In a futile effort, Ivy Brown attempted to blink her greenish grey eyes to alleviate the pain searing through her head. Where was she? She gradually began to sit up and roll out the kinks in her neck. When the world began to magnify and clear into focus, the room was no longer made up of shadows and outlines. It became a bedroom with beige walls and carpet with miscellaneous items scattered across the floor. There was an empty pizza box lying on the ground, a grass- stained soccer ball in the corner, a white lamp and what looked like eaten protein bar wrappers atop the small dresser next to an unmade bed, and the faint stench of day-old sweat. The odd part was that it felt real. It was almost as though this organized chaos belonged to her. Even though the room was unkempt, everything had its place except for her. All she felt was an emptiness that seemed to carve a hole deep and wide enough for the soccer ball to pass through.

………….

    Not for the first time in his life, Logan was confused. Why the heck was he washing dishes? He looked down and saw a black apron with a frayed, cheesy logo that looked like three ice cream scoops that were way too happy. He was wearing an oversized T-shirt, and his gray Nike sneakers were splotched with a dark, sticky substance.

    A stringent middle-aged guy snapped Logan out of his reverie and scolded him for taking too long with the dishes. After he decided he did at least a half-decent job with washing the ice cream scoopers, he left the claustrophobic corner where the dishwasher and sink were located. A few steps out of the little alcove he recognized the store as that ice cream shop he passed on his way home from soccer practice. He started to feel a sense of excitement and freedom at the sight of the local ice cream parlor. It was as though he could no longer control his feelings, and they no longer belonged to him. Suddenly, he felt a jolt in his shoulders and quickly snapped his head around, his black hair that he kept meaning to cut getting in his eyes. It was that old dude again.

    “What in your right mind do you think you’re doing? Go do your job.” The man gestured at the customers waiting in line to order.

    Logan nodded and approached the counter where the ice cream was housed in a glass case. “How may I help you?” he mustered in his most fake but friendly tone. He helped numerous customers with ease, as the words started to feel like second nature and just flowed out of his mouth. However, he stopped short as the last customer came to give his order.

    The man who approached him was wearing a baggy shirt, beige cargo pants, and worn out sandals. He had dark, unruly hair with visible dandruff and bright blue eyes. It was Logan but not. Was it him in the future? Wrapped around the older man’s neck was a thin string that held a sign made of construction paper written on with messy handwriting that read “College Dropout”.  For some reason, seeing those words made Logan’s stomach drop at 100 miles an hour until it made a crash landing and everything went black.

…………..

     Curiosity strangled Ivy until she could no longer take a breath of fresh air, so she cautiously cracked open the door of the lonely room. All she could see was a dark, narrow hallway, so she opened the door further and stepped off the carpet and onto the hardwood floor. She searched for the light switch blindly by rubbing her hand against the rough walls until she was successful. It was nothing out of the ordinary, she realized, as the light illuminated a hallway with tan hardwood flooring and white walls. Was she really the only thing without a place in this world? Was she the only one who wasn’t normal?

    She walked down the hallway and into what she assumed was the living room. No pictures dressed the naked walls and no uplifting messages were embroidered onto couch pillows. There was just emptiness until a skateboard rolled towards her with the words “Remember me?” sketched on it. Before she could search for sign of another life, the world was sweeped out from under her. Goodbye sad room, sad house.

…………..

    The vibrations of genuine laughter woke Logan up. He was lying in a fluffy bed accompanied by a fuzzy blanket and puffy pillows with a life that wasn’t perfect but was beautiful and made sense.

    The laughter was coming from a laptop perched on the pillow next to the one on which his head was lying sideways. It was a four-way video chat with people he did not recognize but with whom he somehow felt connected and comfortable. He heard a name being called in a sing-songy tone but was suddenly paralyzed and left unresponsive. He urged for the darkness not to eat him alive, but it was hungry and wanted a feast.

………..

     “Hello, we hope you enjoyed your journey,” the woman standing over Ivy stated with words that seemed rehearsed and with a smile that made her stomach feel uneasy. There was a pause that indicated the woman was waiting for her to respond.

     “Yeah, it was...an experience,” she mustered, the words feeling foreign on her tongue in this strange world.

     “Good, that’s what we like to hear. Now, you are probably wondering where the heck you are.” Ivy confirmed this statement with a slow head nod. “I’ll start from the beginning. You and Logan Curran were on the same school bus and accident at the same time and both suffered traumatic injuries.”

    Logan. Hearing that name made her feel like a rip tide was pulling her under and suffocating her. Ivy’s agitation at the woman’s dramatic pause seemed to please the woman as she took a deep breath and continued.

    “In order to restore balance in the universe, only one of you can survive. So, we created stimulations from both of your psychological reports. Basically, you were inside his brain and he was inside yours. Now, both of you are left with the task of choosing who lives. Good luck!”

    How could Logan’s life be in her hands? Before Ivy could protest, the woman disappeared into thin air. After the previous events of the day (does time exist in this world?) she wasn’t fazed by this.

   “Hello?” Ivy spun around to come face-to-face with the bearer of her fate.

………….

  No matter how hard he tried, he could not remember his last moments on Earth. But, he remembered the ugly picture they painted. This was the girl whose brother killed himself after he and his “friends” bullied him.

   “What was the skateboard?” Ivy asked almost immediately, her words a jumble from talking so fast as if she was being timed.

    Logan sighed, “Learning how to skateboard with my mom was the last time I remember being truly happy.” he replied slowly, picking apart each word. He closed his eyes for a few seconds and found the courage to go on. “I know this doesn’t change anything, but I am sorry.”

   “You deserve a second chance, you know. Michael would agree.”

   “No, you deserve to live the life I saw when I was inside of your head or whatever.”

   “But--”

   “And don’t worry about being a failure. I know you are the kind of person who will end up where you need to be.”

 “You would be a better person than you were before.”

  “It’s too late for that.”

   And with that, Ivy and Logan were swept their separate ways.

…………

   It was like he was watching a third grader’s slideshow in slow motion. Every second of his existence was a choppy mess with poor transitions. However, he knew in this moment he could say he lived a full life.