The room smelled like stale beer and cooling takeout — something fried, hours past its best moment. The light coming through the window had turned golden-orange, stretching long across the floor where Wanda lay sprawled. One arm bent under her head, the other flung out toward the couch leg she hadn't quite reached before gravity won. Her hair was dark against the wood, strands caught in her partly-open mouth.

Mmmmmm.

Her fingers twitched. Whatever she was dreaming, it pulled a crooked smile from the corner of her lips.

Hehe.

An empty can sat inches from her nose. Two more balanced on the coffee table edge next to half a burger still in its wrapper, grease soaked through the paper. The room was quiet except for her breathing and the distant hum of someone's lawn mower outside.

She shifted slightly, turned her face away from the window light. Her shirt had ridden up on one side, exposing a strip of skin above her jeans. The movement seemed to satisfy whatever sleeping instinct had stirred — her breathing evened out again, deeper.

The sun kept dropping. The orange light crawled across her shoulder, up toward her face. In another ten minutes it would hit her eyes directly through the gap in the curtains.

For now she was still under, mumbling something that wasn't quite words. Her hand curled loosely near her stomach. The room held its breath around her — waiting, or just existing the way rooms do when no one conscious is watching them.

A car door slammed somewhere down the block. Wanda's eyebrow twitched but didn't lift. Whatever dream she was having, it hadn't let go yet.