But I continued to drive slowly down the overgrown lane, twisting through the trees that arched over me like a green, living tunnel. My hands were shaking, so I tightened my grip on the steering wheel.
I knew that part of the reason I did this was the nightmare; now that I was really awake, the nothingness of the dream gnawed on my nerves, a dog worrying a bone. There was something to search for. Unattainable and impossible, uncaring and distracted . . . but he was out there, somewhere. I had to believe that.
The other part was the strange sense of repetition I'd felt at school today, the coincidence of the date. The feeling that I was starting over-perhaps the way my first day would have gone if I'd really been the most unusual person in the cafeteria that afternoon.
The words ran through my head, tonelessly, like I was reading them rather than hearing them spoken:
It will be as if I'd never existed.
I was lying to myself by splitting my reason for coming here into just two parts. I didn't want to admit the strongest motivation. Because it was mentally unsound.
The truth was that I wanted to hear his voice again, like I had in the strange delusion Friday night. For that brief moment, when his voice came from some other part of me than my conscious memory, when his voice was perfect and honey smooth rather than the pale echo my memories usually produced, I was able to remember without pain. It hadn't lasted; the pain had caught up with me, as I was sure it would for this fool's errand. But those precious moments when I could hear him again were an irresistible lure. I had to find some way to repeat the experience . . . or maybe the better word was episode.
I was hoping that déjà vu was the key. So I was going to his home, a place I hadn't been since my ill-fated birthday party, so many months ago.
The thick, almost jungle-like growth crawled slowly past my windows. The drive wound on and on. I started to go faster, getting edgy. How long had I been driving? Shouldn't I have reached the house yet? The lane was so overgrown that it did not look familiar.
What if I couldn't find it? I shivered. What if there was no tangible proof at all?
Then there was the break in the trees that I was looking for, only it was not so pronounced as before. The flora here did not wait long to reclaim any land that was left unguarded. The tall ferns had infiltrated the meadow around the house, crowding against the trunks of the cedars, even the wide porch. It was like the lawn had been flooded-waist-high-with green, feathery waves.
And the house was there, but it was not the same. Though nothing had changed on the outside, the emptiness screamed from the blank windows. It was creepy. For the first time since I'd seen the beautiful house, it looked like a fitting haunt for vampires.
I hit the brakes, looking away. I was afraid to go farther.
But nothing happened. No voice in my head.
So I left the engine running and jumped out into the fern sea. Maybe, like Friday night, if I walked forward . . .
I approached the barren, vacant face slowly, my truck rumbling out a comforting roar behind me. I stopped when I got to the porch stairs, because there was nothing here. No lingering sense of their presence . . . of his presence. The house was solidly here, but it meant little. Its concrete reality would not counteract the nothingness of the nightmares.
I didn't go any closer. I didn't want to look in the windows. I wasn't sure which would be harder to see. If the rooms were bare, echoing empty from floor to ceiling, that would certainly hurt. Like my grandmother's funeral, when my mother had insisted that I stay outside during the viewing. She had said that I didn't need to see Gran that way, to remember her that way, rather than alive.
But wouldn't it be worse if there were no change? If the couches sat just as I'd last seen them, the paintings on the walls-worse still, the piano on its low platform? It would be second only to the house disappearing all together, to see that there was no physical possession that tied them in anyway. That everything remained, untouched and forgotten, behind them.
Just like me.
I turned my back on the gaping emptiness and hurried to my truck. I nearly ran. I was anxious to be gone, to get back to the human world. I felt hideously empty, and I wanted to see Jacob. Maybe I was developing a new kind of sickness, another addiction, like the numbness before. I didn't care. I pushed my truck as fast as it would go as I barreled toward my fix.
Jacob was waiting for me. My chest seemed to relax as soon as I saw him, making it easier to breathe.
"Hey, Bella," he called.
I smiled in relief. "Hey, Jacob." I waved at Billy, who was looking out the window.
"Let's get to work," Jacob said in a low but eager voice.
I was somehow able to laugh. "You seriously aren't sick of me yet?" I wondered. He must be starting to ask himself how desperate I was for company.