“What are you doing?” I say with a happy expression planted on my face.

“Hey honey, I’m going to bake a cake,” says a tall, handsome, mysterious looking man as he kisses my forehead gently, “would you like to help?”

“Of course.” I say to him as if I couldn’t wish for anything better.

He tosses me the crisp bag of sugar and tells me to put 1½ cups in the bowl. I go to take a pinch from the bag for myself, but he reminds me that I can’t afford anymore cavities. I moan and groan as he hands me the fat carton of baking powder to pour one teaspoon in with the sugar. As he gently taps three eggs on the counter and effortlessly cracks them into a separate bowl, I measure out three cups of flour.

Powder, of course, ends up everywhere, so I have the urge to turn this normal baking time into something I will remember. Poof. Powder flies everywhere making the air dry and cloudy after I blew a handful of flour towards his surprised face. Not even a second later, he makes his way towards me, picks me up, and spins me around over his bulky shoulder, at what seems like a million miles per hour. I begin to beg him to put me down, but he keeps spinning as he asks for the magic word.

“PLEASE!” I say being completely serious yet trying not to laugh.

“That’s not it,” he says as he is having the best time in the world making me smile and hearing me try to outsmart him, “try something more loving.”

“I LOVE YOU!!” I shout at the top of my lungs as if my life depends on those three words.

He laughs and begins to slow down the spinning. Once he stops, he holds me by my hands to keep me from toppling over. He bends down slightly and kisses my cheek. When the room finally stops spinning, I kiss him back.
“I love you.” I whisper in his ear.

“I love you, too.” he quietly says back.

He finishes whisking the eggs in with a cup of milk and we then poured the creamy liquids into the bowl with all the dry ingredients. The mix slowly turns into a light batter. I walk over to the oven and set the temperature to 425°. We decide to turn on some music while we wait for the oven to preheat. He turns on “Cinderella” by Steven Curtis Chapman. As the song’s soft melody plays, he asks me to dance and I answer yes. He takes my hand and guides my every step. He spins me around like a ballerina. The song is put on repeat, so we continue dancing. Beep. The oven lets us know it is done preheating and we can finally put the cake batter into the oven. I let him put the pan in the oven because we both know how clumsy I am. I set the timer to one hour. While we wait for the cake to bake, he asks me what has been going on in my life. I don’t have a real answer because I just throw my life together as it is. I tell him the problems I have. He tells me I’m perfect and couldn’t ask for more, to just be myself and to forget all the people who bring me down. He tells me his problems; he’s afraid he’s going to mess up on his presentation at this meeting he has tomorrow. I tell him he’s perfect and all I could ever want; he’ll do fine tomorrow because he’s smart and knows what he’s saying, so they’ll listen to what he has to say.

As these happy moments fly by, so does time. We both begin to wonder why the oven hasn’t gone off. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. The smoke alarm is going off. We start to smell something burning.

“Oh no, the cake!!” we both say out loud as we run frantically to the kitchen.

“Lily, what temperature did you set the oven to?” he asks me with a face full of concern.

I hesitated thinking…”425°…” I say knowing I had somehow made a mistake.

“It was supposed to be 325°!!” he says trying to keep his voice down, for he does not want to upset me.

I apologize repeatedly. We can see the oven filled with flames and smoke. He tells me not to open the oven, but it was too late. I open the oven, smoke wisps out and fill my lungs making it hard to breathe. Flames burst out scorching me from the shoulders up.

My body writhing in pain, I scream, “Help!!”

He doesn’t seem to hear me or even see me. I’m a ghost, just a shadow. He goes to put out the flames, while I’m screaming his name. He looks towards me, but not at me…through me. As if he heard something, but thinking it was just in his head, he turns back to the oven. He diminishes the flames and slowly fans away the smoke and heat near the alarm. He takes the cake out of the oven; I’m still screaming, but he can’t hear me. I start to feel dizzy and my vision is blurring. I begin to notice the world is blackening and spinning out of view.

“DAD!!!” I yell with the ump of not wanting to leave him.

The world is gone and I awake with a jolt in my body in a place more familiar than the one I was in before. I am home, my home, in my bed. Ugh, I had the dream again, I think to myself. This dream was one I had often, too often. Ever since I was a child, I’ve had dreams of the one I would call Dad. Long story short, he left me. I do not know who he is or where he is, but I’ve always had a picture of what I imagined he would look like. Even if my images are wrong, I don’t care. These dreams of him throughout my life are a harness in my own reality. In my years, not a day goes by that I don’t think to myself, maybe today will be the day he comes back for me. These dreams give me my own world to create with him. Although I know it is not real at all, it is better than having false hope that he may come back one day. Days and days go by when my whole body aches with the pain of knowing I’ll never have a dad. But in my sleep, when my body is at rest, I can’t control the places my mind wanders to or the people it deep down wants to be with. It happens for a reason and I now know why. It’s to save my reality from turning into some rinky-dink of pity.