Usually, the road up to �my� house only took ten minutes or so of curvy, yo-yo driving and careening upward through the trees. As I drove on, however, deep in thought, the length of the drive became a relative matter to my mind� if I stopped thinking about things, the dark branches stop passing overhead, the water in the creek would slow into suspended animation, and the bat fluttering past my windshield would pause in midair, his eyes fixed hungrily on the moth hovering with still wings several feet above my car. Things such as this that went by too fast for the eye to see were suddenly there, waiting for me to start thinking again. However, as I leapt rapidly in my mind from one thought to the next, I suddenly found myself� a chapter�s worth of thinking past, but no time spent at all� rounding a curve a mile or so down the road from my house. The mist was like a wall, or perhaps a ceiling, and the road was the attic stairway that would deliver me through it and to the wonders beyond. Fog was inherently enthralling to me: a phenomenon of our world, water vapor, which hung around OUR ground-level and also happened to obstruct OUR wavelengths of visible light. Which made me happy to drive through it, though rather annoyed at the same time. Fog required me to drive with concentration, and it also meant that I couldn�t go as fast as I liked in order to continue to adhere to my strict no-death policy. I ended up crawling at thirty miles an hour, up a hill that I usually took at sixty in order to have the momentum that was necessary to avoid hearing the strain in my little car�s engine. I rolled down my window a bit. I loved the smell of this road, next to the creek, in the middle of the forest, and the fog gave a refreshing bit of density and weight to the crisp air.
And so it was, I chugged through the fog, with the reflectors on the guardrail shining on my right, the yellow line shining on my left, and a great mass of white nothing shining everywhere else. I turned off the radio, which I had hitherto been turning up whenever an angry or depressed kind of song came on the alternative rock station� that is to say, it was turned up for most of the trip so far. And then, I felt it: d�j� vu. The feeling that has no word in the English language, and so we borrow the French phrase, which when translated literally means: �already seen.� The feeling that you are experiencing something that is so familiar, you are certain that you have already experienced it� I could remember sitting in the car, smelling the wet air, straining up the hill, seeing nothing but the black interior of my car and the whiteness outside, feeling the familiarity of the context of that moment as it passed. In that flash of strange recognition, I delved further into the faux memory, trying to press it farther forward� to remember something more. I could remember seeing� a red light� I carefully kept to the middle of my lane as I went around the next curve, and then the feeling of d�j� vu was gone.
A small red light below a dark mass of something appeared through the mist, barely in front of me, next to the guardrail on the right. My heart leaped as it flashed past, the darkness of substance astride a point of reflected red, frighteningly close to the side of my car. At that instant, I heard a strange noise, what I assumed to be a yell obscured by the sound of my engine, and the air rushing through my half-open window. I slowed down, my heart beating� that red light was obviously the rear reflector of a bicycle. Had I hit some bicyclist who was inexplicably riding up an extremely steep mountain at dusk in the fog? No, I would have felt something� but why the yell? My imagination instantly provided me with images of a horrific yodeling monster with a single red eye at waist height. No, it was most definitely someone on a bike. Perhaps I didn�t hit them, but I caused them to swerve, or to fall, maybe even over the railing�what had I done? Why couldn�t this have just been a normal drive home in the fog? I pulled over the car, shifted into park, and put on the parking brake even though it was mostly for show. Trying to calm myself, I made a halfhearted attempt to search the back seat for a flashlight. Of course, I didn�t own a flashlight, let alone have the good sense to keep one in my car� it wasn�t that dark out yet anyway. I heaved the door open against the slope of the road, hurriedly got out of the car, and stood up directly in front of a young man with a wide, smiling face.
�Hey, man!� he said with a very penetrating alto. I instantly lost all doubt that it was he who had yelled.
�Uh�. Hi.� Well, this didn�t happen every day. What joyous Adventure.
�Thanks a ton for stopping. None of the other cars even seemed to see my thumb. Didja hear me holler? This hill is SUCH a pain, I�ve been walking my bike for three miles, yep�� He indicated the ancient, decrepit single-speed bicycle leaning against his thigh. It had a fairly new-looking speedometer and a large neon pink horn affixed to the rusty handlebars, a flash of color that stood out ridiculously in the fog. I mumbled something affirmative about the steepness of the mountain, and wondered how to avoid giving a hitchhiker a ride AFTER I had already stopped for him� but he seemed nice enough, about my age, slight of build, not particularly threatening, and fairly exhausted from the climb with a heavy old bicycle, so I decided to pretend that I had seen his thumb and had stopped on purpose. The kid was examining my car, and I took the opportunity to examine him more closely. He was wearing comfortable clothing, loose cut blue jeans and a button-down plaid shirt of nondescript color, which seemed to hang off of his thin frame a little bit more than my own clothing did. He was about four inches shorter than I was, which would put him at about 5�5�� though the slope of the hill probably had thrown off my judgment a bit. He had short hair, which looked like it had been a buzz-cut that had grown for too long and had turned into an inch-long fuzzy hedgehog-like ball. I was unable to discern his features well, as he stooped over the car in the encroaching night. �It�s kinda small� d�you think this thing�ll fit in the back? You�ve got some stuff in there�� he peered into my rear windshield at the collection of blankets, car parts, and other odd accumulated items that I had repeatedly forgotten to clean out of the trunk. �Yeah,� I responded, �it�s a little bit cramped� I don�t know� do you think that you could leave your bike here? Pick it up later, maybe?� �Well, I ain�t coming back�� His loud voice trailed off. This comment was not what I had expected him to say, and surprised me into ignoring it; from his manner and speech, I had guessed he was one of the locals that lived up near me, probably on a farm or in a hunting cabin at least. But he appeared to have reached a conclusion.
�Hey, let�s get in, so we don�t get mowed down by some fella in the fog� I got an idear.� He actually added an audible �r� at the end of Idea� a perfect Bristin inflection, perhaps he was a resident of the town and was running away from home? That must be it. I decided to not think about why he would be leaving, as the words Murder and Arson and Armed Robbery flew around my head. He wheeled the bicycle back to the railing, propped it up, and tried the handle to my passenger-side door.
�Oh, sorry, it still must be locked,� I said quickly. �Hold on for a second, let me get it.�
I got back in the drivers seat, and was just about to lean over and unlock the door when I realized that this was my chance. All I had to do was start the engine and take off, leaving the semi-mysterious runaway and his old bike on the mountain. No illegal picking-up of hitchhikers. No mystery. No danger. Or was that what I wanted? � I looked over through the passenger window in my moment of hesitation, and I saw a flash of plaid�green, I thought, though it was still hard to tell in the mist-shrouded dark�as the guy leaned against the car, waiting for me. I suddenly remembered green plaid, a distant memory of what was happening at the moment I was recalling it� and a smell� what came next? Oh, yes, there was newness. Something exciting, a new part to my life, like the feeling I had when I had first bought my car�but no fear� I could only remember the feeling of the experience that went along with green plaid, not the experience itself. I strained my memory for more, but the d�j� vu had gone� I reached over and decisively unlocked the door, wondering how I was leading myself into this mess.
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