The hardest part of the day is getting up.

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 " Larisa, time to get up!"

A small groan emanated from the comatose body twisted in sheets. Larisa tried to raise her head but it was too heavy.

Perhaps she had a steel plate in her head and the pillow was really a giant magnet. Maybe it wasn't her fault she couldn't get up. Maybe she was different from other people. Thinking these strange thoughts, she returned to the oblivion of sleep.

" Larisa!" her mother called for the thirteenth time that morning. "You have to get up. We are leaving in fifteen minutes!"

  Larisa groaned and lifted her metal head off the magnetic pillow, her eyes weighed a hundred pounds each, her brain loaded with dull oatmeal.

Morning was not her best time. In fact, morning was a daily torture that made the rest of the day seem wonderful in comparison.

She stumbled out of her bed and headed blindly towards the bathroom. Unexpectedly, a wall appeared and crashed into her.

"What?" she incoherently muttered, staring at the strange wall before her. This wasn't her wall. She looked around. This wasn't her room. Where was she?

As blood began to race about her head, clearing out the dull oatmeal, she remembered. She wasn't in her room. She was in a rented apartment in Washington D.C. with her family. Her father, a renowned historian, had been invited by the American Institute to give lectures on the Japanese internment during World War II.

Getting dressed required far more thought than she was accustomed to using in the morning. At home, she could dress in a semiconscious state. She never actually had to think coherently until several hours after she woke up. However, today, nothing was in its place.

She had only herself to blame.

Yesterday, she’d felt adventurous when unpacking and put her clothes in places different from the norm. Now she paid the price. She found her blue jeans in her underwear drawer, her socks neatly stacked under the bed, her shirts hanging from the curtain rod and her underwear tucked away in the shoe shelves. Unfortunately, she had no idea what she had done with her shoes!

"Mom, I can't find my shoes," she complained, as she joined her family in the kitchen. They had already eaten breakfast.

"Larisa, you just unpacked last night, how could you lose your shoes already?" her mom asked as she cleared the breakfast table.

 "I don't know, but they're gone." Larisa replied as she re-cluttered the breakfast table, even as a sense of ill-ease came over her. She remembered feeling quite creative last night while unpacking. There was really no limit to the possible whereabouts of her shoes. She might never find them.

 "I bet I can find them," offered her little brother, Ross. Like the rest of the family, he was dressed and ready to go.

 "I don't think so, Ross," she said. Ross would look in normal places, and she was quite certain her shoes would never be found in a normal place. She only hoped her shoes were still shoes and she hadn’t melted them down in one of her midnight science experiments.

The trick here, she told herself, was not to panic. She'd remember in a couple of hours when her brain began to function, but until then, she’d need to stall the family.

 Ross, with impish confidence, rose without another word and headed towards her room.

Larisa frowned, looked at her cereal, and then looked at Ross entering her room. Well, she better forget breakfast. The last thing she wanted was Ross in her room unsupervised.

He was at her closet when she reached the door.

"It's not there. I already checked," she said, thinking he searched the shoe shelves.

Ross ignored the shelves and opened up the other half of the closet where the hangers hung on a metal rod. There on a hanger were her shoes, tied on by the shoes strings.

 "Ross! How did you know where my shoes were?" Larisa asked in amazement.

 Ross turned around with a slight accusing glare in his eyes. "You unpacked for me too. Remember? I spent a long time jumping for my shoes this morning." With that admonition, he quietly left the room.

Fully dressed and shoed, Larisa returned to her mushy cereal.

"Did Ross find your shoes?" her mom asked in surprise.  

“Uh-huh” Larisa answered reluctantly.

 "Where were they?"

Hmmmm, in the closet".

Ross looked up as if he were going to comment further on the matter, but after catching Larisa's threatening glance, decided silence was the wiser course.

 "Seems to me you would have looked there before you decided your shoes were lost," her mom reprimanded.

 "I did, but I missed them."

Larisa's mom didn't say anymore. She had long ago accepted the fact that while Larisa was very bright for most of a day, but in the morning, her brain only worked part-time.