There were fifty nine cars on the highway that passed the unexplainable and mysterious happenstance. But only four people in three separate passing cars noticed it as they drove by during the copper glow of the evening sun.

Mel, in the white 2008 Passat, was wiggling her weight, trying to un-bunch the skirt beneath her legs without jostling the wheel. She was committing a common double standard, scoffing at others for checking their text messages while driving, but made the exception to use the same unsafe technique when the need to tidy herself applied. Mel’s eyelashes were in need of another coat of mascara before she arrived at her destination so she risked it, thinking of doing so as acceptable since it was only once in a while, as if she had a flyer for dangerous behavior that was cut into fortune cookie sized coupons at the bottom and she could use them whenever she felt it was necessary.

Bernie was unaware of Mel’s risky enhancements in the car ahead of him, but was just as distracted from the road, trying to brush off the remaining mayonnaise and sesame seed bun crumbs that freckled his round equator of a belly. His red four door Honda had many crinkled balls of fast food paper bags, evidence that Bernie either ate regularly in his car or was always in a hurry.

Theresa and Gloria, who were in the silver gray minivan on the opposite site of the highway, were debating playfully over the next series of ear piercings that Gloria had just gotten. Gloria was pro, Theresa con. Theresa had been fighting another kind of battle simultaneously, a cold in the throat that mostly made her feel like the throat must be winning or it wouldn’t be so sore.

Each person had a very fleeting connection to what was simultaneously occurring on the side of the open highway.

It might have been the fact that there weren’t many roads off this particular highway except county roads made of dirt or small pump jack sites. One could easily overlook them except for the telltale double line that tinged the road a lighter shade of packed down earth. Either way, the black sedan that was parked just off the north side of the east-west highway, caused attention. At least, it caught the attention of Mel, Bernie, Theresa and Gloria.

Three doors opened and three women emerged from the black sedan, demonstrating that they were unhurt and canceling out any concrete reason to pay further attention to them. Not to mention the fact that the red brake lights were not blinking rhythmically either. The three were young and old; old enough to not be presumed irresponsible and reckless, young enough to not be presumed drunk or senile. Yet they had stopped for a reason and if it wasn’t engine trouble, what was it?

This question gripped at four people, driving in three cars, out of the fifty nine passing.

One of the girls was behind, coming out from around the car. She stopped and shifted her belt, the socks sticking up from her boots, and the collar of her sweater while the other two waited, shaking their clasped hands at her to hurry up. All three stood together, acknowledging the moment. Three woman in a line, each glancing in silly spurts at the other two. Three in a row, dancing about in shivers from the wind and the excitement.

A deep breath of frigid air in, a squeeze of the hands together and a short nod of assessment that they were each ready, and the three starting running down the hill and into the brown orange valley of cultivated farmer dust. Except running to what remained undiscovered to those passing by in their cars as the foot of the hill was invisible from the highway.

All of this happened quickly. A fraction of a mile, a few seconds. A clean pause. In one second, Bernie, in is red four door Honda noticed the door open so hard it bounced back so the driver had to hold her arm out to catch it. In another second, Mel noticed the wind pick up the skirt of the woman sitting in the back seat and could swear she heard the squeal and giggle that must have joined it. In another second, or perhaps the same second of Bernie’s, Gloria observed the woman who had been sitting on the passenger side lift out of the car, and then toss her head back and forth, trying to shake the long curly tendrils that had attacked her from the enchantment of the wind.

Only a pause. A few heartbeats, really. A short enough time to leave each observer – Mel with her sticky lashes, Bernie with his stained tummy, Theresa with her swollen throat and Gloria with her crowded earlobes – wondering what was it that the three friends would find once they reached the bottom of the hill.

***Note to Readers: This circumstance is actually a drop of non-fiction, as it was an actual observance I had made while driving down the highway with my family. There really were three friends, really on their way to some adventure in a valley beyond the scope of my eye. But apparently not my imagination.