Nebraska

Mom always told me not to walk home on the highway, but some days I had to do it. It was so big and dark and perfect. When a car went past I would step off the road just far enough so I could feel the wind it made as it rushed by. So that's how I got to be walking back to the farm from the soda fountain in town one day and it had been so boring that I just had to take the highway back. That's when I saw him. He was standing on the side of the road. I didn't look at him straight until I got close, though. We were only about 5 feet apart when I looked up at him and he looked at me at the exact same time. We stared at each other right in eyes. Deep.
"Hi." I had to say something. He was right in front of me after all.
"Hi."
"Hitchhiking?" I knew the hobos and drifters that were sometimes on the road were one of the reasons Mom didn't want me walking on it, but I had never seen someone actually doing it before.
"Yep."
"Where to?" I had never seen someone doing it but I felt strangely comfortable with this guy. He looked young; not that much older than me. And his face had an openness, like he was trying to take in everything that he saw and smelled and tasted and felt all at the same time.
"That way." He pointed down the long stretch of black road. It was in the direction of town but I knew he was pointing far past Minatare, Nebraska. Was he being vague because he didn't want to tell an 18-year-old farmgirl from Nebraska where he was really going? I knew that was logical but for some reason I believed that he felt the same strange sense of trust with me as I did with him. I looked at him for a moment and opened my mouth to reply just as I heard the sound of a speeding car coming up. Quickly, he turned around and put out his thumb. The car went past us but then it started to slow down and I felt a twitch of dismay. Why? He looked back at me for a second, bent down and grabbed his bag, and abruptly ran past me to the car stopped 10 yards away. I was still staring with a sense of disbelief when he opened the door and looked back at me.
"Maybe I'll see you there." He slammed the door and the car rolled off.