April looked at herself in the grimy gas station mirror. She liked the ponytail, hanging over her shoulder. The brown of her hair and the white of her t-shirt made for a nice combination of neutrals with the jacket, jeans, and boots. The heavy black leather jacket suited her. Or did it?
“Hell,” she whispered under her breath. Why couldn’t she make up her mind? Where was this self-consciousness coming from?
Why had turning 31 done such a number on her confidence? Why 31 and not 30, for that matter?
“If you’re gonna have a mid-life crisis,” she said to herself, “why not choose a nice round number like 30, like a normal person?”
April didn’t have an answer for that. All she had now was wanderlust, a lot of squandered goodwill when she’d left the office without two weeks’ notice, and the motorcycle she’d bought on impulse the day before.
Unlike most road trip movies she’d seen, she was heading east, not west. The only destination she’d had in mind was the ocean, and so decided to aim for the Outer Banks. There were plenty of detours to take along the way, plenty of time to try and figure out the reason for this restlessness.
This definitely qualified as a detour.
April was off the map, heading down a dusty Virginia back road. Dense woods created a perpetual shadow even as the afternoon sun beat down. It was cool and dark and quiet.
When she’d first spied the old station wagon, she’d thought it was abandoned, and decided to take a look purely for the hell of it.
The first thing out of the ordinary was the child’s car seat stacked upon several textbooks. The second thing out of the ordinary was the bizarre metal apparatus connecting from high on the seat to the pedals. The third thing out of the ordinary was the driver.
His body looked like an action figure. As her eyes took in the interior of the car, for a split-second she’d thought that was exactly what she was seeing. And then he moved.
Her scream echoed through the forest, before the trees swallowed the sound.
Screaming was embarrassing, but curiosity and concern won out. April peered back through the window.
“Hello?” she said, raising her voice to be heard through the glass.
“Hi,” said the tiny man, with a confidence suggesting he had made peace with this situation in a way she wasn’t likely to match for a while.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m feeling a little low,” he said, and grinned. His voice, almost too soft to be heard even as he projected it, sounded strained. His smile was weak.
Puns, April thought, that’s either a good sign or an awful one.
“I was just...driving around, and saw your car, and...I don’t know, I just thought it looked interesting and I figured somebody had left it here a long time ago. Uh,” she said, as he seemed to be drifting off, “my name’s April.”
“Nice to meet you, April,” he replied, “I’m Josh.”
“Do you need help?”
“Are you a serial killer?”
“What?!”
“I’m obligated to ask. I’m in kind of a vulnerable position.”
“Are you saying you do need help?”
He nodded. It seemed to take a lot of effort, but he reached behind the stack of textbooks and retrieved a long (relative to him, anyway) thin piece of wire to connect the car seat to the edge of the window. He latched it into the depression of the window itself, and crawled across; the sight was worrisome. Once he reached the other side, he used whatever strength he had in his tiny body to lift the locking mechanism on the door. She waited until he crawled back into the seat before opening it.
April noted that her shadow covered him entirely; that made her feel weird. He reclined on the cushion in the car seat, looking spent. His breath was quick.
“What can I do?”
“Just stay until I feel better.”
“I can take you to a hospital, but I’ve got no cell service out here and I have no idea where the nearest one might be.”
“I’ll be okay,” he rasped, unconvincing, “just stay with me.”
How could he be like this? There was only one explanation: that accident in Massachusetts. It had been all over the news years ago, and occasionally there were those “where are they now?” pieces on the victims. She’d never expected to meet one in the flesh.
Josh was a handsome guy. He was older, by the look of it, probably in his mid-forties. At normal height, he’d have been an imposing figure. Even now, diminished, he was (she had to admit it) gorgeous. She shook it off, knowing that this was not the time.
After a while, Josh’s eyes opened and he seemed more alert.
“How are you feeling?”
“Better.”
This time, he was more convincing.
“I was worried.”
“What’s there to worry about? It’s just a tiny man in a station wagon in the middle of nowhere. Nothing concerning.”
April smiled despite it all. At least his sense of humor was healthy.
“What now? Hospital?”
“That’s still a no. Nothing’s wrong that a hospital can fix. I’ve seen enough doctors already.”
April rolled up the sleeve of her jacket and checked her watch. It was already past three o’clock. Daylight wouldn’t last forever.
“If not a hospital, then where do you need to go? Actually, if you don’t mind my asking, how exactly did you end up here?”
“I was just...out for a drive. I had one of my...spells, yesterday afternoon. It was probably the last one, judging by my current size. Now I’m too small to drive, even with the extenders.”
He seemed awfully calm, but April supposed none of this came as a shock to him.
“You’ve been out here since yesterday?!”
He nodded, and April; whistled.
“I’m just sort of...wandering, myself,” she went on.
“Vacation?”
“Rough day at work.”
Josh grinned. He had a nice smile, one that could light up the room even at his size.
“I was thinking about visiting the Outer Banks. Is there somewhere I could take you?”
“Yeah,” Josh replied matter-of-factly, “the Outer Banks.”
“What’s the matter?” Josh asked. She unzipped the leather jacket and Josh lifted his head from behind the edge of her t-shirt’s front pocket.
“Does the jacket look good?”
Josh laughed; not a great response.
“Sorry,” he said, realizing how it sounded, “you just sounded so upset. I thought it was something serious.”
“It is serious,” she replied, “I have no idea what the hell I’m doing with my life.”
“I don’t think matching your jacket with your boots is going to clear that up for you.”
April rolled her eyes.
“Hey, so this is what the ladies’ room looks like!” Josh spoke with mock-excitement.
The bike sped down the highway for hours, the landscape gradually shifting as it blurred by. April wished she could tell Josh, but the safest place for him was in her shirt pocket. It was a shame he had to miss the view as the dunes began to appear on the horizon.
She’d worried the roar of the engine would bother him, but he didn’t seem to mind. What a trooper, she thought. The OBX, as the area was called, was flat along the main drag and populated by rental homes, summer houses, and the occasional beach-front condo. April pulled up at hotel along the beach and paid for a room. If it was a mid-life crisis, she reasoned, she might as well splurge for an ocean-front view.
A quick trip to a local Mexican restaurant later and the two of them were all settled in. April watched with undisguised fascination as Josh literally sat in his plate.
“I don’t mean this to sound insensitive,” she said, “but being able to eat a burrito the size of a rolled up gym mat is a pretty damn nice consolation prize to your situation.”
“I only regret that now I can’t finish it. It’s like a Twilight Zone episode. There was burrito enough at last!”
April laughed, deep and rich and real, and realized how foreign the feeling had become.
“Speaking of your, uh, situation,” April continued, treading on uncertain ground.
“Okay,” Josh cut in, “I’ll tell you. They’ve got drugs that halt the process. In the past, people like me didn’t make it into their forties. I’m good to go for just about as long as anybody now. I shouldn’t get much smaller, either.”
April nodded.
“Family?”
“Negative. Living with this...thing, it does a number on your self-esteem. I did pretty well compared to most, had a few girlfriends through the years, but I always seemed to let things fall away,” he said, suddenly a bit more contemplative than he’d intended. “I knew how it’d end up. I didn’t want to make anyone into my nurse. It made me feel guilty.”
“You hitched a ride in my pocket from Virginia to North Carolina. Feel guilty now?”
“Not really. But I did pay you for gas.”
April ran her hand over Josh’s wallet. It had felt like a violation taking the cash out at the gas station, even with his permission. She wondered why as she stood up and stretched.
“So,” she said, half-yawning, “what’s next?”
“You quit your high-paying job, bought a bike, drove halfway across the country Easy Rider style, picked up The Littlest Hobo, checked in to a deluxe suite, you barely settle in, and already you ask what’s next? SO restless!”
“I’m asking more for you than for me.”
“I’d answer the same way you would.”
“I don’t have an answer.”
“Exactly.”
April sat back down, took a bite of an enchilada twice as tall as Josh, and stared off at the deep blue horizon.
“You’re too young for a mid-life crisis,” Josh said suddenly. “Hell, I’m forty-five, and I feel great. I’m a lucky guy, all things considered.”
“You did just spend the last eight hours snuggled up the biggest pair of tits in history, relatively speaking. That’s gotta give you mid-life crisis immunity.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Josh laughed.
For a while, they sat in silence, taking in the salt air and the view.
“Really,” April said finally, “isn’t there anywhere you want to go, anything you want to do?”
“Not alone.”
He sounded certain.
Another long moment passed, an evening breeze blew by.
“You can stay with me,” April spoke with a finality she hadn’t expressed in a long time herself.
“I told you,” he said, “I don’t want a nurse, even if I do have to hire one. I can’t stand burdening people. It’s not me.”
Her gaze drifted down from the horizon to the tiny man standing on the table, as proud as a toy soldier. She felt some sort of lightness inside, something gone so long it barely registered.
“And I’m not a nurse,” she said, still just as certain, “but I’m telling you, you can stay with me.”
Josh turned back to her, up at her. He smiled despite himself, at the sight of the wanna-be biker chick who escaped the clutches of the marketing department, now looming over him. A jolly not-so-green giantess.
“You make it tough to say no,” he said.
“Then say yes.”
That night, they watched a movie. Her fingers took in the curves and details of his body, perfection in miniature. Not too fast, just getting acquainted, she thought.
Josh fell asleep about halfway through, and April couldn’t help but admire the sight of him, the muscles, the little streaks of premature gray near his ears, the solid, unreal feeling of his body as she held him in the palm of her hand.
I’m a lucky girl, all things considered.
But what was next?
Not much was certain.
Just the two of us, April thought. It’s just us and the road ahead.