Dear Diary,

Even as I write this, I can see how futile words are. How impossible it will be to express what happened on paper, how I felt. I can describe physically what happened to me as I turned away from Andrea’s closed door and headed back toward the ute, tugging the dog along with me. My body temperature skyrocketed. My teeth locked together. A pressure swelled in my brain so fast and so heavy that my eyes were clouded with green exploding spots and splashes of red color. I almost forgot about the animal altogether. Got into the car without it, found the lead, yanked it up by the neck and threw it onto the passenger seat. The mutt’s howling made things worse. I couldn’t breathe. I drew the car away from the curb and roared down the road.

People talk about blacking out with anger, acting without knowing what you’ve done. Yes, there was some of that. I drove, going nowhere, faster than I could help but not fast enough, apparently, to attract any attention. I got onto highways. Got off again. But for the most part, I was there watching, as something, some black and swirling collection of smoke, another body, climbed into mine and I willingly let it take control. I surrendered, and the fury drove. I was helpless to do anything but crawl into a corner of my own being and scream about how perfectly it had all been about to be, and how viciously it had been stolen from me, my dream. My one.

Penny. Penny. Penny. Penny.

Did Andrea know how long I had been looking for Penny?

She was too stupid. People like that can’t comprehend that a soul could search for another soul beyond time, beyond physicality, beyond Earth. To get in between the meeting of two souls was the worst crime. The most vile and evil crime. I shook with it. Outrage. I was demented. The dog crawled into the footwell of the passenger seat and whimpered, panted. I ignored it. I drove and drove, my body hard as a rock in the driver’s seat, rigid with pain.

Only the sight of her drew me out of it. A flash, a shock of white at the corner of my vision. I reeled in my seat, glimpsed her out of the back window standing alone at the bus stop kicking dirt. Like a bubble bursting, the anger rose and split and I was flooded with relief. So fleeting, the distraction. All my muscles relaxed. I gulped air, turned the car down a side road and crept back toward where I had seen her. There was a strip of bush behind the bus stop, thick brambles, tangles of wild unflowering bougainvillea covered in thorns. I got out of the car and stood looking at her through the brush.

She could have been Penny with that hair. A hand curled at her side, slender white fingers picking at the belt loops on her jeans. When she turned and glanced up the road I saw that she was not Penny at all but a pointier, frailer version. Straight, skeptical eyebrows. Big lips. I hardly got the details. The fury was climbing again. Rising, rising. I was shaking. I watched cars whizzing past.

I was beginning to understand what I would do. Had known all along, really, from the moment I pulled off the road. Maybe it had been there longer, the plan. Maybe it was there when I wanted to buy the van. Maybe it was there when I was a teenager, dreaming. It was only fully formed now. The thoughts were coming clearer. Coming with words. With cautions. With whispered promises.

A car pulled over next to the girl suddenly. I watched, shaking violently, as a big man got out, balked at the sight of the girl standing there. The two examined each other. I crouched, gripped the trunk of a nearby tree with one hand, my mind screaming.

The big man fiddled with his car as more cars whizzed past on the road. Said something to her. Her voice tinkled back, too soft to be much more than baby-bird murmurs through the bush. The big man raked a hand through his black hair, waved goodbye and left.

The highway was empty. I went back to the ute, grabbed the leash and pulled hard. The dog fell, squealed, began limping on a front paw. Good. I had to move fast now. I tugged the dog toward the bush, grabbed it by two hanks of white fur and threw it into the bramble.

The dog yelped. Struggled. Limped.

I watched.

She’d turned away from the road. Blue eyes searching the bush, finding the dog there, trapped, injured, the bright red collar twisted up in the branches. I hid behind a tree. Listened as she neared, her soft voice coming over the screech of cicadas in the trees all around us.

“Oh, puppy!” she said. “Poor puppy!”