Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
Seal’s eyes barely opened, and her hand flew to stop the beeping sound, pounding on the top of the bar of an alarm clock next to her bed. The clothing she wore was now replaced with colorful pajamas. The room, arranged differently from the last time she slept in it the night of the earthquake, felt familiar but also oddly not recognizable at all.
Her memory jogged, and it surprised her the house still stood, but she remembered it always standing. She looked at where her sister’s bed should be, now replaced by a desk. Her parents must have rearranged everything. Her room felt larger. She saw things that had been there before she left, but there were also new items. Now she owned different clothing and had her own computer. Instead of posters of Disney movies and a Korean boy band, there were posters of famous Lakota singers and the woman’s soccer club. Everything, even the new stuff, felt familiar, but it also felt strange, like it didn’t belong, or she didn’t.
She skipped getting changed and ran down the stairs to see her parents. It had been at least a month since she disappeared down the hole. She found them sitting at a table, eating breakfast. “Seal, you’re up! We were going to let you sleep in today.”
“Oh, mom and dad I missed you so much!” She kissed and hugged them. Her dad felt thinner. They looked at her like she had three heads and one of them was purple.
“What’s wrong with you? Did you have a bad dream?” Is that what it was? A dream? Then her sister walked into the room and Seal fell to her knees upon seeing her. “Oh Beth,” she exclaimed.
“My name is Behitha, silly!” Seal’s mom walked up to her and felt her head with the back of her hand.
“No fever,” she said. Seal grabbed her sister and hugged her for a long time. Behitha tolerated it, but after a while her arms hung limp like a rag doll as she waited for her sister to stop being weird. Seal finally let go and they sat at the table and had breakfast together.
“Are you ready for your party tomorrow?” her mother asked.
“Wait, what party?” Seal said.
“The Halloween party. We have it every year. If you changed your mind, it’s a little late to stop it now.”
If it was Halloween, that would mean no time had passed at all for her, but the world had changed. Her journey HAD saved her sister. No. That wasn’t right. It was more than that. The Beth that had died a year ago never died at all. Had never been on that tractor. As she sat there looking at her mother, her father and her sister, she understood that the world had changed and when she concentrated hard enough, she could remember it being both ways, like she had lived two lives in different places at the same time.
“I’m going to take your sister into the city so you can have fun with your friends. Do you want anything while we are there?”
Pierre was no longer Pierre. It was now run by the Lakota. Her family still lived on a farm. Her father no longer worked for the Lakota Community college. Now he was a full professor at Lakota University. The house they lived in was different, too. It had more bedrooms. Behitha had her own. They slept separately and they weren’t as close now. This made Seal sad to realize. And there was a party tomorrow with her friends. She had lots of friends. She remembered all of this as having always been this way.
“Why go into the city? Can’t Bet… I mean Behitha invite her friends over too?”
“What has gotten into you?” her mother asked. “You’ve never wanted your sister around your friends before.”
Seal looked directly at her sister. “Well, I think she is old enough now. What do you think?” Seal already knew the answer by the look on her sister’s face.
“Oh yes, yes, yes!” Behitha did a shimmy dance in her chair and then went to her sister to hug her. “Thank you, Seal.”
After breakfast, more memories came flooding back. So much had changed. She paged through her dad’s atlas. The borders of the region were unrecognizable. Her people now had their own land and government. It stretched across parts of what had been the Dakotas and into Minnesota, Wyoming, and Montana. The United States still existed, but it was no longer alone in its sovereignty.
They were a free nation. But they were not exclusive. People of all nationalities and colors lived in the new country. Things were not perfect. There were still problems, but the population thrived. There were more opportunities, and Lakota traditions and stories interwove into everyday life. Only she knew there had been a different world where they were treated differently. Then she remembered one thing lost to her.
Javin no longer lived in a trailer park down the road. It never existed. In this world, she never met Javin. She could only recall past Javin.
Her father still read stories, and he wrote books, which her mom helped to edit. They were boring books, though, about the botany lifecycle and genetics of sunflowers and other crops. Her Grandpa was alive and lived with them in their basement. They went snowshoeing together every winter and bison hunting. They would bring one back every November. Last year was the first time Seal was allowed to hunt and she caught a rabbit. Behitha refused to talk to her sister for a week.
“Rabbits are cute! You shouldn’t kill bunnies!”
Later that first day back, the phone rang. “Seal, it’s for you.”
“Who is it?”
“I don’t know, dear, one of your friends.” Seal picked up the receiver.
“Hello?”
Silence. “Hello,” she repeated.
“Ummm, do you remember me?”
“Javin,” she asked softly.
“Ye…. Yes. Yesterday I didn’t know you, but I woke up today and now I do,” He said. “It’s weird. And I remember you through a dream.”
“It wasn’t a dream,” she said. “We really know each other.”
“I looked up your name on the internet and found your number.”
“Where do you live?” she asked.
“I live in Wakpáby.” The city. That was not far away at all, sitting astride the Missouri river. Seal could see its tallest structure, the First Lakota building, from her doorstep. Though most of the Lakota city shunned large gaudy buildings, this was the exception.
“I’m throwing a party tomorrow night. Do you want to come?”
“That would be nice. Let me ask my mom.” He sounded nervous, and a little unlike the Javin she had known before.
“Here, take my address,” she repeated it twice to him. “Do you have a costume?”
“Yeah, I have something,” he said.
“Good, I’ll see you then.” She hung up the phone and took a deep exhale.