I feel the safest I will feel in years as this stranger eases his mother’s minivan off the gravel and drives slowly across the prairie to the edge of a small hill.
Luke parks directly in front of a NO TRESPASSING sign on the barbed-wire fence that keeps us from driving off the incline. He kills the engine and the headlights along with it. I take in the twinkling, scattered town below, sprawling across more than twenty miles of land, just because it can.
“Cool,” I say.
“Yeah, I thought so,” he says, eyes straight ahead. I like that he likes this town. It’s not for everyone, but it will always be a little part of me.
“So, you’ve never been up here before?”
Good question, I think. “Um, no,” I reply. “In fact, I have no idea where we are.”
Luke takes his eyes off the landscape for the first time and settles on me. His hands are still resting lightly on the steering wheel. “You’re pretty trusting, you know. I could be a murderer.”
“Yes, you could be, but I doubt it.” I say, transfixed by his pale eyes. “I feel too safe with you.”
“You are,” he says sweetly. He pauses for a few moments and I think he might lean over and kiss me, but he doesn’t.
“Okay,” he says louder, hitting his hands lightly on the steering wheel. “Let’s get this party started. You hungry?”
“Yes, but I don’t think anyone delivers out here,” I say, scanning the barren land around us.
“Never fear, I’ve got it covered. Just a minute.” Luke pops the back door, gets out, and disappears behind the van. I turn around to see what he’s doing and realize that the middle row of seats is missing. On the third row, there are two throw pillows that look like they were taken from someone’s couch; a soft knitted blanket folded neatly on the seat; and a small cooler on top of the blanket.
Luke spies me checking out his setup and smiles sheepishly when our eyes meet. My stomach spins at the sight of the dimple on his right cheek.
He closes the door with a light thud. Instead of getting back in the driver’s seat, Luke opens the automatic sliding door on the far side of the van and climbs in. He’s carrying what looks like a pizza delivery sleeve in his right hand and a plastic bag in his left.
“Liar!” I say playfully.
“Come on back,” he instructs with a laugh.
Instead of attempting to gracefully climb between our seats, I get out of the van and enter through the sliding door on my side. Crouched down, I walk to the back of the vehicle and sit next to Luke, who has cleared the blanket and the cooler from the third row and propped a pillow on the seatback for me to lean against. From some secret compartment, he retrieves a remote control.
“Whoops,” he says as he gets up and scoots to the front of the van. He reaches up to the dashboard and turns the ignition, fiddles with the heater and some other controls, then returns to our seat. I hadn’t noticed the drop-down DVD player until now; it illuminates the backseat. A copyright warning is our nightlight as Luke pulls a miraculously warm pizza from the sleeve (apparently he “borrowed” it), retrieves paper plates and napkins from the sack, and grabs sodas from the cooler.
I recognize the movie from the first five notes of its sound track. As the signature opener of Star Wars scrolls up the tiny screen, I scoot closer to Luke Henry on our makeshift couch in the middle of nowhere. I am the happiest I’ll be in years.
“I love this movie,” I whisper.
“Yeah,” he smiles, still looking at the screen.
“Yeah, what?” I ask.
“I thought you might.” Luke looks at me like he can see into my soul, and all of a sudden I feel naked. Breaking the tension, I reach for the pizza at my feet and begin eating. Luke follows suit, and between the two of us, the whole thing is gone quickly.
Full and content, we watch the movie in silence. Halfway through, I pull the blanket over my legs. Someone texts Luke but he doesn’t answer; he turns the ringer off and tosses the phone to the front seat. He puts his arm around my shoulders, and we snuggle together like we’ve known each other forever.
After the movie, Luke makes his way to the front of the van, explaining that he should turn off the car for a little bit to conserve gas.
“I don’t want to get us stranded out here,” he explains.
“I wouldn’t mind,” I reply.
“I wouldn’t, either,” he says seriously. “But I think your mom might.” Instead of rejoining me, Luke pulls open the moonroof and asks me to hand him the pillows. He lines them up against the backs of the driver’s and passenger seats and lies down with his head on one.
“Come here?” he says, more as a question than a command. The van has grown cold quickly, so I drag the blanket with me as I scoot to the forward section and lie down parallel to Luke. We settle the blanket over both of us, tucking it in around our bodies to trap the heat.
Luke and I stare straight up through the large window at the winter sky, overcrowded with stars. My teeth begin to chatter and my body starts shaking, but it’s not the cold. Luke moves closer to me and grabs my hand under the covers.
“This is nice,” he says softly, after a few moments of silence.
“Yes, it is,” I say quietly.
“Like we’ve known each other for a while, right?” he asks.
“Uh-huh,” I mumble, scooting closer to Luke’s warm shoulder.
“Want my theory?” Luke asks, carefully rolling onto his side to face me. His eyes look mischievous, like he’s got a great secret to tell.
“Yes, please,” I say, still on my back but facing him instead of the stars now.
“Reincarnation.”
“Reincarnation?”
“Yeah, you know what that is, right?” he asks.
“Of course I do. I’m not dumb. I’m just wondering what that has to do with us.”
“Well, my theory is that we were married in some past life. Maybe I was a great king and you were my queen and we were killed by an angry mob.”
“What did we do to make the mob so angry that they wanted to kill us?” I tease.
Luke laughs and continues. “All right, forget that. Maybe we were just average people living sometime, someplace. Just elsewhere.”
“Elsetime.”
“That’s not even a word,” he says, sidetracked.
“I know. I just made it up. Go on.”
“Okay, fine, we were married elsetime. Anyway, we died of whatever you die from, let’s say natural causes. But we were in love, so our souls keep finding each other in whatever forms our bodies take.”
“Are you Hindu or something?” I ask, avoiding the fact that my stomach is in knots from hearing his beautiful theory.
“No, we used to be Catholic. But I did have a religion class at my last school that exposed us to different ideas. I think the concept of reincarnation is a good one.”
“If you’re Catholic, shouldn’t you believe in heaven and hell and all that?”
“I said I used to be Catholic,” he replies.
“No heaven then, huh?” I press on.
“Who knows until we experience it? I think that heaven and reincarnation are both ways of making us feel better about what happens to people’s souls after death. I hope at least one of them is true. I don’t like to think about being worm food.”