In his slumber, the fog of drunkenness and anger was clearing up and Miles was beginning to sober up, feeling pangs of guilt.
He knew that his mom was pissed at him because she herself was going through a hard time in her life. Being a single parent to three kids is bad enough when one of them is a punk who doesn't know what he wants to do with his life. She can barely pay the bills. Plus, Grandma Elizabeth had died two years ago at age 85, and his mom had taken it really, really hard and still hadn't gotten over it, the two having been really close. Emma and Hannah had been close to grandma too. Miles had felt sad about her passing, but he kept it bottled up inside of him, leading to his depression and alcoholism and other bad behavior. He was lashing out because he was confused and felt powerless.
All of that was about to change.
**
When Miles woke up, he felt weird.
For one thing, he was covered up in a thick and comfortable blanket. Unless Miles's memory was going funny, he remembered passing out on top of his bed. Had Mom laid it over him?
But other things felt weird too. He touched the top of his head, and his hair felt much longer, and almost styled. He also felt some kind of hard material over his scalp. Blinking, he woke up.
Pulling off the thick, woolen blanket, which looked utterly foreign to him, Miles gasped in shock to find a girl's body in a pink nightgown.
"What the hell?" he said, and immediately shoved his hand to his mouth, A soft, feminine voice had come out instead of Miles' usual snide, sarcastic male voice.
Furthermore, the hand he used was not his. It was a dainty, female hand connected to a thin girlish arm.
"OK" Miles thought. "Am I still drunk? Am I still dreaming?"
He climbed out of bed, his body still that of a girl in a pink nightgown, and looked around the room. This wasn't his room! The pink wallpapered room looked so much older, as if from another decade. Instead of a light fixture on top of the ceiling, there was a desk stand next to the bed with a lamp on top of it. The bed itself was now a different model, and the frame was made out of brass instead of wood. Where his TV would be stood a bookcase. Miles walked over to it. It was filled mostly with schoolbooks that looked sixty years out of date, and a couple of ancient classics like Moby-Dick. On top of the bookcase was an old fashioned record player and a small collection of records. Miles began to look through them. Frank Sinatra. Al Jolsen. A Greatest Jazz Hits record.
Instead of a closet, he found a thick wardrobe on the farthest side of the room, which were filled with blouses, skirts, mary janes, and other crap that Miles didn't wear, as well as a blue backpack.
Looking around to see if the coast was clear, Miles opened the backpack and groaned.
Mostly more schoolbooks, and a small, leather-bound book with a strap. Miles opened it.
THE JOURNAL OF NELLIE ADAMS.
The earliest date had been written in 1946, when this "Nellie" person had apparently turned ten years old.
"What kind of a name is Nellie?" asked Miles, but he immediately shut up, since his new girlish voice disturbed him.
He flipped through the journal, reading about the life of this girl from seventy years ago. It was mostly a bore to read. Gossip about other girls, boy problems, problems with parents, the usual. Apparently girls never change. The latest entry had apparently been written on her sixteenth birthday in 1952.