Elizabeth Hall wakes in a strange bed in a strange room with the strange feeling that her sheets are trying to smother her.
Liz (who is Elizabeth to her teachers; Lizzie at home, except when she's in trouble; and just plain Liz everywhere else in the world) sits up in bed, bumping her head on an unforeseen upper bunk. From above, a voice she does not recognize protests, 'Aw hell!'
Liz peers into the top bunk, where a girl she has never seen before is sleeping, or at least trying to. The sleeping girl, who is near Liz's own age, wears a white nightgown and has long dark hair arranged in a thatch of intricately beaded braids. To Liz, she looks like a queen.
'Excuse me,' Liz asks, 'but would you happen to know where we are?'
The girl yawns and rubs the sleep out of her eyes. She glances from Liz to the ceiling to the floor to the window and then to Liz again. She touches her braids and sighs. 'On a boat,' she answers, stifling another yawn.
'What do you mean ‘on a boat'?'
'There's water, lots and lots of it. Just look out the window, she replies before cocooning herself in the bedclothes. 'Of course, you might have thought to do that without waking me! 'Sorry, Liz whispers.
Liz looks out the porthole that is parallel to her bed. Sure enough, she sees hundreds of miles of early-morning darkness and ocean in all directions, blanketed by a healthy coating of fog. If she squints, Liz can make out a boardwalk. There, she sees the forms of her parents and her little brother, Alvy. Ghostly and becoming smaller by the second, her father is crying and her mother is holding him. Despite the apparent distance, Alvy seems to be looking at Liz and waving. Ten seconds later, the fog swallows her family entirely.
Liz lies back in bed. Even though she feels remarkably awake, she knows she is dreaming, for several reasons: one, there is no earthly way she would be on a boat when she is supposed to be finishing tenth grade; two, if this is a vacation, her parents and Alvy, unfortunately, should be with her; and three, only in dreams can you see things you shouldn't see, like your family on a boardwalk from hundreds of miles away. Just as Liz reaches four, she decides to get out of bed. What a waste, she thinks, to spend one's dreams asleep.
Not wanting to further disturb the sleeping girl, Liz tiptoes across the room toward the bureau. The telltale sign that she is, indeed, at sea comes from the furniture: it is bolted to the floor. While she does not find the room unpleasant, Liz thinks it feels lonely and sad, as if many people had passed through it but none had decided to stay.
Liz opens the bureau drawers to see if they are empty. They are: not even a Bible. Although she tries to be very quiet, she loses her grip on the last drawer and it slams shut. This has the unfortunate effect of waking the sleeping girl again.
"People are sleeping here!" the girl yells.
"I'm sorry. I was checking the drawers. In case you were wondering, they're empty,” Liz apologizes, and sits on the lower bunk. “What's your name?"
“Thandiwe Washington, but I'm called Thandi.”
“Im Liz.”
Thandi yawns. "You sixteen?"
"In August," Liz replies.
"I turned sixteen in January.” Thandi looks into Liz's bunk. “Liz,” she says, turning the one syllable of Liz's name into a slightly southern two, Li-iz, "you mind if I ask you a personal question?"
"Not really."
