Truly, Madly, Like Me - Jo Watson Page 0,7

one last peculiar look before he turned and walked away. I didn’t blame him for this either—he probably wanted to be as far away from me as possible in case my strange behavior was contagious.

I drove out of the lot. The car jerked back and forth wildly as I tried to control the speed and braking. It roared and screamed at me every time I put my foot on the accelerator, as if it wanted to take off at warp speed, and then groaned loudly as I pressed the brake, as if it was pissed off with me that I hadn’t allowed it to. It was going back and forth so much that I was sure I would get whiplash, and the blue dice were swinging so much that they almost hit me in my face. I grabbed them, wound the window down and, without a moment’s hesitation, tossed them out. I heard a yell and looked to see a pedestrian swatting them out the way as they hit her.

“It’s good luck,” I screamed as I drove away.

CHAPTER 3

I’d been driving for five hours already, and it had taken me at least three to figure out how to drive this car at a normal speed without unintentionally breaking land-speed records. I’d also had to fill this thirsty, blue beast up with petrol already! But now my ears were aching from the noise of the thing. It sounded like a racecar tearing around a track, and I couldn’t fathom how anyone could drive like this. I passed Bloemfontein and the Free State, and was soon heading out onto the open road that led into the Cape. A spray of pink and white Cosmos stretched out on the sides of the road, the South African signal that we were going into autumn. I’ve always loved Cosmos. I remember one Easter holiday we’d stopped to pick some, and then put them in a vase later that day. But the sad thing about Cosmos is you can’t keep them beautiful; as soon as they’re picked, they begin to die. I always thought that was so sad.

But the vegetation and scenery started to change as I drove into the Northern Cape, deeper into the Karoo desert. The sun was beating down on me, so hot that a rippling haze had formed at the horizon. The land around me was flat. Not a tree, not a building, not an anything rose up to break the desolate flatness. Bleak. That was the only way to describe it. Hot and bleak and far, far away. I hadn’t seen a car for hours and this place felt like the loneliest, most remote place in the entire world. I felt so alone out here, driving in the blue cheese, that I wasn’t surprised when the salty prick of tears formed in the corners of my eyes and I felt one trickle down my face. I wiped it away with the back of my hand and pushed on. But another half an hour later I needed to pee. Badly.

I pulled my phone out, ignoring all the blue notifications, and went straight to Google Maps. I typed in “Petrol Station” and waited for Maps to present me with the nearest one. But when it returned the result, my shoulders slumped. It was three hours away. At the town I was headed to. That’s how in the middle of nowhere I really was. I was in no-man’s nowhere land. A place where petrol stations and pitstops were about as few and far between as trees. And now I was going to be forced to pee on the side of the road.

The road was single lane—it had no emergency lane and the sun had warped its surface so badly that it was falling apart at the edges. Simply crumbling away on the sides and falling into little piles of sand and rocks. I needed to pull over, but the blue cheese wasn’t built for any kind of off-roading, and one of those small stones was sure to rip the bumper clean off. Since I hadn’t seen a car in hours, I took my chances and stopped in the middle of the road. I dug through my handbag for a tissue or something to make this roadside pee experience as pleasant as possible. My fingers brushed past the white envelope and I paused on it momentarily, a lump forming in my throat.

Should I open it?

I pulled the envelope out and held it up to the