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Rey was driving on the highway when she found it. Or when it found her.
Looking back, she never really came to understand how she ended up finding it. She was driving through Texas, she remembered that. Some sort of journey-of-self-discovery road trip; she wasn’t entirely sure exactly how far west she’d driven from Dallas at that point. Her windows were down, some rock song or another blaring through her stereo. It was that tiny burst of spring before summer, and her arms were bare. Half of her hair was up in a bun, and the rest was a bunch of short, soft feathers waving in the wind. The sun had set hours ago, and the lights of the city were auroras dancing by. There were other cars on the road, their red and white lights marking which side of the highway was which.
She exited one highway or another, and came to an access road. She could see the street lamps lighting up the freeway that the access road ran alongside, empty. The on-ramp was unlit, one or two of the street lamps broken— it curved up, then fell again. She took it, not thinking. The darkness swallowed her car, and for a second, she couldn’t see anything. Then, she was increasing speed on the freeway again.
But something was different. Her speedometer showed she was going 70 miles per hour, but everything around her seemed to be moving so slowly. Maybe it was just her perception. A set of traffic cones sectioned off the far left lane for a work crew, but the work crew looked like no more than five black shapeless figures in reflective work vests and hard hats. There was an electronic sign next to where they were working, but something was wrong with it. It was nothing she could read— just a bunch of lines and dots that she couldn’t make sense of. It was no language she knew.
Overhead, the sky is a navy blue sea full of stars. But for the life of her, she couldn’t make out any constellations that she recognized. The stars lit up the sky, in multitudes that she’d never seen anywhere but in pictures. Despite the changes around her, Rey took a deep breath and kept driving. She was flooded with a strange lull, like everything was alright. There was no danger here.
She kept driving, relishing in the wind blowing my hair and the blurred and undefinable auroras of neon lights of the city around her. Was she still in Dallas? She didn’t even care. She felt nice. Secure. Safe.
The more she drove, the more the city gave way to country; to hills and plain. How long had she been driving? She had no clue. The street lamps became few and far-between, until she hadn’t seen one for a few minutes, and the only thing lighting up the road were her headlights, and the only thing lighting up the sky were stars. She hadn’t seen a car in a few minutes either. Or had it been hours? She wasn’t sure. For some reason, she couldn’t see the clock on my dashboard anymore. Strangely enough, her stereo was playing the same song from before. Did that mean it hadn’t been that long, or was the song on repeat?
Then, she passed a gas station. Decrepit, like it was either abandoned or just very, very run down. There were bars on the windows, and a grate over the door. Almost like a prison. The harsh light outside the door of the dingy tan building kept flickering every few seconds, and the yellow lights in the awning above the antiquated gas pumps were so dim, they didn’t look like they could illuminate anything properly. There was a sign for the gas station by the turn in, and a figure waited under it. The figure waved at Rey, and she pulled over and rolled down her window.
“Going my way?”
It was a boy. Maybe a year or two older than she was, with wild dark hair that swept down to his neck like a raven’s feathers. His eyes were intense, brown, but glowing like amber. He had to lean over to see into her car, enormous being that he was. He was wearing a white t-shirt and a pair of dark jeans, and all he carried with him was a beaten-up backpack and a leather jacket. She didn’t say anything, but there was understanding; she opened her door and let him in. He put his backpack on the floor at his feet and Rey drove off as if nothing had changed. As if they were old friends. As if they knew each other in their souls.
“I like this song,” He said. It was the same song from before.
“Where are you going?” She asked him. He turned to her, looking at her as if she’d asked him a weird question. Then he shook his head and looked out his window.
“Just keep driving,” He said.
A pause between them, as the same song continued to play. Why hadn’t it changed yet? But even more than that, who was this strange boy she’d just let into her car? She didn’t even know his name.
As if he was reading her mind, he uttered: “My name is Kylo.”
Rey nodded. “I’m Rey.”
“R-a-y? Like a ray of light?”
She shook her head. “R-e-y.”
“Ah,” he nodded, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye, “ The King in Spanish.”
“Not Queen?” Her only response was a tiny shake of his head, so she changed the subject: “I thought I was in Texas, this doesn’t look like Texas.”
“This is Nowhere,” He drawled. She couldn’t decide whether his voice was sultry or rough, but it was deep. Not accented, either, like her own English intonation. “This is all I’ve ever known. But I’m getting out of here.”
“I should go home.” She didn’t mean that. She didn’t want to go home. She still felt that peaceful haze from before. She wanted to stay like this.
“Do you remember how to get there from here?”
She blinked slowly, then bit her lip. “...no.”
“Well, that’s sort of important,” he seemed to be joking. He was smiling at her, and she wanted him to stay smiling. He looked nice when he smiled.
“Where is here?”
“You know where we are,” he said, “you always have.”
“I… have?”
He nodded. “You’ve heard stories about this place as far back as you can remember. It shows up differently to everyone. Wonderland. Neverland. Ogygia. The Vanishing Isle. The Faerie Realm. So many people have so many names for it, you’d think that these were all separate places.”
“Faerie—”
“We call it Nowhere, here,” He continued, “because there is no time, no places, nothing but existence.” At this, he began to get angry, his hands clenching into white-knuckled fists in his lap, “Nothing. No one. No heaven, no hell, just limbo. I’ve had it! I want to leave. And you,” he took her eyes off the road, taking her by the cheeks and forcing her to look at him, “you’re going to take me with you.”
“Take you where?”
“Home. Remember your home. This place erases memories; the longer you stay here, the more it will make you want to stay. Until you’re trapped here, like me. Think about your home! Envision it!”
The more she thought about it, the more she realized she couldn’t remember things. Her family— what did her parents look like? What were their names? Did she have siblings? Friends? A boyfriend? A girlfriend?
“Listen!” The boy says, shaking her shoulders, “You’re driving your car. You’re listening to your favorite song. Don’t think about anything else but what your home looks like! Is it a house?”
House. A structure made of brick and glass, bushes out front, fence out back— she could see it! “Yes, I live in a house!”
“Take me there. Take me home.”
“Home…”
She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, she was parked in the driveway of her grandfather’s house. She didn’t remember how she got there, but she remembered her name. She remembered her family: her parents were gone, but she had her grandfather. She remembered her dog BB, she remembered the name of the street her grandfather lived on. And she remembered the self-discovery road trip, the one where she was going to decide what to do with her life; she guessed that was over now.
And the memory of a boy with wild hair and dark eyes. He was no longer sitting in her passenger’s seat. Her stereo was off. Her car was off. She got out, and her legs shake as her feet felt firm ground beneath them. She was in college, she didn’t live with her grandfather anymore, but she was not driving anywhere else that night.
She touched her cheek. A vague memory came back to her, like a dream fading in the light of a new morning:
Kylo leaned across his seat to press a tender kiss to her cheek. “I owe you the rest of my life, you saved it. This gift will help you find me again.”
She tried hard not to forget what his face looked like. What did that mean? Would she ever actually find him again? Was he even human? He’d talked about the faerie realm, was he one of them? A Fae?
She took her keys inside and laid down on the couch. She knew her room was ready if she’d ever wanted to come back home for a weekend, but she didn’t think she could make it up the stairs. She closed her eyes and fell asleep within minutes, dreaming of The Boy From Nowhere.
It became a weird memory, one she didn’t even tell her grandfather. After a few weeks, she had convinced herself that it was all just a fever dream.
Spring Break was over, and the little road trip she was supposed to have gone on wound up less of a success than she wanted it to be. She went back to school, intent on burying herself in her studies and maybe finding herself that way.
The little coffee shop on campus was perfect for studying. She spent a lot of her study time there, until she was called away by her friends.
Poe has tickets for the game tonight, u down? Finn’s text read. She tapped out a quick “ sounds cool ”, and gathered her stuff to leave.
On her way out the door, she bumped into someone. One of her books slipped out of her grasp, and the guy she’d bumped into caught it.
“Sorry.”
She froze. She couldn’t believe it—that deep, not-quite-sultry-not-quite-rough voice. Her cheek burned. She looked up the nearly two feet he had on her, and found those intense eyes. The shock froze her vocal cords and rendered her dumbstruck.
He was giving her that same weird look, like she had two heads. Her book was in his hands, and it took her a second to come back to herself and take it back from him. When their fingers touched, a strange jolt like a static shock went through her, and she drew back quickly. The two stood there, both expecting the other to say something, and neither speaking a word, until he cleared his throat and extended his hand.
“Ben.”
She looked at him curiously, narrowing her eyes. She shook his hand tentatively. “Rey.”
He nodded, interested. “Spanish. The King .” Yes, it most certainly was.
A small, amused smile crept its way onto her face. Her cheek was still burning. “Yeah… I’m sorry, do I know you from somewhere?”
He shook his head, but a mischievous light twinkled in his eyes. “No, from nowhere.”
They stood there, looking at each other, both knowing, neither saying. Rey suddenly remembered her friends. She readjusted her books in her arms and broke eye contact.
“Sorry, I’ve gotta go,” she said.
He nodded. “Right, right. See you around?”
She suppressed a grin as she stretched up on her toes to peck his cheek. “Find me again. This’ll help.” Then, keeping her grin to herself, she turned and hurried out of the coffee shop.