith on it, a pleated skirt to the ankles and brown loafers. Your hair forms itself into the same low braided pigtails as yesterday.

You get ready for bed in a way that requires no thought at all — you change into a nerdy graphic tee and soft sweatpants, things that have apparently always hung in your dresser, wash your face, take the glasses off and set them by the clock where your hand knows they go. The bed with its knitted quilt takes you like it's been taking you for years. Your last waking thought is a worry about Thursday's problem set, and then you're asleep before you can wonder why that was your last waking thought.

The alarm goes off at seven and you're up at once, brushed, washed, braces gleaming. Today is the dentist. The words arrive with a small flutter of nerves that feels correct and familiar, like you've had this flutter before. You open the closet and put on the outfit: white button-down, the pleated skirt to your ankles, brown loafers polished and waiting. The blue cardigan goes on last — and there's the name tag on the breast, stitched in red thread, and it says EDITH.

You stare at it. Three letters wrong. Your name is Emma. Isn't it. You know your name is Emma the way you know water is wet — and yet the tag sits there, professionally embroidered, saying Edith, and a voice in you — calm, warm, installed — tries the word out: Edith. Edith Kessler. It fits your mouth strangely well. Your name is Emma. You're almost sure. You file it under a tailor's mistake and decide to ask Ruth about it at breakfast, and the filing takes no effort at all, which should be the alarming part.

Your fingers go to your hair and find it already braiding itself — low braided pigtails, neat and fuzzy and ginger, forming without a mirror while you stand with your hands half-raised. You watch the last plaits settle against your shoulders. Same as yesterday. Same as everyone. Glasses on, and the room snaps into focus, and there's a knock at your door: two quick raps, then Ruth's whistling voice through the wood.

"Edith! You ready? We walk to the dentitht together, firtht appointmentth are together." First appointments are together. The sentence slides into your memory like it was always printed there. You open the door, and Ruth beams at you, at the tag on your chest, and pats it once with a fingertip, satisfied, like a gardener reading a label on a cutting that has finally taken root.