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Harold walked into Karena’s
room and sat down in the chair with his head in his hands.
He’d done this often in the past week, since she’d woken up as a baby, a
nd Karena was quite used to it
.
She knew exactly what he’d do, sitting there for a while in silence, deep in thought.
She also knew what he was going to ask of her
,
and so she decided that this time she’d
start the conversation instead.

“You can’t leave me in here forever, you know,” she said.

Harold looked up. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you can’t just leave me in this crib like this,” Karena replied. “I
may be in the body of a baby, but I’m not really one, and so you have no right to be keeping me locked up in here.”

“So what am I supposed to do then, let you just run around free?” Harold asked. “Like you said, you have the body of a baby still, and are bound to get hurt in some way even if you have the intelligence not to get into a dangerous situation. What would you be able to do
,
anyway? You don’t have the strength to walk, and you can only crawl very slowly.”

Karena shut her eyes in frustration. “I don’t know,” she said. “But I do know that I don’t want to live the life of a baby with the mind of a teenager.”

“What if you don’t have a choice?”

Karena was silent.

“Look,” Harold said. “Why can’t you just tell me what’s going on? It’s ridiculous to think that I’ll be able to help you with any of this if you won’t even tell me what happened.
”

“I don’t need you help!” Karena replied, though she wasn’t quite sure she believed it.

Harold went on, undeterred. “
You may not even be my child for all I know! Your mother and I have been getting hardly any sleep, we’re sick and exhausted, and above all we’re worried about our daughter. So please, do me a favor, for both our sakes.”

Karena searched her mind, but she was beginning to run out of ideas for why she shouldn’t tell him what had happened. She knew almost for a fact now that this wasn’t a dream, that somehow, in some crazy way, it was all real.
She was stubborn, and that was really the only thing that had prevented her from
revealing the truth up until now. But she knew that Harold was right, that she had to tell them at some point. And so it might as well be now.

“Bring Christi in here,” Karena said. Harold rushed out of the room and brought back Christi
in the blink of an eye,
anxious to learn what Karena had to say.
Eagerly, he sat down, staring intently as he waited for his daughter to begin her tale.

With a deep
breath
, she began. “I’ve been through this all before,” she said. She paused, letting the words sink in. “I was a baby like this once, but I’ve grown past it. Or at least, I had grown past it.

“You two were my parents. I have memories of growing up with you, b
ut from the early years when I was a baby like I seemingly am now,
my memories are scattered and
scarce. As time went on I grew up, went to school, learned to read and write, grew older and older until eventually I was 15 years old. I lived a perfectly normal life in a perfectly normal household.
” She swallowed, knowing that that wasn’t perfectly true. But they didn’t need to know everything.

“And then,
all of a sudden, this happened,” she continued.
“
I woke up inside the body of a baby. I can’t explain it, and I’m sure that even though you’ve heard my story now you can’t explain it either, so there’s no point in trying to.
T
here. Now you know why I was acting so strange.
I know this explanation won’t satisfy you any more than it will satisfy me, but you just have to accept it for now.
”

Harold and Christi sat, shocked. Karena knew that her story hadn’t answered any questions they’d had, but at least they had the truth now.
Well, most of the truth. She decided not to tell them about the man. She needed to kee
p at least something to herself, along with the lie about her living in a normal household.

After a moment’s silence, she asked: “Will you let me out now?”

There was a pause before Harold’s reply came. “Yes,” he said. “But I think we need to go see another doctor.

Karena was lying in a chair, finally free from her crib. She and her parents were at a psychiatrist’s, and she’d decided that this time she was actually going to talk. There wasn’t any point in hiding any longer, in pretendin
g that she was an ordinary baby, now that she knew for sure that this wasn’t a dream.
If she was going to get help
,
this was the only way.

“So,” the doctor said. “You say your child suddenly had the ability to speak fluent English overnight for some inexplicable reason, and now she is talking to you
as if she’s a grown—
up.”

“Yes,” said Christi. “I know the story is difficult to believe, but it’s true, and I’m sure she’ll demonstrate for you right now.”

Everyone turned in Karena’s direction, making her feel a bit awkward. Although she knew she
had to say something, anything
to make the doctor believe that she actually did have the ability to speak, she all of a sudden had absolutely no idea what to say. She opene
d he
r mouth, and then shut it again
without uttering a sound. This doctor made her feel nervous for some reason.

“Karena,” Harold said. “Would you please say something to the doctor?”

Finally, Karen
a said the only thing that came to her mind.
“What should I say?”

The doctor raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Interesting,” he said. “And she couldn’t speak English at all before?”

“No,” Christi replied. “
Only small words that you would expect someone her age
to be able to say, like ‘Dada,’ and ‘
Mama.
’
”

“Very peculiar,” the doctor remarked, before turning back to face Karena. “Tell me,” he said. “What caused this?”

Karena went on to tell him about how she used to be a
15-year-old
, having lived her whole life up to that point, and then having disappeared and appeared in the body of a baby.
Once again
, she left out the part about the strange man she’d seen, standing in both Quencher’s and the nursery.

The doctor was quiet for a while, clearly deep in thought. “That’s an incredible story,” he said.
“I’m sure that most people would have a hard time believing it, but I, for one, do not.”

“Why’s that?” Harold asked.

“I don’t know what cou
ld have caused it. Unless…” The doctor
went off in though
t
again.

Finally,
he
asked: “What time did you put her to bed at night?”

“About 7:00, I think,” Harold replied.

“And what time did she start screaming?”

“Probably a
round 2:00 in the morning, though I can’t be sure. It wasn’t the first thing on my mind at the time.
”

“So that means she slept for about 7 hours until she woke up, correct?”

“Yes, I guess so, but…”

“Hold on. Did you check on her after putting her to bed? Say, before you
yourselves
went to bed, maybe.”

“Yes, we checked on her briefly before shutting off the light in the hallway. She was sleeping soundly.”

“And what time was it then?”

“About 10:00, I think. But what does any of this have to do with the fact that my daughter can suddenly talk?”

The doctor sat in thought. “It doesn’t seem very likely,” he muttered to himself. “I’d say there’s a very small chance this could actually happen, but I can’t think of any
other rational explanation, not that this explanation is entirely rational
itself
.
I suppose
one might deem it more probable, however, than any other suggestion as to how this could have occurred.
”

Harold and Christi sat patiently, though Karena could tell they were anxious. Christi’s leg always started bouncing when she was nervous, and she started doing this now.
Harold was also clearly not at ease, wondering why the physiatrist was asking all these questions.

“OK,” the doctor said, spinning around in his swivel chair. “I have a theory, though it’s very unlikely and the chances of such an event actually happening are close to nil.

“Sometimes people can have very vivid dreams.
These dreams can interfere wi
th your actual body in real life
, a
nd can cause confusion and even, in some extreme cases,
harm.”

Karena’s ears perked up. Was the doctor going to propose that this was all actually a dream? That she was really asleep this whole time and th
at sometime
soon she was going to wake up? But no, that couldn’t be. That would mean that the doctor hims
elf would be in her dream, which would make no sense at all
. But if not that, then what on earth was he going to suggest?

“For example,” the doctor went on. “I once had a dream that I was drowning, and when I woke up I found I’d been holding my breath in real life so that I couldn’t breathe, making the dream all the more vivid. This is quite a common occurrence. Sometimes people can actually learn things in dreams that may or may not be true, and that are influenced by
your memories. Another time as a boy
I had a dream that I looked up a word in the dictionary that I’d been wondering the definition of, only to find that in real life the definition of the word was the exact opposite of what I’d found in the drea
m, making things extremely
confusing for a while.

“My point is that dreams can cause people to learn thing
s and believe things, and that’s what could have happened to
your daughter.”

“What do you mean?” Harold asked. “What sort of dream could cause all of this?”

“It could be,” said the doctor. “Though it’s very unlikely, that your daughter dreamed through her entire life up to the age 15, learned to speak English, believed that that dream w
as real life, and then woke
up, still as a baby.”

Harold and Christi
at first showed no reaction to this, simply because they did not know how to react
.
The very prospect was so startling that they were quiet for a long time, just staring at the doctor. Harold rubbed his fingers on his forehead and looked down at the floor. Karena, however, was the most shocked. The prospect that her whole life, everything she’d ever done, all her accomplishments and failures, everything that she’d ever known, it was all a dream! And that the whole time she’d actually been an infant lying in a crib making up the whole thing in her mind! It was ridiculous!

Harold looked up at the doctor. “This can’t be possible,” he said. “If you’d seen the change that came over her, you’d know it too. This can’t just happen through a dream. There has to be some other explanation, some other…” He trailed off.

“Well I you can find one then I’d be very interested to hear about it,”
said the doctor.

There was silence again. No one
in the room was sure what to make of this
. The doctor appeared uncomfortable with the silence, but no one else noticed him. Karena was busy thinking through her life, thinking through all the important things that had ever happened to her, and thinking about how that couldn’t possibly be a dream. It couldn’t be.

Karena almost didn’t notice when her parents picked her up and the
n
left the physiatri
s
t to return to her home, and the nursery where fifteen years had passed in
the course of
seven hours.

Time pa
ssed
, and Karena slowly began to gain greater mobility in her chubby limbs, and, through lots of trial and failure, learned how to walk again. She found it ridiculous that she had to relearn all of this, since it was so simple to her in her past life, but she was even more frustrated by the fact that she
actually found it to be quite difficult to relearn walking
.
In her head, she knew how to do trigonometry,
and was a perfectly normal 15-year old,
but on the outside she was a helpless baby that could hardly do anything without help from her parents.

Karena could tell that her pa
rents weren’t
having the experience they’d expected to have when they’d had a child and pictured it growing up, since
their
baby who was learning how to walk was always talking to them like a teenager.
While other parent’s babies grew up in a regular fashion,
Karena was completely different, and Karena could t
ell that at times it upset her parents.

Harold and Christi
did a good job of making sure no one else knew that their baby could speak flu
ent English and was indeed a 15-year old in the body of a 1—
year old. Explaining the story of what had happened that night, of Karena’s story,
and
of the doctor’s theory, would all be far too time consuming and distressing, for both them and everyone else. So they just kept K
arena’s abilities to themselves, which was easier, at least for the moment.
Besides, once the media found out how intelligent this baby was, they would never be getting a moment of rest.
They knew that at some point it would all have to be revealed, but the farther this could be delayed, the better.

At first, Karena didn’t remember any of what was happening to her as a baby from her past life. But as she got older, events started happening that gave her strange feeling
s
of deja-vu, li
ke she’d been through it before, though most of the time when this happened she wasn’t able to specifically remember it happening before.
A notable instance of this was
at her 2
nd
birthday party.
Since nobody knew that Karena wasn’t really a baby,
all the guests they invited to that party thought th
at Karena was just an ordinary 2—
year old who was going to stuff her face with cake in a ridiculously messy and disg
usting manner as most every 2—
year old child did at their birthday party.

Before the party, Harold and Christi had instructed her to keep absolutely quiet, only making the occasional baby-like sound or uttering random, irrelevant phrases through a thick layer of slobber like
a
2
-
year old
would.
Karena had agreed,
despite her frustration at having to do this, since she’d done
it
many times before
. But nonetheless she’d decided to stick to her word and not reveal who she really was.

Karena hated sitting in the high chair with the restraining table in front of her that jabbed into her body so that she couldn’t squeeze out, which she wouldn’t be stupid enough to do anyway judging the distance to the floor.
Her fragile
baby body would be broken for sure.
But she just put on a show for her guests by acting like a baby, and it worked.

Then, all of a sudden, there came a moment in the middle of the party when it was as if something had clicked in her brain, and she clearly remembered having seen the scene in front of her before. There were adults all drinking out of plastic cups that had “Happy Birthday!” written on them with colorful confetti surrounding the words. There were little kids that were older than her running around the
adults’
feet playing tag until one of them fell and started crying. There was a table full of treats such as deviled eggs,
pasta salad, and cold meatballs, with a cake that no one had opened up yet, waiting for the time when everyone would sing
“Happy B
irthday.
”
And in the middle of it all were
her
parents, talking and laughing with the other adults.
It was strange that nothing of any particular significance happened at this exact moment that
invoked
the deja-vu, it just happened.
From her high chair Karena had a perfect view of it all, and then, just like that, the deja-vu was over and everything was new to her again.

This was the first strong incident of deja-vu, but it bega
n to happen increasingly often in the following months
.
Karena continued to grow, and slowly her frustration with her situation began to diminish. She became accustomed to her new life, and over
time her shock went away and she accepted the fact that this was her new life. That she would have to grow up and go through everything all over again until she got past the point where she’d disappeared and could continue with her life as she had before, though she knew things wouldn’t ever
really
be the same again.

Until then, she would just have to bear with it, never being surprised by anything because she’d been through it all before, and always knowing what was to be around the next corner in her life. In some ways it might give her an advantage, and she might even be able to change things that she hadn’t liked with her old life. That wasn’t to say that she was glad this had happened, far from it. But she decided that she mi
ght as well make the most of it while she could.

And so, time went on, and day changed to night a
nd night into day, and in time the days
turned
to years and
Karena grew older and older in her new life, her new life which mirrored
the old
in almost every way.