3
Sherry looked down the road behind her one more time, then searched the other direction. He might come from there, she thought suddenly. She had been expecting him to come from town, but there was no reason to think that. He didn’t have to play by the rules. He didn’t have to come from anywhere.
“When you’re not real, nothing has to make sense,” she said to herself. “And he’s not real. Not really real.” She clung to that thought.
Regardless, there was no sign of anyone or anything in the night. Both stretches of highway faded off into blackness. Her shoulders sagged. Maybe he wasn’t coming. Maybe she had done something wrong. Or maybe it was all just bullshit, stories to scare little kids on camp-outs. Maybe, she thought, she was crazy, obsessed. That’s what Alan, her long-suffering boyfriend, probably thought. That’s what everyone thought. Maybe they were right. After all, her life over the past few years had been anything but normal, at least from their point of view. And whatever hopes Alan had for her sanity were probably gone for good after the way she had acted tonight at the gas station.
She shook her head again and felt the ponytail brush against her shoulders. No. She knew he would come if she had done everything right. And she had. She was sure of it. She had waited too long, sacrificed too much to fail now. And she knew in her heart that it was far more than merely a story, a dream. She had heard it and seen it. In a terrifying way, it was all very real.
A mosquito buzzed her ear, and she swatted idly at it, blew smoke toward it. “Come on,” she whispered to the night, then she raised her voice and shouted into the gloom. “What’s the matter? You chicken?”