Dear Sage

“Don’t ask, just get in!” she pats the side of the truck’s door, “C’mon, get in!”

I let out a huff of breath, gaze around the empty yard which glows gold in the setting sunlight and jog to the tan pickup. I swing the passenger door open and leap inside. The truck reeks of cigarettes and booze and despair. Sage smiles recklessly as she shifts the vehicle into drive, and starts forward with a violent jolt. The belt screeches as she takes off, speeding around corners with reckless abandon. Three beer cans roll out from underneath my seat and rattle across the floor. My seatbelt locks me in. Sage rides without one.

We race past houses, to the outskirts of town, and to vast empty fields. Grassland flies past us. The last traces of purple sunlight give way to a dark velvetine sky. My window is all the way up. Sage’s is all the way down. Brisk night air blows her hair all over her face. Her arm hangs out of the window. She steers with her wrist resting on top of the wheel and a small smile on her face. Her eyes are wandering and oddly pensive.

The truck is silent. It’s not an uncomfortable or awkward silence. It’s a peaceful and companionable silence. It’s the kind of silence that happens when two people don’t need words to fill up the emptiness, only each other.

Sage turns off to the side of the road and coasts to a stop. She shuts the ignition off and leaps out of the truck.

“Follow me,” she says, with the slam of the truck door. She hates this truck. I turn and jump onto the ground. The gravel crunches under my feet as I land. I jog after Sage. She walks through the empty field, arms swinging freely and stops to look at the sky. Silently, I join her.

Sometimes I wonder if I am in love with Sage. Everything about her intrigues me, from the way her eyes shine with mischief, to her cynical laugh, to her biting sarcasm. She is a peculiar human. She isn’t like other people in how they see the world. She is more real somehow, more deliberate. She looks at things in such a way that spurs deeper consideration. She is reckless and wayward and brash. I know the way she thinks, and I know the way she feels. Her sadness. I know her. All of her.

She is my best friend, after all.

“Sage?” I say quietly. She hums a response, uncharacteristically nebulous.

I open my mouth, and then close it, not sure exactly what I am trying to articulate. I sigh and try again.

“Life isn’t pointless.” I say quietly.

I look at her. Silence stills between us. Sage’s gaze shifts and her eyes soften with a sort of sadness that I can't understand.

"Perhaps..." she whispers to the stars with a sad smile.

In my heart, I know she doesn't believe me.