Here all I could see was green, stretching until it met a cloudless, achingly blue sky.

I hadn’t realized, until then, how much I’d missed it.

The sky, I mean. And all that green.

When we reached the outskirts of our town, an hour later, I saw that other things besides the buds had changed since I’d last been there. The Chocolate Moose was gone, sold out to Dairy Queen. Same building, new sign.

When we stopped at the red light in front of the courthouse, Rob turned his head to ask me, “Where to?”

“My house,” I shouted back, over the thunder of his engine. “I need to drop my stuff off.”

He nodded and roared off in the direction of Lumbley Lane.

And I soon saw that even the house I’d grown up in looked different, though the only thing that had changed was the color of the trim, which my mother had had spruced up to white from its former cream.

But the place seemed…smaller, in a way.

Rob turned into the driveway and cut the engine. I hopped off the back of the bike, then took off the helmet and handed it to him.

“I’ll call you later,” I said to him. “Will you be at home or the garage?”

He’d pulled off his own helmet. Now he looked at me oddly—as if he thought he’d done something wrong, but couldn’t figure out what.

Welcome to my world.

“What about—” he started to ask.

“I said I’ll call you.” I didn’t know how else to make him understand that I needed to be alone for this next part.

He looked a little angry as he jammed his helmet back on.

“Fine,” he said. “Call me at home. That’s where I’ll be. I should check to see—I mean, maybe she came back by now.”

“She didn’t,” I said.

He studied me through the clear plastic screen of his helmet. There was something he wanted to say. That was obvious.

But he seemed to think better of it and settled for saying instead, “Fine. See you later.”

Then he turned around and drove away…

…Just as the screen door on the front porch of my house squeaked open, and my dad came out and went, “Jess? What are YOU doing here?”

I didn’t tell them the truth. My family, I mean. That I was there for Rob,or that I had my power back…for now.

Sure, all they’d have to do was call Mikey. He’d have cracked under the pressure eventually—though I’d left him with firm instructions not to say a word to anyone about Rob’s visit OR my apparently rejuvenated ability to dream.

But I knew it would be a while before Mike succumbed to the peer pressure to tell. Especially if he wanted to stay on Ruth’s good side. Which I suspected he did.

Instead—after giving our German Shepherd, Chigger, the kisses he leaped up on me and demanded in his joy at seeing me home—I just told my mom and dad that I’d missed them, and had decided to drop in for a quick visit, using some of my airline bonus miles. It’s amazing what parents will believe, if they want to believe it enough. Mine would never, I knew, shut up about it if they learned what I’dreally come home for—to find someone. Worse, to find someone related to Rob Wilkins…whom my dad had actually always liked, up until I’d made the mistake of telling him about Miss-Boobs-As-Big-As-My-Head. Even then, he’d just gone, “But, Jess, are you sure about who was doing the kissing? I mean, if Rob says she was the one who started it, and he was just an innocent bystander, it’s not fair of you to blame him for it.”

Dads. Seriously. They should just stick to handing out the allowance.

My mom was delighted to see me, but mad I hadn’t called first.

“I would’ve planned a barbecue,” she said. “A welcome home barbecue, and invited the Abramowitzes and the Thompkinses and the Blumenthals and the—”

“Yeah, that’s okay, Mom,” I said. “I’m here for a couple of days. There’s still time to plan something if you really want to.”

“We could have a brunch,” my mom said all gleefully. “On Saturday. People like brunch. And if they already have plans for the rest of the day, they can still do them, after brunch.”

“Douglas is at work?” I asked, after dumping my stuff off in my room and noticing that they’d converted his room, across the hall, to an office for my dad, who’d formerly done the books from the restaurants at the dining room table.

“Probably,” my mother said, as she fussed around, saying things like my sheets weren’t freshened up, and how I should have called so she could run them through the wash first. “Or one of those city council meetings.”

“What?” I grinned. “Douglas’s interested in politics now?”

My mother rolled her eyes. “Apparently. Well, not politics, exactly. You know they’re shutting down Pine Heights—” Pine Heights was the elementary school all of us had gone to. It was three blocks away—so close, we’d come home for lunch every day—a building constructed during the Depression by WPA workers, ancient enough that it still had two entrances, one for boys and one for girls.

At least according to the scrollwork over the doorways. No one, when I’d attended it, had ever paid any attention to the signs.

“There aren’t enough children in the neighborhood anymore to fill it,” my mother said. “So the school board’s shutting it down. The city wants to convert it to luxury condos. But Douglas and Tasha”—Tasha was Douglas’s girlfriend and the daughter of our neighbors across the street—“have some big idea about—well, he’ll tell you about it when you see him, I’m sure. It’s all he ever talks about anymore.”

“Maybe I’ll stop by the store and see him,” I said. “If you think he’s working now.”

“He probably is,” my mother said, rolling her eyes. “It’s all he ever does. Besides this Pine Heights thing.”

Which was funny, because just a few years ago, none of us would have believed that Douglas would ever do something as normal as hold down a job. It hadn’t been that long ago, really, that we’d all despaired of Douglas ever even leaving his room, much less supporting himself.

“Invite him for dinner,” my mother called as I banged out of the house. “Tasha, too, if she’s around. I’ll make your father grill some steaks.”

“Hey,” my dad yelled from his office-slash-Douglas’s old room. “I heard that.”

I left them squabbling and went down to the garage. Opening the barnlike doors—our house is a converted farmhouse, and almost a century old like most of the houses in our neighborhood—I went in and found what I’d been looking for: the baby-blue 1968 Harley my dad had bought me, as he’d promised he would, for high school graduation.

Not that I’d specified a year or color. Any bike would have suited me fine. The fact that he’d gotten me such a perfectly pimped ride had really been the icing on what was already some pretty delicious cake.

Still, with one thing or another—the war, and then my acceptance to Juilliard—I had only gotten to ride her a couple of times. I hadn’t dared bring her to New York, where she’d have been stolen in—well, a New York minute. She was a real beauty, the color of the sky on an Easter Sunday—not quite turquoise, but not exactly teal, either. I loved her with an affection that probably wasn’t normal. I mean, for an inanimate object.

But she was just so perfect, with her cream-colored leather seat and shiny chrome trim. My dad had gotten me a matching cream-colored helmet, which I put on after dragging her out from behind my mom’s trim paint cans.

A second later, I was gunning the engine. It rumbled like the finely tuned instrument it was. Four months of disuse had done nothing to dull this beauty queen.

And then I was out on the street with her, feeling the tension that had settled in my neck—around about the time I’d opened my apartment door to find Rob there—finally starting to dissipate.

There is nothing like riding a really finely tuned motorcycle to get rid of stress.

But instead of turning towards downtown, where Douglas’s comic-book store was, I turned Blue Beauty—yeah, okay, so I’d named my bike. I think we’ve already established that I’m a freak—towards the newer part of town, over by the big, multimillion dollar hospital they’d finished a few years ago. New apartment buildings had sprung up all around it to house the several thousand people who worked there.

Not the doctors, of course. They all lived in my neighborhood. The orderlies and nurses lived in this one.

Hannah Snyder, as I’d learned from my dream about her, was crashing in Apartment 2T at the Fountain Bleu complex just behind the Kroger Sav-On, right next to the hospital. I was surprised to see that there really was a fountain at the Fountain Bleu apartment complex. It was kind of a lame one, but it bubbled away in front of the complex in a somewhat soothing manner. All it needed, really, was a couple of swans, and it would be like the real Fountain Bleu it was named for, over in France. Or wherever.

I parked the bike and stored my helmet in its carryall. Then I strolled across the parking lot and thumped once on the door to 2T.

“Who is it?” a girl’s voice asked.

“Me,” I said. “Open up, Hannah.”

She had no idea, of course, who I was. Not yet, anyway.

Still, I’ve found, over the years, if you answerMe whenever anybody wants to know who it is, they’ll nearly always open the door, thinkingthey ’re the dumb one for not recognizing your voice.

Rob’s little sister stared at me a full five seconds before she realized I wasn’t the “me” she’d been expecting.

But she definitely recognized me. Even though we’d never had the pleasure of making each other’s acquaintance before. I guess she was up on her local history. Either that, or Rob had a picture of me somewhere.

Okay, probably she recognized me from TV.

She said a very bad word and, looking panicked, tried to slam the door in my face.

But it’s hard to slam the door in someone’s face when they’re holding a motorcycle-booted foot against the door frame.

Seven

“Better let me in,” I said.

Hannah made a face.

But she let go of the door.

“I can’t believe this,” she was grumbling as I pushed the door all the way open and invited myself into a stark white, fairly small living-room-dining-room-den combo. The paint still smelled fresh, and all of the furniture—a cheap leather set that reeked of no-payment-down—looked brand-new.

“He said you two were broken up.” Hannah looked hot-cheeked and accusing.

“Yeah,” I said. “We are.”

I noticed a large-screen TV against the wall. She’d been watching Dr. Phil’s most recentFamily in Crisis . I wondered if she’d noticed any similarities between their lives and her own. I found the remote on the couch and flicked it off.

“Where is he?” I asked her.

“Who?”

Hannah had started to cry. Not because she was unhappy, I didn’t think. I think because she was frustrated. And maybe a little scared. It’s no joke when America’s foremost psychic hunts you down. Especially when she’s wearing motorcycle boots.

I guess Hannah doesn’t read the papers much or she’d have known—you know. That I hadn’t exactly been in top form lately.

I thought about telling her that she ought to be gratified that I’d found her at all. She was my first find in over a year. That had to be an honor, of some kind.

Except that to her, it probably wasn’t.

“You know who I’m talking about,” I said to her. “Where is he?”

“My brother?” Hannah sniffed. “How should I know? At the stupid garage, I suppose.”

“Not your brother,” I said. “Your boyfriend.”

Hannah’s mascara-rimmed eyes widened in an unconvincing attempt at looking innocent.

“What boyfriend?” she asked. “I don’t have a—”

“Hannah,” I said, “I didn’t come a thousand miles to listen to lies. Somebody’s paying the rent on this apartment. So tell me where he is, or I swear to God I’ll have Child Protective Services here in five minutes flat.”

I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket to illustrate the seriousness of my intent. Although truthfully, I didn’t exactly have the number for Child Protective Services on my speed dial. I’d stolen that line fromJudging Amy , one of Ruth’s favorite TV shows, which she makes me watch in syndication at least five times a week. It is oddly addictive.

Hannah seemed to realize she was up against a force greater than her own, since she said with a defeated sniff, “He’s at work. He’s very important, you know.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet,” I said sarcastically. “What does he do?”

“His dad owns this place,” Hannah said with a flicker of In-Your-Face-Girlfriend ’tude. “The apartment complex, I mean. He helps run it.”