I was at some sort of vacation retreat with a bunch of other people around my age. It was in Charlotte, North Carolina, which isn't too far from where I live, but I apparently had a seven-and-a-half hour train ride back home to Atlanta. And my parents were there with their car, which made about as much sense to me in the dream as it does to awake me. They had come to take my stuff home, but they were going to let me take the long train ride.
Everyone was going home at the same time, and I saw other girls traipsing through the woods with their suitcases and sleeping bags. The entire place was situated on one side of a hill, which made it extra difficult to lug our stuff.
I stopped in a gift shop to see if I could find a book to read on the trip home. The gift shop had hundreds of copies of only one book: it was called My Best Friend, and it looked too sappy even to be an Oprah book. It was about sci-fi writer Anne McCaffrey befriending a younger sci-fi writer, and the two of them becoming soulmates. It was just the thing I didn't want to to read.
As I left the shop, I encountered an older woman, "Mandy," who's one of the bulimic patients at the clinic where I work. She was convinced that she and I were best friends, even though I had only talked to her a few times. She said she had talked to my parents and told them how close we were and that she was going to ride home with them. I felt really weirded out by this, wondering if Mandy was stalking me. I also figured my parents would now think I was weird for having someone my mother's age for a "best friend."
I met my parents at the car, and they said "Mandy" and I could both ride home with them. I tried to explain that I barely even knew Mandy, but they didn't seem to hear me.
I remember all of us -- my parents, my younger sister, Mandy, and me -- fighting over the beds in a motel room, and that was it.
