There was once a boy and a girl. The boy was from the west. The girl, from the east. The boy rejected those ideals around him. The girl embraced them. They met one day when crossing paths in their quests to find a better place to live. Persuaded by the girl, the boy packed up his things and headed back in the direction which he came. He told the girl that he realized that he had forgot something and thought he might as well head back. And why not enjoy each other’s company?
So they headed back together, on a train, which was in the boy’s preference. They talked over the rickety tracks in their burning desire. Each sentence brought on a new understanding and added to their lust for each other. When they came upon their next stop, they decided to get off the train and hitch-hike the rest of the way there.
“But what if we can’t get a ride?” The boy asked.
“Then we’ll stay at a hotel overnight.” She told him.
To this, the boy asked, “Well, what if we can’t find a place to stay? Or if we run out of money?-What if we get stuck here?”
The girl simply kissed him on the cheek and held his hand. She told him that all those things didn’t matter a bit, because they had each other. Comforted by the girl’s free spirit, the boy agreed not to get back on the train.
They went out for ice cream later on and afterwards walked the streets of Chicago, looking around at everything. They were like children, together in their world of wonder towards lights, cars, crowds, and buildings. Oblivious to everything, where they were going didn’t matter to them. They walked and walked until after night had fallen then, they sat at a park bench and held hands, talking about everything they possibly could. They didn’t stop talking until a light hue of dark blue hung high in the sky. It was a beautiful thing indeed. They sat at that bench until the sun came up and did a cliché thing of watching the sun rise. After this, they walked around again and waited for the café to open.
While they stood outside the café’s ornate windows, the boy began to yawn and scratch his eyes.
“What’s wrong, hun?” The girl asked him.
He told her that he was getting tired and needed to sleep.
“No, no, no,” the girl protested, “we’re on a journey. We have to see everything. We have to learn everything. We have to be everything. There’s no need for sleep, hun.”
The boy leaned against her in his fatigues and they complained about the café not yet opening. Finally, when the doors opened, they shuffled inside, huddled together and shivered. They ordered coffee and breakfast. When they finished all of their meal, which included a total of six cups of coffee and an order of pancakes and bacon each, they paraded into the warming day. They decided to continue, nowhere yesterday, they walked along the road with their thumb out-turned, still beginning to sweat, despise the chilly breeze that carried under them.
When somebody did pick them up, they told them to ‘take us west’, and so he did. The fellow that decided to do this was a young cowboy from somewhere in ‘good ole texass’. He talked about all the good of the west and preached about the eastern difference. He told them that he’d been around to see what it was like and was on his way back home. They all discussed how lucky they were, considering that they were going the same direction, but the cowboy but in, adding that he didn’t know about all that, ‘cuz the chances of summin’ commin’ from east to west seemed pretty likely these days. So, with a new subject, they talked more still.
The boy had fallen asleep after a few hours, which the girl didn’t seem to mind, but her eyes were wide with amazement at the barren scenery around her. She “Oo’d” and “Aah’d” at all the stuff there is to see out of an automobile windows, going from Illinois to Texas. Not once did she truly blink, no, not once did her eyes really rest. When the boy woke up, she was at it still.
“Ooh, look at that!” She said. The boy looked and smiled falsely. He didn’t see what she saw, and he was confused by all this. But he did love it. He loved it because he loved her, and she loved it. She really did, too, her eyes were red of dryness but sparkled still.
“Don’t you think you should get some sleep sometime soon?” The boy asked.
The girl looked over at him, ridiculously. She smiled and hugged him tight. “Naw,” She said, ignoring even the thought.
The cowboy somewhat laughed at the events around him, driving all while from Illinois halfway to Texas ‘til dark. They rounded a quick corner and a flash of lights shone bright in all their faces. One of them yelped, but who knows which? The oncoming lights plowed into them and there was an explosion of sound. Screeching tired, crunched metal, the slam of the two vehicles together and a somewhat final dead silence afterwards.


The girl woke up in soreness and pain. She couldn’t remember anything but the cowboy’s voice and a familiar, lovely new face. It was more like a shadow or silhouette now, in that she couldn’t very well remember it enough to see it. She felt as though the person should be around. She tried to move, or turn even, but couldn’t. There was a confined stiffness about her. Her eyes began darting around the room, in a sort of blind fashion. Everything was almost too bright to see. She laid there for an hour, maybe, stuck in a sort of daze from anesthesia and confusion. A nurse came in. He was a man with a sort of face that reminded her of that silhouette. She remembered a name.
Mumbling, she asked the nurse if he was who she remembered. He shook his head, responding with a polite “Ma’am?” She went on, talking in her anesthetic daze, without any real idea of what she was saying. Eventually, she talked herself back to her quiet slumber.
A few days passed of this, just sleeping and sometimes waking but mostly not. Finally, she woke up without the anesthetic effects and just looked around. She called out for the name. No one was there, but she could hear slow footsteps clapping outside of the room to the door. She moved easier now and could turn her neck well. A window was open and she was lying down on her back, staring at the ceiling. She positioned herself around to look. There was a newspaper nearby on a grey, stony counter. With determination, she managed to grab it despite the white cast formed around different parts of her body, particularly her left leg. She scanned the words and flipped and flopped the pages, amusing herself with the news and weather and all the like. Ignoring the advertisements, she turned the page again. A face near the top seemed to stare at her. It filled the silhouette that she had nearly forgotten.
It was his name, and his picture, and his age, and his description. She felt tears well in her eyes. They formed huge droplets, clogged with a mustiness of the distance that resided in her ocular spaces. She dropped the paper on her lap and laid her head back, staring back at that grey ceiling of dots and square panels. She vaguely remembered anything, but she couldn’t help but even before wonder where anyone was.
She wished didn’t know. She wished that she just went back to the state that she was in, the anesthetic nothingness that she used to know. The pain was deep and she was beginning to feel herself slip away into another slumber. She welcomed it.
“Hello.” A woman’s voice echoed through the girl’s mental walls.
“Yes?”
The girl opened her eyes and saw the doctor standing there with her notepad and white coat. The doctor smiled and she just stared passed her. Reaching for the newspaper, the doctor began to notice that the page that it was turned to. Her smile faded quickly and she placed it back on the counter.
“What happened?” The girl asked.

Everything had been explained. She had healed (Physically, at least). She’d just got out of physical therapy and had been released out into the real world for the first time in what seemed like forever. Where to? She asked herself. Where to, where to, where to...?
She was lolling in her thoughts for a moment until she realized where she was. Oklahoma City. About how far from Texas? Not far enough. She salvaged what she had with her, which was almost nothing when she came and nothing when she left, considering that they had decided to part with their stuff that day that they left the train. And that’s where she was headed; that rickety old car of people heading across the west, except she wasn’t going west anymore. She was going east. She hopped for Brooklyn or Boston or wherever she could find leave.

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