I think it was in black and white. There were narrow streets, wet cobblestones. I was following my sister down these alleys, but I don’t know where we were going. At one point, I understood that I’d just gotten off the phone with our grandmother. “It’s nuts,” I said. “She said they arrive Monday and then I’ll have to drive them to London. And I said, I have school, I have finals, and she was like, But you have to drive us to London.” Later, my sister said, “Do you hear that?” but I heard nothing. She raced around a corner and I could hardly keep up. I saw a steel door swinging closed, and followed her through there into a dim stairwell. Through another doorway, and then up and up, and then through another doorway, and then we were in some sort of dank waiting room. There were doors leading off to various cinema screening rooms. An employee excused herself as she brushed past me to refill the napkin dispensers. “Ssh,” my sister said. “There.” I looked up at a television suspended from the ceiling, on which an old-timey cartoon was playing on a loop, the plinky-plonky fairground music starting over and over again.

I woke, uncomfortable.