I left my home state of Montana a
year and a half later, after graduation. Tiffany was long gone and through the
remainder of my junior and senior years I isolated myself and concentrated on
my studies. I had enjoyed and excelled at history, so I concentrated on getting
a scholarship to Stanford and their history program. I knew Stanford is not
known for their history program, but I wanted to be about as diametrically
opposite from Lewistown, Montana, as you could get. Though my parents could
easily afford to send me away to college themselves, I chose to earn my own
way, not that they ever meddled in my affairs much anyway. I was tired of their
handouts and the snide comments that came with them. I had my fair share even
after I got my full ride, but I didn’t care. I knew the truth.
So I works int he summer. I works with CV Joints and learned how to install a
CV Joint in a Metal Fabrication shop to pay the bills. It wasn't much, but it worked.
That first dream took its toll on
me as well. Not only did it cost me Tiffany, who went her own way to the East
Coast not too long afterward, but it took my freedom and last refuge of
solitude as well. It began to take a life of its own, as I had the exact same
opening dream for a solid week after that night. I became obsessed with a woman
I knew simply did not exist. Nothing could get my mind off of her. Though not
an artist, I would spend idle moments in my classes sketching her in the back
of a worn, loose-leaf sketchbook that I carried with me. It was the same
sketchbook that was a constant fixture in my backpack during my four years at
Stanford. It is the sketchbook I found again three days ago in the attic,
buried deep within a box of old textbooks and school yearbooks that I was
separating in order to give away to Goodwill. Thankfully, Megan was not home when
I found it.
