Nothing remarkable had happened, and no misinterpretable wishes had been made in the week leading up to Noni’s twelfth birthday. She’d gone to school that day, stayed for most of it, and ended it with a movie rental and pizza paid for with money in a card from Auntie Lou waiting for her when she got home. The VCR display counts off the seconds of rubber-suited alien invasion. “Happy birthday,” she toasts herself with a cat mug of ginger ale.
“Thanks!” says a girl she hadn’t noticed sitting at the opposite end of the coffee table, eyeing the pizza. Watching a little finger swipe through a glob of melted cheese and sauce, Noni falls back against the front of the sofa and squints. What the hell.
“Are you real?”
“Are you?” shrugs the stranger, focusing more on chasing a dribble of grease sliding down her palm, and shrugging again going all-in with a decisive arm lick.
What the hell? What the hell. “Are you … me?”
“Well… I’m Eleanor Jane Kistler but everybody calls me Ellie. Who are you?”
“I’m Eleanor Jane Kistler, and this is my aunt’s apartment. How did you get in here?”
“We have the same name. Ellie J Kistler. My mom’s name is Margaret Jane Kistler and her mom’s name is Gramma Jane. Dunno how I got here. There was a clock and then there was here and you and pizza. I love pizza. It’s my birthday, you know? Can I have some?”
Jesus. This is definitely me. But me from before, she thinks. She must’ve thought about it for too long because a very serious sounding high-pitched “ahem” snaps her back to attention. The smaller Eleanor has picked up the remote and turned the movie off as if that was the distraction here.
“I think we are the same? I mean, I think you are me when I was little. Everyone used to call me Ellie but now it’s Noni. How old are you today?”
“Six. I got questions too, but first things first—about the pizza…”
“Yeah, yeah go for it. Sure, why not?”
“If you’re me but older, and it’s our birthday, where’s Mom? Is she on another trip? Where is Gramma Jane?”
Noni sighs, reasonable questions from an unreasonable … ghost? Brows knit and shoulders drooping she quietly answers, “Mom never came back and Gramma Jane… Well, she’s no longer with us. She passed on when I was 7.”
The younger Eleanor sets her slice of pizza back into the box. “Gramma Jane’s gone too?” Her small face darkens, at least the older one thinks so, for a moment. Tears hit the lap of her purple corduroy cover-alls that shift to lavender and then fade to nothing at all. Noni recoils from the table as Ellie disappears; the cheese dripping over the edge of the pizza box is the only sign anything had happened.