Is

...could it be? Sam's actually written something?

The pickup veers off the Interstate and onto a dusty gravel road, becoming a rusty blue speck a ten-mile radius of grassy wasteland- a grassland parallelling the universe in that it seems to constantly expand with every off-kilter distance marker we pass.

This drive is sort of being like sucked into a black whole- the future’s bleak and I’m feeling more and more desperate with every flattened raccoon the truck thumps over, thinking, Heck, they’re better off now.

I rest my head on the back of my wrist, punching myself in the jaw everytime the vehicle pops up as the road becomes wilder, more unpredictable.

Shirley takes her right hand off the steering wheel and maneuvers it around the stickshift, resting it on my knee. It’s worn and cracked and a few of the fingernails are chipped in the corners, making them look sort of like mini-ski jumps.

The ski jumps bother me and I have to fight the desparate urge to wrestle my nail clippers out of my backpack and chop them down to cross-country proportions.

“It’s gonna be all right, honey, you’ll see,” she says, cracking her gum. Wintergreen; I can smell it on her breath.

I mutter the standard “I know” and then go back to looking out the window. She moves her hand away and pushes her sunglasses back up the bridge of her nose with her little finger.

“And you’ll get to meet Gabriel,” she nods to herself and taps her hand against the steering wheel. “He’s a sweet little darlin’, I’ll tell you that much. Everybody likes him.”

The first thing that pops into my mind is Hick With Mental Deficiencies, which I know isn’t fair to Whatshisname, but you really can’t help yourself when it comes to first impressions. It does nothing to try and censor them- doing in such only results in a major backfiring. I think of it like giving a cat a bath, a prime example of a situation that only bad can arise from.

Shirley’s hands do-se-do over the steering wheel as she turns onto a different dirt lane that’s obviously kept in a little better shape than the one we had just driven over. Tall prairie grass sways in the wind and curves inward, forming a tunnel that threatens to eat us alive. It seems like the whole earth is in three big stripes on some crazy sweater- wide blue sky, faded-looking grasses, gray dirt, in succession.

“We’re almost there!” Shirley squeals, with enough enthusiasm to make up for my lack thereof.

“Cool,” is my response. I speak mainly to feel my jawbone rubbing against the palm of my hand.

Shirley speeds up a little and the grasses fly by the sides of the truck with a soft whir until the road widens and up ahead I can see a house. A house Martha Stewart-types would call ‘quaint’, or ‘charming’; with its cute little veranda and crimson trim against cream wood siding. At the moment, to me it’s about as cute as the Gorgon sisters on heroin.

The front door flies open and out barrels an avalanche of blonde and fitted Husker t-shirts on…a nice-looking boy. No, no, not nice, but nice. So nice I can’t come up with some sort of farmhand joke to counteract my state of shock.

Shirley’s window makes a low humming noise as she rolls it down, indicating for the boy to come to her. He complies with a gigantically noticeable confident male-model-like swagger in his step.

Stereotypically enough, he ends Drool Fest with a hair flick. Yes, I’m serious, a hair flick- truly turning a signature homosexualist move into a…a…I’m not quite sure what, but whatever it is, it’s as straight as two straight things.

So straight I can’t form coherent sentences anymore.

“Hey, Shirl!” he says, crossing his arms and leaning up against the truck.

Shirley squeals and kisses him on the cheek. “Hey, Gabey! Did you take the cookies out of the oven?”

He sniffs the air, making him look like some oversized, rather

gorgeous Retriever. “Yup,” he says, hair-flicking and grinning simultaneously.

Shirley giggles. One can’t quite put into words the sight of a woman in her forties fully setting aside any dignity she has and hitting on a fourteen-year-old. “Oh, Gabey, you’re such a laugh!”

A laugh? Yes, ‘Shirl’, he’s hilarious.

But still nice-looking.

Shirley takes off her sunglasses and folds them together with plastic-on-plastic clacking sound. “Could you help Anna with her bags and show her the room?”

He flashes me a smile and heads toward the back of the truck, whistling to himself.

My jeans are fairly plastered to the backs of my thighs from the three-hour sit-and-stare since the McDonald’s stop in Ogalala, and my fingers are still a little sticky from an incident with a ketchup packet missing the little crimped end- not exactly helping the inevitable fact that I’m going to have to deal with Gabey-Woo and his one-woman fan club until the distant future when my parents become something normal and safe- say librarians, or professional knitters- and don’t have to leave me behind, ever.

I’m praying there’s someone different, someone who doesn’t fit the College Football Fan/Sandhills Rancher mold in this family, even if it perhaps does turn out to be the dog.

Gabriel reappears on my side, dragging my cheap blue Walmart-purchased suitcase behind him, one of my backpacks slung over his shoulder. He stops and pulls open the side door, handle landing with a thud when it snaps back.

“After you, mademoiselle,” he says with a Colgate Total-commerical-worthy smile. I’m going to have to try hard to find something to have to brood about now- he seems to be one of those ‘upbeat’ people, the people you’re not supposed to hate.

As soon as I press the button on my seatbelt it flies back with a loud thwack, like we’re in some sort of battle-ready Air Force cockpit instead of a lowly vintage Ford.

Gabe waits for me to step down and yawn before holding out his hand. “Gabriel Mattson, at your service.”

I smile a little and shake it.

“Anna Harper.”

“Excellent!” he exclaims, looking to be on the verge of hysterics.

I never knew that my name was amusing, but apparently out here everything is different. Perhaps it’s not me, perhaps he’s on something, but we’ll never know.

The twenty-foot drag to the front door is hard with my unsteady leg muscles contracting and making me stagger every once in awhile, like I’ve been away months at sea exploring unknown lands and I’ve just landed in the middle of the prairie. I step up onto the front porch and hold the screen door open for Gabe, who tugs my suitcase up the stairs with several consecutive jerks and thuds. God knows I may just have packed 400-year-old china vases in there…

It smells like baked goods. I lift my head up to take in my surroundings.

It’s possibly quite hard for the average homo sapien to envision this, but please bear with me. The only possible way the front room could be as it is without severe decorative confusion on Shirley’s behalf would be that the Gingerbread Man was suddenly resurrected and layed seige upon the house; binding and gagging the residents of the house as he sprinkled special, magical ‘awful décor’ gumdrops all throughout the room right before their eyes as they writhed in agony on the gingham-covered couch.

Apparently now they’ve just been hardened to the effects over time and are wholly blithe to the true horrors of ‘country taste’.

I edge carefully around a frilly heart-shaped pincushion hanging like a mobile from the ceiling and lower my eyes, following the worn piece of Velcro dragging behind my suitcase.

To be continued...hopefully soon. WAHOO! I'm consistent!