She had been mistaken. She could feel the realization settling over her. The life she had been traveling toward - imagining herself into - the ideas and expectations that had been so solid only a few weeks ago - this life had been erased, and the numb feeling crept up...
Her future was like a city she had never visited. A city on the other side of the country, and she was driving down the road, with all her possessions packed up in the backseat of the car, and the route was clearly marked on her map, and then she stopped at a rest area and saw that the place she was headed to wasn't there any longer. The town she was driving to had vanished - perhaps had never been there - and if she stopped to ask the way, the gas station attendant would look at her blankly. He wouldn't even know what she was talking about.
"I'm sorry, miss," he'd say gently. "I think you must be mistaken. I never heard of that place."
A sense of sundering.
In one life, there was a city you were on your way to. In another, it was just a place you'd invented.
from Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon
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