As I put the notebook down on my desk I ran my finger down the middle of the cover, wiping off a thin layer of dust. For a moment I was afraid to open it, all of those images rushed back through my head, for some reason I was afraid that when I opened the notebook it would be like the dream. But the more I looked at it the more I felt I needed to look inside, so I opened to the first page.
When I had looked in it at the park I skimmed over it for the most part, but this time I looked at each page slowly and carefully. I probably took at least fifteen minutes to look at each of the first few pages; I worked out all of the same problems Tommy had, I made note of the mistakes he made, how he wrote his numbers, where there were smudges and eraser marks. After a while it felt like I was watching him write the problems, I could see him jot down the problem quickly, then watched as he worked it out, speeding up and slowing down depending on how well he knew what he was doing. Sometimes the numbers were written a little differently, more smooth and deliberate, as though someone, his mother perhaps, or a friend or tutor, was explaining what to do. Other times an answer would be wrong, and there would be a red circle crossed out next to the problem, sharply but neatly pressed into the page. I could sometimes see the indentations these made on the pages behind them, and I would trace them with my finger, feeling these little valleys on the paper.
On every page there were those numbers that didn't make sense to me, even on the pages where I hadn't noticed them at first. At first glance I had assumed these to also be Tommy's work, but after I took a closer look at them I noticed that they were neater than his numbers, as though someone had gone to great trouble to make sure they weren't crooked or smudged. To be honest, I don't think I've even seen numbers that neat before that weren't printed off of a computer. I tried much harder to make sense of them this time, I compared them to their spots on the page, the other problems on that page, and the string on the pages before and after them, but I still couldn't find a pattern.
I had started reading the notebook around 4:00 in the morning, but while I was looking over it I wasn't really aware of how much time passed. I never spent less than fifteen minutes on a single page, I'm sure, but on some I took even longer, and I would sometimes go back and forth between pages while trying to figure out the pattern with the number strings. Every now and then I would get a weird feeling on the back of my neck, too, that would make me pause for a moment. A couple of times I even got up and looked out the window, though I never saw anybody down on the street. So time passed much more quickly than I had expected. I was on the last page before Tommy's first drawing when my alarm clock went off, I had spent almost four hours reading that notebook. I was a bit upset that I didn't even get around to looking at any of the pictures, and for a brief moment I considered flipping to the last page and seeing if the map from my dream was still there. But I held off, if it was there I didn't want to be thinking about it all day while I was in class or at work, and if it wasn't then it didn't really make any difference.
When I left my room John noticed I looked tired, and asked me if anything was wrong. I thought about telling him about the notebook, or the dream, but for some reason I didn't really feel like I should before I got a closer look at the notebook. School and work both went o.k. for the most part, even though I was tired from such little sleep.
I've been obsessing about the notebook even more now, I think that I'm going to look through it again soon, for some reason I feel like I really need to see if I can recognize anything important in the drawings.
