1. The engine sputtered, the emergency light blinked on, and she carefully navigated the
old car to the side of the abandoned road, the vehicle coasting to a smooth stop as it died, she
suspected, for good.
She rested her forehead against the steering wheel, the clicking of the cooling engine
the only sound in the small space besides the whip of the wind as it slapped against the car
before continuing on its way across the barren North Dakota plain.
There wasn’t much snow, and squinting through the passenger’s side window, she could
make out the brownish golden hue of the crop that had grown in the field over the summer as
the remains poked from beneath the thin crust of dirty ice.
Sitting for a moment before pushing open the heavy door, she pulled on her red
fingerless gloves, cheerful fox faces grinning at her from the tops of her hands, and she took a
sip of the now tepid coffee she had purchased at her last stop.
With nothing keeping her confined to the car, she stepped out, the wind immediately
biting into the delicate flesh of her cheeks and with a loud creak she slammed the door shut
behind her.
Knowing it was futile, but trying anyway, with unsteady hands she pulled her cellphone
from within the deep pocket of the emerald green coat he had bought for her so long ago
saying the color matched her eyes, perfectly.
The lack of bars proved to her what she already knew and she slid the black rectangle
back into her pocket, resisting the overwhelming urge to hurl the device into the dead field
with a throw containing all the strength she could muster.

2. Her fingertips were numb from the brief exposure to the cold, the tip of her nose
tingling, and from the shoulder of the road she wondered, not for the first time, if dying from
hypothermia was as pleasant as people made it sound, if she could lie in the field allowing her
worries to drift away in a warm, yet frozen, haze.
Ignoring the wind that blew her black hair in an angry tangle around her head, she
stepped off the shoulder of the road and into the crusty snow, her black scuffed boots breaking
the grey layer of ice with a crunch, the sound carried away on the points of snowflakes as they
flew into the horizon.
The sky was a whitish-grey blending into the field far into the distance, and she stared
into sky, eventually pushing her hair from her eyes, from her lips coated with Passion Pink, the
flavor he chose as his favorite, he said, because it would always remind him of their first kiss.
A rumbling caught her attention and for just one moment she allowed herself to hope
he had come for her, but even before the beat-up truck passed her by, her shoulders hunched
in disappointment and she pushed down the burning in her throat, blaming the sting in her
eyes on the cold.
A single blackbird cawed overhead as it fought against the northern wind and she
focused on the bird, the solitary figure it made, cutting determinedly through the icy air, the
black of its feathers in stark contrast to glaring brightness of the winter sky.
She stood in the empty field, the prairie void of life, shivering in her bright green coat
that matched her eyes, her pink lips trembling, a useless cellphone sitting in her pocket, a worn
out car parked behind her, alone.