I asked myself one hundred times what's the reason behind all of this, but with no luck. Sleeping felt lovely, and by the time my mother woke me up in the morning, I'd convinced myself that everything had been a dream, just like these memories I have with Allison. “Austin, wake up! In 30 minutes we're leaving to Nana” she yelled through the door.

It's both sad and humiliating. It's probably a thousand times better to be a drug addict than to fall in love with someone who doesn't exist. These ideas go through phases for me; sometimes I want to punch myself in the face and sometimes I don't.

The last thing I need right now is making all this nonsense public, because that will never allow me to build a better reputation. I was determined to change something in my life, and this was the first step.

I rubbed my eyes slowly as I woke up, staying on the side of my bed and feeling like I just opened them after a big party. Everything seemed unreal, mystical, and far away, as if I were watching a movie rather than my own recollections from the previous night. My uncontrollable attention jumped after the notebook, checking to see if everything was in order.

There it was, open after I knew for sure I have closed it last night. “What if my mom saw it? What if someone read it? There is no reason for which to be open” I thought myself. I reached out for it and what my eyes saw, will never be ok. After what I stated the other day, "Dear Austin" was written on the next page.

"It's me, Allison," she writes, "although I think you already knew that from my handwriting. I wanted to tell you something for a long time, but no matter how hard I tried, the words wouldn't come out." My soul fled from my body as my heart missed a beat. Even with my teary eyes, I was able to distinguish the handwriting.

"You might assume I'm bringing you awful news, but on the contrary! A few weeks ago, my parents decided to sell the house and for our surprise, we found really fast someone willing to buy this old home. When it came time to choose a new place to stay in, though, I couldn't help but suggest a few alternatives in your neighborhood.

Fast-forward a little and here we are! I moved a few streets away from you in secret. My love, I'll be waiting for you to pay me a visit as soon as feasible. The back of the card has the address.”                                                     

I checked it out and it was there. Obviously, this is some stupid joke and I do not know who would do something like this... I tried everything I could to keep this a secret, but it somehow spread like a disease. Normally, I would have been delighted at the chance to meet her, but in this case, I simply closed the book and tossed it away, forgetting about it. Or at least that was what I wanted to do…

“This doesn’t make any sense. It can’t be” I thought myself many times while I was in the car. It always takes us a good 20 minutes to get to grandma, but at least I got time to think. "Perhaps this is simply a terrible joke, or maybe I wrote it myself... maybe." And that sounded like a fantastic concept! Maybe I did wrote it in my sleep, along with the strange glow-like thing I saw.

“Austin, honey! Come here and help grandma!” said Nana as I was putting all the leaves in a bag. Turns out, she still thinks that she’s able to carry all those heavy boxes.

“Thank you, sweetie. Put them in the garage.” I distracted myself from my own life doing these life improvements for Nana. She is actually really old and there are some stuff in the rooms from the floor above that are never used, but most of the time serve as something to be cleaned. We decided to take all of them down in boxes since she won’t use them anymore.

“Won’t you miss all of these?” I asked her as I was getting closer to take the next box.

“No, no… In a way it feels like I am packing my bags to finally leave.” She gave a warm smile.

“Where?”

"You know," she said, pointing to the sky. "Perhaps it is time for me to leave after all."

“No, don’t say that! I don’t want to lose you…” She laughed at me.

"Well, there might be someone waiting for me up there."

“Who?” I inquired.

"Your papa, of course."

"You never tried to marry someone else..."

"What for?! Honey, I've always adored my husband. He was my life's love, and there was no way I could ever do something like this to him, knowing he was waiting for me."

"Why so sure?"

"As you know, I was pregnant with your mother when he left and fought in the Second World War. He said to me "If I don't come back, know that I will love you forever, and I hope we will find each other again" right before our last kiss. "If there is something up there, I'll wait. Don't worry about me, take care of our only daughter, my love." But, of course, I didn't believe him because I was so confident that he would return home."

"And he never did…"

"And he said he'd be there waiting for me." She said this as she was on her way to get some tea. "I'm sure that jerk is keeping an eye on us right now." And then she offered me a cup of it, which prompted me to reach out.

"Nana, that's so sweet..."

"Enough talking about me. How is Allison?" she asked as she poured herself the hot tea, but I immediately choked.

While the cough refused to go away, I asked what was she talking about. She went on to say, "She is the sweetest girl I've ever seen." Meanwhile, I was dying, but I couldn't tell if it was the tea which is going to kill me first or what just happened.

Something was not right, I felt it.