By: Luke Wang

It’s been five days since Steven has started his voyage. He sat silently while steering his trusty navy-blue BMW 3 series wagon through a string of semi trailers on the interstate. The amber circular outline of the sun shaded the sky into a mixture of orange and red with the original blue ceiling barely visible, sending him a clear message: it’s dusk and he has been driving since dawn. Three clear beeps marked the arrival of 7 PM and the epilogue of the daylight. Steven was not afraid of the dark nor driving in it, with the gentle classical music seeming through the speakers as his memories rewinded to five days ago.

A morning rainstorm poured from the milky New York sky as a flock of waterdrops drummed the slate grey spacious two-story house along with the garage it connected. A bright lamp illuminated the garage, the silhouette of a man being clearly printed on the garage window. The man was working with his car, an navy-blue BMW 3 series E91 Wagon. Then, there was a creak, an older man, possibly in his early 60s, wearing a sweatshirt entered the chilly garage. The man looked up, he did not speak. The older man spoke in a deep but concerning voice: “Look, Stevie….”The older man stopped in his speech, he then reached over and hugged Steven. “You’ve grown, and it’s your choice.” He said with a sign, “Take care sonny.” The old man watched as the taillights briefly lit up the front porch and dissapeared into the screen of water.

Steven laid his seat down, the old wagon was another quiet dot in the parking area. Surrounded by other still vehicles and the dark vast plains of the Midwest. He pulled the blanket up as he stared out of his windscreen, drips of white from the stars glittered on the pitch black night sky. With an unnatural feeling of comfort and coziness, Steven drifted off to sleep. He dreamed that he was standing next to a lake, unlike the familiar forest of Upstate New York, the lake was in the middle of a valley, with dark green pine trees and the grey mountain of the Cascadia region. A wooden cabin stood next to the lake, before Steven could inspect closer, and a bright flash illuminated the dream world. Steven awoke abruptly, he cleared his eyes and turned his head to look outside, from his view the interstate extended in a never ending distance across the plains.