sanity is relative

There was a family with a mother and two kids, one being a teenage boy and the other a preteen girl. They were on vacation from up north and arriving at a desert hotel in Texas; the place was set up like a bunch of disconnected buildings over a wide area. It was still afternoon, very hot and sunny.

The hotel office was the first building as the mother pulled the car past it, but there was no obvious parking lot right there. She said she'd find it and went to the left along the road, there were more buildings and stuff to the right. They passed a pool, and the son mentioned it though he also said perhaps the water wasn't so promising after all, as from the angle he was looking at it, it looked like it might have been a murky green. It was hard to tell, though, and there was another bigger pool after that with even less-promising water.

The further they went, the more obvious it was they were getting too far away, and the son mentioned this but the mother refused to go back, still convinced the parking lot was out here somewhere. He said it was too far to walk back, and then as they seemed to leave the complex entirely and approach a large warehouse and other buildings, he said, "Look, we're in a whole other township now!"

The mother pulled over and the son got out, tired of dealing with the stupidity. He knew where the hotel office was, even if it was quite a walk back. There was a place to get drinks and he went inside, asking the guy behind the counter how much a Cherry Coke was. On the answer, the teenager put a coin on the counter and said, "I'll take 20, then."

The coin had the denomination "10000" on one side, along with the word "Canada", and on the other side it had the word "GOLD". The guy behind the bar stayed where he was, leaning up against another counter along the back wall; he could see the coin from there.

Some older guy chuckled at the kid and said, "That's worth about two bucks, son."

It still wasn't gonna fly even for a soda, so the kid finally dug a quarter out of his pocket, which was apparently the price of the drink. Still the guy behind the bar didn't move, and the teen asked why that wasn't enough.

"Sales tax."

"Geez, you guys charge sales tax on food here?" Digging around in his pocket again, he pulled out a penny and added it, and he really didn't have any more so he was about to ask how much sales tax could possibly be on a quarter.

A woman came up, she was probably late 20's at least and pretty, with short blonde hair and wearing jeans and a denim leather jacket over a t-shirt of some sort. She added random coins to the little pile and told the guy behind the counter to keep the change. The kid couldn't believe someone so pretty was helping him out, and then it seemed she wanted to actually sit by him at the counter and talk to him.

Now there seemed to be some kind of plot developing, to do with the woman needing to get some information out of the kid. Meanwhile about all he was thinking was that if this kept up and she stuck around even when he would have to walk back to the hotel eventually, he was suddenly glad it was a very long walk back. In the meantime, the soda came in bottles as she had also ordered a regular Coke for herself, and it seemed to keep nicely cold even when they refilled the glasses later.

I had the visuals of the glasses being refilled, but made a comment to someone nearby as if I were watching a movie. I said I could really go for a rootbeer float, regular flavor (the concept of Cherry Coke versus regular Coke was confusing things). I don't know who it was I was talking to, I was still paying attention to the... movie?

Then I woke up.

My (real) parents were on a car trip, but it was like we all in the Great Depression era. We even had a car from then, one of those mobster looking things (the hit-man car that the modern PT Cruiser is modelled after). We stopped at a place to stay for the night, and I remember it being cold outside but still daylight. Inside the hotel was a line, a very long line. Everyone was sorta hunkered down along a hallway, with a blanket around them if they were lucky enough to have one. Then this lady who musta been the manager/owner scurried by, saying to herself quite audibly, "At least I have the alimony payment" over and over. I think she said something before that too, as she came in, like, "I can't do this I can't deal with this anymore."

I turned to Dad, who was crammed in an alcove behind me with other people, and I said, "That's not smart, she shouldn't talk like she's got money around a bunch of strangers, she's putting herself in danger. I guess she could have meant that she'd just successfully made an alimony payment, but the odds are entirely greater that she's the one with the cash." Dad said something in agreement.

I decided to follow her, worried she was gonna get in trouble. I managed to stop her outside the hotel, and asked if there was something I could do to help. At this point I was morphing into a sort of freelance detective character (still female, still kinda with my real personality). The lady said that the hotel's reputation was on the line, that someone had stolen a diamond necklace from one of the tenants. I asked who'd been in and out of the place lately, and the lady said there was one black kid named Scamp who hung around a lot (at least I think that's his name... something like that... Scat? Scraps? not sure).

Suddenly I knew he'd done it, call it gut feeling or whatever. I just had to find him and see what he'd done with it. I told the lady not to worry, that I'd take care of this, and asked if the tenant had reported the theft to the police yet. The lady said no, and I said "good" because Scamp would be less likely to be nervous if the cops weren't crawling all over the town looking for a thief.

I had no car and no driver's license, so I walked. I checked my pocket for coins and realized that in Great Depression standards I had a small fortune in coins in my pocket, even though it was just a little bit of change by today's standards. I knew I could use a taxi for a penny to get anywhere in town, and for two pennies I was certain any cabby would drive me all over for however long it took. I walked past my Dad who was bicycling down the main street for some reason (like he belonged in this town?) and then I got a taxi.

I stopped at a jewelry store and asked if anyone had sold or tried to sell a diamond necklace here recently. "No." Had anyone seen Scamp around? "Yes, he's over at the laundromat a lot." So I went there and saw him across this big room of washers and dryers. He was talking to himself, working out his own code of holes in the wall, and by pressing the right one he openned a secret compartment in the wall. He hid something in a small box that came out of it (like a CD player ejecting it's tray, but the box came out completely) and then closed it again.

I went up to him, pretending I hadn't seen the secrets (there were three compartments total). First I talked to him, making him trust me and feel safe with me. Then I convinced him to give up the goods, and I openned the third compartment (I knew which one probably had jewelry from watching earlier). I asked him if one necklace was the diamond one missing from the hotel, but I had guessed wrong and he pointed out the correct one. It was a diamond set in a open heart shape made of gold, and the chain was gold too. I put that necklace in my right front pocket of my shirt so I wouldn't get it mixed up again. I said I'd help him return the rest of the stolen jewelry too. One of the other compartments had stuff that was actually his, just little odds and ends like pieces of ribbon. He started to tell me about his sister. He said, "You know my sister's depressed, right?" She was poor too, and spent all her time in her room. She seemed to be getting sicker and sicker. Everone expected her to just sorta pine away and die, like there was no way to help her.

I went to visit the sister and saw her room was awfully decorated in puke green and a color I like to call "grandma orange." I guess she liked green and orange together, but I knew just the decor alone had to be making her depression worse. I found a pillow that had a pattern of orange flowers on green leaves, and I said, "How would you like to see your room completely made over in this green" and I pointed to an almost lime-green, "and this orange" and I pointed to a matching neon orange. (Very Target/Ikea-like, or fairly typical "Bed In A Bag" bedding color options.) I was already thinking of patterns for the bedding and accessories. The girl seemed interested, and I knew this makeover would be a huge breath of fresh air for her. Plus, we'd be getting her all new clothes and a hair makeover too. This was starting to feel like one of those extreme makeover shows, and the Great Depression era was fading into modern times.

And then that's exactly what it was. I was the host of a makeover show, and I'd become a black lady. I was standing on the porch of the house the following morning talking to the girl's mother and aunt or someone like that (they were all black too, of course, since Scamp was black in the first place and this was his family). The women were sitting around on the patio furniture. I said, "Now, we've got a lot to do, lots of shopping to get done, so I better get started." And I was going to go in and get the girl.

Then I woke up.