“I haven’t had one of these since I was a kid,” James said.
She was fascinated by his backstory. Anna didn’t have much of a backstory. Even though she had an elaborate setup. She was like a doll sitting in a dollhouse, surrounded by furniture.
James hadmemories.
Anna had memories, too, but they were mostly of this place. Her backstory was only a few scenes long. A few disjointed flashbacks.
James’s character kept shifting. It was driving him crazy.
“Oh God,” he said, when they were done eating.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He looked upset.
“James—what?”
“I’m not James anymore. I’m Isaac.”
“But your last name—”
“Not anymore.”
“She’s working on you,” Anna said. “It’s a good sign.”
He sighed.
“She’s kept all the important parts,” she said. “You’ve still got red hair and nice shoulders.”
That made James laugh. He rolled his eyes, he tried to relax. “So, your character has shifted a lot over the years?”
“I mean, I was eight when I started, so yeah.”
“Have you always been ‘Anna’?”
“Yeah, but …”
“What.”
“Well …” She looked at him for a second, deciding whether to say more. “For a while, I could open portals into other dimensions.”
James—Isaac—guffawed.
“It’s not funny,” Anna said, laughing.
“How did that even work?”
“I don’t know.” Her shoulders were shaking. “She never hammered it out. My eyes glowed.”
James—she was just going to keep calling him James—was still laughing. “You really were a Stephen King character.”
“I had siblings for a while.”
“And then they faded? That sounds traumatic.”
“It wasn’t so bad. I’d already been here for years, and they were so sketchy. Like, sometimes there were three of them, and sometimes there were four …”
James leaned back in the porch swing. He was looking up at the stars. “Do you think people remember this place? After they leave?”
