IN THE MIDDLE OF THE UNKNOWN

The even sound of wheels rolling over gravel was satisfying for James to hear from the safety of a smooth car seat, strapped between the rough belt. The clinical scent of leather still filled the inside of the vehicle, but outside, the expansive fields, scattered puddles of blue water, and the clear sky with clouds that hopped straight from an oil painting felt like an escape from the stuffy space inside. James stared at the underdeveloped road up front with half-open eyes. No other cars or people were nearby. It was empty until a vanishing point, and the expansive grasslands made the entire world appear devoid of any other physical being than James Matherfold. Her eyes were blurry once she opened them wide, and the ends of her eyelashes felt glued together as if she had just awoken from a long slumber. James looked at the wheel, her hands clutching it tightly, and soon her insides turned hollow. Her foot slammed on the brakes abruptly to stop a car that had run out of fuel at that moment.

She punched the wheel, and James screamed as the horn blared through the desolate road. Pain radiated through her hand and body; she clenched her fist close to her chest, her eyes squeezed shut, until the pain subsided. Once her eyelids flickered open, the horrible realisation of what had happened came crashing down. James slept on the wheel of her car after leaving work. She must have driven straight through the night based on the clear morning sky. James flung the door open and stepped into the cool air. While squatting on the floor, she ran her fingers vigorously through her auburn hair, scraping her scalp.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she muttered while smacking her temples with her palm. From the stress and fatigue of the past month, James found herself in a perpetual state of exhaustion. This time, sleep consumed her in the most unfortunate place: behind the wheel. She exhaled sharply and jerked herself out of her seat to inspect her car for any marks that may, unfortunately, show there was damage done elsewhere.

James held her hand to her wildly beating heart as she circled the silver Cadillac, exhaling gently as she finished walking around the perimeter to find the shiny exterior unscathed. No one else must have been hurt, and James was clearly scratch-free. There was drool plastered to the side of her lip, and her hair was greasy from sitting all day yesterday in front of the computer, but she was alive. Alive, but lost, with a car that ran out of gas, and based on a glance at her phone, her battery would clock out in a matter of moments. The red line on the battery icon made James’s heart sink further—she didn’t have a charger.

She slept at the wheel, managed to remain safe all through the night, but the miracle left her lost in an unknown place with nothing around for what felt like thousands of miles.

She pressed her back hard on the warm car door and slid down to the gravel in stark white pants she would never normally get dirty. Without a cue, James began wailing like a wounded animal, unable to control the excruciating pain inside her chest and in her mind from thoughts that kept bursting through a dam.

“This isn’t what I signed up for!” She cried and screamed until, from the corner of her eye, she saw a tent perched in the middle of the wild grass and large puddles of water. Her cries soon faded as she observed the perfectly placed tent from her seat on the ground.

James mopped the tear streaks from her face and found her way to the green tent she must have missed earlier, although she felt sure it wasn't there in the first place. As her feet took her closer to the oddly placed tent with black stripes and splotches of mud outside, the zipper of the mesh door being unwound stopped James in her tracks. A man with golden hair in tight curls, and skin so soft he must have been made from silkworms, stepped outside. She carefully inched closer as the man in a red flannel and khakis sprawled himself on the grass before the tent and stared at the picturesque sky.

As James timidly went forward, the sound of crunching grass under pointed heels made the golden man look towards James, who once again stopped in her tracks, eyes widened as if he was about to jump at her with an axe. The expression he gave startled James in a way she found unexpected. He smiled as if they were friends who met each other from time to time. She couldn’t help but allow her lips to tilt upwards ever so slightly.

“Hello there,” he said, and James noticed his canine tooth was slightly crooked on the left side. She looked around, and there was no one else to be seen. His normalcy at her arrival left James stunted in her spot.

“Hi?” She said as a question. “Umm, is there anyone around?”

“I’m here,” he closed his eyes and looked up to soak in the sun that was gloriously bright in the sky.

“I meant, is there anyone else around? I’m lost, my car is out of fuel. Do you have a car? Would it be too much to ask to get a ride home?” James ran her hands through her hair so vigorously that a few strands were plucked straight from her scalp.

“What’s wrong?” He asked.

“I told you, I’m lost, I have no more fuel.” James let out a pithy laugh.

“Come sit down, tell me what’s wrong.”

“I’ve told you,” James said through gritted teeth. There was no way to get through this golden man. “I need a ride! I need to get home.” James nearly screamed, and her breath began to stagger.

“Are you in a rush? To get home, I mean?” He asked with his head tilted adorably to the right.

James parted her lips, but nothing came out. She only had her empty home waiting for her to arrive. “No, not really.” She sighed with defeat.

“Come, then, sit.” James followed his hand gesture and plopped down on the dry, prickly grass. “What’s your name?” He asked while gazing at the sky.

“James,” she said.

“He looked at her with a raised eyebrow.

“James Matherfold.” She added her last name, believing that was what he wanted to hear and hoping he didn’t find her name odd for a girl, as most people did. Her body shuddered while those puzzled faces—from learning her name for the first time—came to mind.

“I’m Peter.” He turned his head back up to the sky.

“Peter?” She whispered his name as a question.

“Yes?”

“No, ermm,” she cleared her throat, “what about your last name?”

“Oh, right.” He chuckled. “Peter Bold. Now that we know each other’s full names, what exactly is it that you didn’t sign up for?”

“What?” James furrowed her eyebrows.

“What were you talking about when you screamed, THIS ISN’T WHAT I SIGNED UP FOR!” Peter mimicked James’s outburst and could barely stifle his laugh throughout.

“Oh, you saw all of that.” James’s cheeks burned. “Well, just all of this. Ending up here.”

“You mean, physically here, in the middle of this grassland.”

“Umm, yes…and no. I don’t know.” James was losing track of her thoughts. “Well, I have recently been going through a lot." She began spilling everything onto this man who felt more like an aura with his glowing, silky skin. "I broke up with my partner. We were together for eight years, and things just ended abruptly. I moved out and now I live alone. I realized I barely have any friends, apparently.” James laughed nonsensically. “I also hate my job! The only reason I survived that job was because I felt happy with Damien. My partner. Well, now there is no Damien, and my job is unbearable when I have to come home every night to an empty apartment.” James said everything in one breath and immediately slouched her shoulders. Just as Peter parted his mouth to say something, James started once more, “I’ve been so tired that I fell asleep on the wheel and woke up lost and without a single way to get back home. See how lucky I am?” James rolled her eyes.

“That’s pretty great luck!” Peter smiled.

“No, no, I was being sarcastic about that.” She felt the need to clarify.

“Well, I wasn’t. You slept on the wheel, which I hope never happens again, but you woke up alive and completely unscathed based on the pristine state those white pants are in.”

James could barely match Peter’s lively tone or feel conscious about her pants as her face found itself buried in her palms. “I think getting hit by a truck would have been better.” All those thoughts of Damien, her terrible job, her silent apartment, were like a whirlpool inside her head.

“You don’t mean that,” Peter said with a gentle shake of his head. He was now cross-legged in front of James, and she noticed his dark blue jeans were covered in grass stains. The scent of dewdrops and crushed flower petals wafted off of him as he inched closer.

“Maybe I do,” James whispered, inhaling his sweet smell that felt oddly like home.

“No, I know you don’t.”

“Why is that?” James wondered how a person she had just met could say that so definitively about her.

“Because you don’t know what's coming next, and you don’t want to miss it if it’s good.”

“What if it isn’t good?” James snapped, trying to rid her mind of his sweet smell and the feeling that she had known this man for a long time.

“What if it is? And if it is, it’ll be worth the wait.” Peter stood up and extended his hand out towards James. She gingerly took it; the warmth radiating from his palm went right through her body, filling her with the hope she thought was long gone.

“Even if it is,” James started, “I’m lost here, and no other car has driven by. I could hitchhike down the road, and then what? Maybe a car comes by, or maybe I come face to face with a, I don’t know, cheetah. Or maybe I just find myself more and more lost, and then I'll die from starvation.”

Peter began to laugh hysterically as James gaped at his lack of empathy.

“What’s so funny?”

“You’re scenarios. Anyway, none of them are going to come true.”

“Why are you so sure about that? We just met?” James stared at his golden curls and sparkling blue eyes, which had all the answers swirling inside if only she dared to take the plunge.

“Because there is another scenario right in front of you.”

“Yeah, right. There is nothing in front of me except for miles and miles of stupid grass! And you, of course.” James looked the other way to stop herself from saying more.

“No, look closer, James.”

“No, there is nothing here.” James’s body stiffened from irritation towards Peter, who was acting as if there wasn’t a worry in the world. She was lost, and everything around her was crumbling. It felt like this was the moment when there would be nothing left to salvage.

She turned her head away from him with red eyes. Her burning tears paused on their own shortly as she stopped on the spot. The mud beneath her was soft, and her pointed stilettos began sinking into the earth, becoming muddied and grounded.

Right in front was an emerald green sign pointing towards a solution to all the mess. The emerald arrow on a slanted silver rod presented the way to a gas station close by. She turned her head towards Peter, and her jaw was partially dropped.

“Did you see it?” He asked her with a tilted smile. His golden curls pushed back slightly from the warm breeze drifting their way.

“I did.” She sounded defensive, certain the sign wasn’t there before. Her lips pursed into a tight line. “Well, I’ll go and get some gas then,” she scoffed.

***

She trudged along a pathway with a plastic carton in hand. Her gaze followed the ground beneath where a few odd wildflowers tickled her ankles and bare feet, rid of the stilettos that managed to bruise and tear the tips of her bunions.

The gas station wasn’t far, and the whole while she wondered who exactly Peter Bold was. She new his name and cherished his advice, but all the while James didn’t know—or ask—who he was. As the gas station came into view, a lone car drove by, and nothing else resembling civilization was in the vicinity. James blinked multiple times as she filled up her carton and wondered if Peter was a criminal running from the authorities or if he was simply escaping his old life. A life she didn’t know anything about.

James, now even more anxious, twisted her dwindling hair into a knot, hoping that her clammy neck could catch some air under the hot sun.

After her trip to the gas station was complete, she hurried up the wildflower path to her car, all the way she contemplated whether to offer Peter Bold a ride back into town. The company seemed like something she needed, and as far as she knew, he was seemingly nice. She convinced herself to offer him a ride and nodded in agreement with her thoughts just as the expansive grasslands by her car came into view. Her feet quickened their pace as she found herself rushing towards the green tent.

The soft mud seeped between her toes, and she ran with a carton full of jiggling fuel towards the point where she first saw Peter, but was now only met with a vibrant blue puddle of water.

James whipped her head around, dropping the fuel with a loud thud onto the grass below. The tent had simply vanished. Peter Bold was nowhere to be found.

“Peter!” James yelled, in hopes he was just around the corner, “Peter?” James exhaled out loud. He was there one moment and gone the other, completely out of sight in the miles and miles of empty grasslands. While James was collecting fuel, Peter vanished, either on a pickup truck or into thin air, along with the perfectly planted emerald green sign. “Peter?” James whispered. “Where did you go?” She questioned the physical disappearance of an already elusive man while pivoting towards her car, which was perched perfectly in the middle of the open road. After the fuel tank was partially filled and the silvery car was brought back to life with a loud rumble, James hit the accelerator and continued down the empty road.

She went on and on waiting for a sign to come, or maybe two, or maybe none at all. James Matherfold kept on driving.