A sputter rang out into the arid atmosphere as a 1995 Geo Metro wound its way around yet another snakelike road on yet another small mountain that dots the landscape of the southwest United States. The occupant of said Geo Metro also wasn't all that far off from her own kind of sputter and wheeze as the air conditioning had breathed its last a good three days ago, and it was fast becoming hotter and hotter each day.
Abby Warner, the sole occupant of this fading Geo Metro, wiped her forehead of sweat with her shirt and forged on through this mountain road, somewhere in New Mexico. Her hair, damp with sweat, shone with fading aqua blue, with brown roots peeking out. Her eyes, a dark brown, flit up to the rear view mirror with tired concern at her hair. She was a slight figure, fair skinned (though certainly tanned at this point) and just under 6 feet tall. she wears some baggy jeans and a slightly damp tee shirt. A hoody hangs over the passenger seat next to her. I'd hoped the air conditioner would last the journey... She thought to herself.
Driving instincts took over as she mused over the last few weeks. Shouting, arguing, doors slamming and rude gestures passed between her and her father, a salt of the earth fellow who couldn't bother to spend the necessary internet searches to understand who she was and what she wanted. She, finally giving up ever having any semblance of happiness in that house, took her little Metro, her Estriadol and all the clothes and other important things she could manage to stuff into a suitcase. With a frustrated sigh, her mind rolls back into the present, and the task at hand.
Another twist and turn of the road and the sun came into full view, squarely in the middle of the windshield of the tired Metro. Abby squinted her eyes and twisted the sun visor out of its spot, shielding her eyes from the offensive rays. The radio DJ had said it would reach over 100 degrees today, and they weren't kidding. At the last gas station stop, Abby had loaded up on an entire case of water bottles, placing them in her cooler, along with a bag of ice, on the passenger side of the car. The ice from this morning had long since taken its natural route from solid to liquid and had been sloshing about with every dip and duck situated in the roads course.
Oh thank god, we're going down again, She thought in relief. It had been massively hilly these last few days and the Metro had not been taking it well. The little 3 cylinder engine had been wheezing like a smoker and, more than once, had overheated. She'd ditched the air conditioner unit the day before, tossing it to the side of the road out of frustration. At least that toolkit came in handy for something, Abby mused grumpily.
She glanced at her phone, freeing a hand from its ever present space on the steering wheel to check the time. 6:42 PM. Just over 15 minutes until my exact birthday... She thought. Twenty three. She'd be twenty three. Age is just a number, but she felt it like the sun had landed squarely on top of the roof of her car. I feel so old lately, she grumbled. And then: Welp, no one to celebrate with. Just Twitter balloons. She had long since deleted most other social medias from her life, but Twitter and its ever present misery was too addicting to get rid of.
Abby looked back morosely onto the road. Even the beautiful scenery couldn't lift her mood. She'd been greeted by all that the south had to offer in this little journey. From herds of cows grazing lazily to the multi colored mountains and plateaus that had dotted the landscape in the recent few days. Not to mention all the cheesy roadside attractions and billboards that hung onto the side of the roads like hitchhikers, hoping to score a few bucks from some fool tourists. Not me though. People are entirely too bothersome and I barely have enough money for gas lately...
The sun finally starts to dip below the horizon just as the Metro reached the bottom of the hill. Welp, time to get frozen in addition to sweating my ass off... What time is it now? She glances back down at her phone. 6:57 PM. Another tired sigh splits her lips open. Three more minutes and I'll be officially older than 22.
The wait is excruciating. 6:58... 6:59... The road and its scenery barely changed as the minutes ache by. Just as the digital readout jumps to 7PM, the loud thud of engines jolts Abby from her reverie. Coming up behind her was a host of motorcycles. Loud music and raucous conversation filters through her open windows along with the loud undulation of the V-twins as the bikers ride past her. A couple of them shout unintelligibly at her, the noise too loud for Abby to make out what they might have said. It was probably nothing endearing...
The group finally rides past, but just as the final rider speeds off past her window, she hears it.
**BANG**
Heady black and grey smoke starts to billow out of the hood of the Metro. No... Please, not the head gasket. Anything but that, especially here. Abby pulls the Metro to the side of the road (Whats the point?! no one else is on the damn roads except for the nutcase bikers...) gets out, pops the hood and pulls it up. A belch of smoke pours out to greet her. Yup. Blown head gasket.
"FUCK", Abby shouts out. A long and increasingly more vulgar string of curse words string out of her mouth for what seems like forever but ends up being about a minute. Finally, after an eternity of shouting, Abby walked to the driver door and wiped her face on her sleeve. Slowly, tears falling out onto the faded blue paint of the roof. It was foolish to ever have endearing feelings for a machine, but this car was where she had her first kiss, her first fooling around with a girl. The exact space where she had confided to her best friend about who she truly was. And now it was probably going to be confined to some random repair garage out in the middle of nowhere, or worse: some scrap heap junkyard.
Abby yanked her phone out from its spot in the center console and jabs the call icon and abusively poked at the numbers, dialing up Triple A as another motorcycle exhaust note sounds out behind her. She turns and lifts the phone up to her ear, watching for the supposed straggler of the biker group from earlier. I swear, if this guy hassles me or shouts something at me I'm gonna lose my mind at him! She thinks furiously. A moment passes and the robot operator on the other side started to jabber into her ear, telling her how long it will take for a tow, as a yellow helmet pokes out in the distance as the biker comes down from the hillside.
The way the bike looks strikes Abby a bit differently than the yahoos from earlier, as does the attire of the biker. The others weren't wearing helmets, for one thing, and most of them wearing open shirt vests colored black and lots of cheesy spikes and various tough guy looking badges. This person looked quite nondescript in comparison. The yellow full face helmet is the most distinctive, with the rest of the clothing being brown or black. And the bike looks quite plain. A big windscreen and fairing surrounds the single headlight, painted a somewhat conservative smattering of black with yellow accenting. The gas tank is also the same color scheme, with the lettered insignia sitting off center slightly with the word HONDA. A farther down piece of bodywork on the side says "GOLDWING" with the W superimposed and prominent in comparison to the other letters of the word. A pair of saddlebags sit snugly behind a comfy looking pillion seat.
Abby pretended not to look at it as they ride past, but sees the helmet turn slightly over to regard her and locks eyes with the helmet. The half second of focus breaks and her eyes snake back to the phone against her ear, listening for the amount of time.
"A tow truck should be there within the next... hour".
"HOUR?!"
"Please stay on the line for updates to your tow truck, or use the app to..." the robotic voice trails off as the hand holding the phone drops to Abbys side. She puts the call on speaker and sits down with a *thump* into the drivers seat. She stretches her legs out and pulls another bottle of water out of the sloshy cooler. Half of it goes down her gullet, the rest over her head. Time to wait.
