My quilt isn’t on my bed.

No wait, it is. It’s the other bed that’s been stripped; not only is the quilt not on it, neither are the sheets, the pillows, or the stuffed animals. And on top of that, it’s freezing.

I see something poking out from under the mattress. I grab it and with a quiet rip, the front cover of my paperback copy of Hamlet tears off. Why did she have that? I traced the penciled inscription on the front page:

for the REAL Ophelia
though by any other name she’d be as sweet.
Love, Mom and Dad

They hadn’t even bothered to pick out a quote from the actual play. But hey, Shakespeare is Shakespeare, right?

I thumb through it. Read through all those familiar lines. Ophelia’s death…

I punch in his number.

“Ophelia?”

“Henry, I…”

“What is it?”

“Can you take me somewhere?”

“Where? Ophelia, you just left…”

“I want to see the ocean. The real one. Not just the sky.”

“Now?”

“Please.”