Free 08 Illusion by Frank Peretti Page B

care of her. It had to be the hand of God—but she lied to make it happen.
    She slouched, weak with shame.
    So what if she’d trusted the miracle and told the truth? “Hi, I just escaped from the mental ward at the hospital and I wonder if you could give me a ride home? It’s out of town—way out of town.” Maybe they would have said yes anyway because they were angels God had sent. Maybe they would have had a complete change of clothes for her, too, just her size, including a decent pair of shoes, and maybe they would have taken her to North Lakeland Road and it would have looked just the way it was supposed to look and not … like this.
    She looked up at the real estate office. This was the landmark that caught her eye, that made her tell her friends-for-the-moment they could let her off here. The two-story farmhouse had new siding, new windows, a new roof, perfect planting beds, and a paved parking lot where the front yard used to be, but she knew this house. Her best friend, Joanie Gittel, used to live here. They met when they started first grade and waited together at the bus stop right across the road. Howard Road.
    Mandy looked across the four-lane street. There was a city bus stop where her school bus stop used to be, and a sign on the corner: Howard Way. The name of the cross street was North Lakeland Avenue. She could have guessed that from the name of the realty that had moved into Joanie’s house: Lakeland Realty.
    Her mind came to a standstill. All she could do was look, and look again, but nothing clicked. There was no figuring it out, and right now God wasn’t helping her.
    She went to the curb, looked both ways just as Mommy and Daddy always taught her, and hurried across with the first opening in the traffic. The bus stop was a small shelter with a concrete bench, a trash can, and a posted bus schedule. She sat on the bench and looked back across the street.
    She remembered. Mrs. Gittel would watch from that front door until the bus came, and wave as it carried Mandy and Joanie and thirty other kids away for the day. There used to be an old garage right next to the house where Mr. Gittel kept his ’57 Ford, and there used to be a big apple tree in the front yard—Gravensteins. Daddy built the bus stop that used to be here and even put a cedar shake roof on it. She remembered it being about the same size, but she was remembering it through a child’s eyes, so it was probably smaller. There was no sidewalk then, only the gravel shoulder, the ditch, the white paddock fence, and the hayfield.
    She stopped, troubled at herself. She was remembering. She was thinking words such as “then” and “used to be.”
    She got to her feet, reining in her thoughts, putting on the mental brakes. This wasn’t the real now, this was some kind of delusion, and it would break, it would dissolve away and this whole nightmare would be over. She just had to find her old mailbox, her old driveway …
    No! She stomped her foot. Not her old driveway, her driveway ! Not her old mailbox, her mailbox ! And the bus stop that Daddy built was sun-bleached and leaning a bit, but four, five … however many days it was ago … it was here, and there was no four-lane street and the Gittels’ house was still their house and it was gray, not forest green.
    She hurried up the sidewalk along the two-lane avenue that North Lakeland Road had become, holding her hand to the side of her face to block her eyes from seeing concrete, asphalt, parked cars, businesses. No, they weren’t really there. She was on her way home, and there was a hayfield—she could imagine it so clearly—and a white paddock fence and hay cut short and a ditch where little frogs floated with just their eyes and noses out of the water, and a field with Daddy’s horses and a paddock with llamas watching her come home with those big brown eyes.
    She tried to run but could only shuffle-run in the slippers. Cars passed on her left and they were so close, so noisy.