Thanksgiving arrives in our universe sooner than it does in the fiction. For non Americans, Thanksgiving happens on the last Thursday in November, and schools usually have that Thursday and Friday off. However, in this fic, the 24th is on a Monday, and Stella and the others are going to school for the next couple of days.

November 24

It's my first day back at school.

I get a lot of stares. Some of them look away if they think I see them, but most of my classmates just stare, as if they don't want to risk missing me freak out for them. I hear my first period class get quieter as I enter. Then after class I go out in the hall and I hear the hall get quieter.

Chelsea and Mrs. Randall are the only ones that address me normally. Everyone else just stares like brain-dead cows whenever I go near them. Then after I pass by, I hear whispers.

"That's the girl who went crazy . . ."

" . . . she thinks she's Judith Myers . . ."

" . . . she's like some kind of psychic . . ."

" . . . she was born on Halloween. The day Judith Myers died . . ."

In English class, Melanie asks another girl if she can switch seats, so she doesn't have to sit next to me. The girl refuses. Darcy eventually volunteers to take the seat.

"Welcome back, Stella," she says. She fidgets uneasily, but she's making an effort to be friendly.

"Thanks," I say.

Mrs. Randall starts the lesson, diverting the attention from me for an hour.

Later in the day, I drift through the hallway and I spot Ben Tramer at his locker. He doesn't see me, but his buddy does. The buddy thumps Ben in the shoulder.

"Hey, Tramer," he calls out. "Can't stay away from those Myers chicks."

I swivel to the opposite direction and duck into the bathroom. I set the books at the edge of the sink and stare at myself in the mirror, noting my reddened face. Did Ben see me? Or did the buddy tell him I was right there by his locker?

I blow out a steadying breath. Jesus, I'm not used to being so visible. Even when some jackass spread some rumor that I was the one that was pregnant, and my mother was just saying she was having the baby to cover up my indiscretion. (I wish. Then that dick Ronnie White wouldn't have to move in and be a fucking father). I had confronted Myron Armstrong, the cretin who started the rumor, behind the bleachers; he was the guy I was sleeping with at the time, and he was mad because he thought I was cheating on him.

But this is worse.

I inhale, and catch the familiar scent of marijuana.

I trace the smoke to a group of girls lazing in the handicapped stall. Alarm spreads slowly across their faces. The alarm fades, once they realize I'm not a teacher, and is replaced with profound interest. They recognize me.

"Can I have one?" I ask.

"You got money?" one of the girls asks.

I fish out a twenty from my jeans pocket and hand it over. The goth girls pass over a joint. The closest one flicks on a lighter.

After the joint is lit, I sit outside the stall and bake.

II

Seventeen year olds have far more memories than most people realize.

As my joint burns down, seventeen years of Judith's memories course through me. Everything that has made the slightest impression in her life performed as if I am reliving it and at the same time watching them through a TV screen. A perspective that is only possible in my drugged condition, I suppose. I see everything.

Almost everything. There are a few parts that remain shadowy. Those shadowy parts skip away quickly, as if Judith is willing them away. I don't force them to return. They interrupt my buzz.

I wish I could write down all the memories, but I can barely keep track of everything. They bombard from all sides and scatter through my brain.

A couple of hours pass. The goth girls had left the bathroom long ago.

The bathroom door swings open. Joanne stalks in. She cranes her neck around the bathroom before she spots me sitting on the floor.

"Stella," she exclaims, then makes an audible sniff. "Are you high?"

"Not anymore," I mutter. I struggle to stand.

Joanne snatches my joint and marches to the sink to douse it. Then she balls it within a bunch of paper towels and tosses it out.

"Come with me," she orders, yanking me by the arm.

We both got passes to leave an hour early. The secretary has heard of my bizarre experiences, of course. And Joanne gets out easily because adults love Joanne.

Joanne drives me to her house. She orders me to the shower to remove the stench of marijuana. "I'm doing you a favor," she reminds me when I protest. "Do you want your parents to know you were smoking dope?"

I shower and slip into a spare robe. Then I pad into Joanne's room to select something of hers to wear, because she has tossed my clothes in the washer.

Joanne paces the room. "I can't believe you believe in that crap," she vents. "That's not even how reincarnation works. In Hinduism, reincarnation is a progressive cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth to divest oneself of worldly desires so the individual can achieve moksha." She lectures on about karma and samsara and how I'm bastardizing other people's legitimate beliefs.

I tune her out and search through Joanne's dresser drawer for a T-shirt I had left at her house over the summer. As I paw through her neatly folded shirts, my hand freezes.

I unearth a scrap of purple polyester.

My heart pounds. Why would Joanne have this shirt?

I yank out the shirt. My pulse eases. It's not Judith's shirt. It's a long-sleeved, peasant style shirt. And the fabric is heavier, a poly blend.

III

I arrive home at the normal time. My head has cleared of the marijuana buzz, just in time for my appointment with Dr. Egan. (He wants to continue to see me as an outpatient).

I drive my mom's car to the hospital. The sun is low over the sky. It will be dark when I get out. Not pitch black, but I will need my lights on to distinguish anything through the neighborhood.

I don't think my parents realized how dark it would get in the evening. Otherwise they might not have let me go to the hospital alone like a sitting duck.

Dr. Egan begins the session by asking if I've had any more unusual dreams.

"No."

"Not any?" he asks skeptically.

"Not like those," I say, referring to the nightmares that put me in the hospital in the first place. I avoid explaining about the dreams I have had.

"I understand you brought some information to Sheriff Brackett," he pressed on. "You identified one of Judith Myers' school friends."

"Yes."

"You have put much interest in Judith Myers," Dr. Egan concludes. "Do you believe you are reincarnated from her."

"I don't know." I've answered this question so many times, I can do so without emotional attachment.

"Why?" Dr. Egan inquires. "Is it because she died the same night you were born?"

"It's not as simple as that," I repeat. "I know things about Judith that I shouldn't know. Things that nobody else knows."

"And how do you know these things are real?"

"They're too important. Like she needs to tell me something."

Dr. Egan brings his fist under his chin. After a minute of contemplation, he muses aloud, "Your dreams are not about what Judith Myers needs. They are about what you need. This association with the victim may be indicative of a deep seated yearning or fear."

So we're back to the batshit crazy theory. "Like what?"

"The confusion of your birthday might be relevant. For your entire life, you have never celebrated your birthday on the actual date you were born. Perhaps because of that, you feel alienated from yourself, that you are living a false life. Someone else's life. And you have translated that sense of alienation as reincarnation."

"I don't believe that," I say bluntly.

"No?" His eyebrows perk up.

"It's just a date. Calendar dates only have meaning because people create meaning for it." I sound haughty, like Joanne when she's lecturing against superstitious ideas.

"Do you believe that you are not affected all by the meaning of calendar dates?" Dr. Egan replies. "After all, people are conditioned to live according to a calendar. It has more control over their lives than they are conscious of."

"I don't have a problem with my birthday," I state. "Other people overreact when they hear about it and that's annoying, but it doesn't scare me that I was born that night."

"I see," Dr. Egan grunts.

After a deliberate pause, he says, "I understand you went to Sheriff Brackett because you recognized the mother of a missing girl as a friend of Judith's."

"Yes."

"And it was."

"Yes."

"How did you know about that?"

I don't want to tell him about her appearance in my dream. It is one thing to believe in the intangible idea of reincarnation, another to claim I've dreamed about someone whose daughter disappeared.

"I don't know."

Dr. Egan is unable to navigate around the stalemate I have set.

IIII

I bump into Ben at the door of the clinic.

"Hi," I say.

"Hi." He cocks his head. "Everything OK?"

"Yeah," I explain. "I had to see Dr. Egan."

"Oh." He glances to the wall. "I'll walk you to your car. You drove, right?"

"Yeah, but you don't have to . . ."

"It's no trouble," he insists.

"OK." I slip on my coat.

Because I had anticipated the dark evening, I parked so my path would not stray far from the hospital lights. Ben walks beside me, with tentative steps.

"I heard about Alice," he says.

"Yeah." My head bobs down. Etiquette demands I bring up the scenario that everyone seems to be clinging to: that Alice has run off with her new boyfriend. My mouth and voice, however, refuse to form the words. I don't believe it. I can't say it. Not even for the sake of polite conversation.

Ben senses the impossible path of speculation and eases away from it. "So what are you doing for Thanksgiving?" he asks hurriedly.

I have forgotten that Thanksgiving is this week.

"Not much. Thanksgiving is not a big holiday for my parents. We'll eat turkey for dinner and that's it."

"My brother is coming home for the day. He's a junior in U of I."

"Do you get along with your brother?" I ask.

"Yeah, we just set up the Internet at my house and we e-mail all the time."

"Cool."

We reach my car.

"So . . . I was thinking. Since it's a long weekend that neither of us really celebrates . . . I mean we won't be going out of town or anything . . . do you want to do something then?"

"Sure," I reply huskily. My hands tremble, so I recede them under the cuffs of my coat.

"OK, then I'll call you."

"All right."

I am still facing him as I reach toward the car door. Suddenly Ben leans in and kisses me softly on the lips.

After driving home, I float to my door. I am halfway through the side entrance, propping the screen door open, when something compels me to look out.

Michael Myers is staring at me from the end of the driveway. The grown up, masked Michael Myers.

I dive into the house and lock the door. Then I run to the foyer to lock up the front door. While double-bolting the door, I glance out the narrow diamond-shaped windows at the door's sides. Michael Myers has vanished.

I take a closer look through the dining room window, which offers a broad view of the driveway. There is no trace of Michael Myers. He has disappeared just as suddenly as he appeared.

Even after all I have been through lately, I am still reluctant to call Sheriff Brackett over the dubious sighting. So I do my homework and reading in the dining room, with the lights dimmed. I tell myself, if I see him again, I will definitely call the police.

IIIII

Dad asks why I am doing homework in the dark.

"I have a headache," I say. It echoes Judith's excuse from that disturbing dream, but I can't think of any other plausible excuse.

"Maybe you should forget your homework for now and go to bed," Dad suggests.

"Thanks, but I've missed too much school as it is." My grades have fallen from a steady straight A's to a staggering line of C's and D's. I'm not flunking anything, at least, but I am trying to pull up my D's to C's.

"Well, don't stay up too late," Dad says, before he heads upstairs.

"I won't."

I watch from that window until midnight, then I watch from my bedroom window. I fish out my binoculars and aim from an awkward crouch.

Michael doesn't return tonight.