I was working the late shift at the Flying J truckstop on a Tuesday the first time I fell into another world. Not gonna lie, I was pretty blasted on an edible I’d taken to escape the dreariness of another overnight. A couple of fratty-looking guys asked me if we had any Natty Light that was cold and I went to check even though I wasn’t supposed to leave the register and whoosh. The security cameras showed I disappeared into the cooler for twenty minutes and I got written up.
The second time was an afternoon shift, so I had coverage and told Javier that I was going out back to smoke. The fact that I’d never taken a smoke break or smelled like cigarettes before didn’t seem to register with him. Most people are spectacularly unobservant, I’ve noticed. Might be why the secret world revealed itself to me.
I couldn’t remember the first time, so this time the stars were new to me. It reminded me of one of those “immersive exhibits” I’d gone to in Philly once, when I accidentally fell into Van Gogh’s Starry Night and couldn’t regain my equilibrium as ol’ Vincent’s paint swirls washed over me.
Back in the cooler, I walked among the stars, their tiny dots of light falling on me. I could feel their warmth on my skin, like when I used a magnifying glass to amplify a sunbeam as a kid. I’m ashamed to say I fried an ant or two in my day.
A few days later, I asked Kate B. – the good Kate – when we installed the light show in the back of the cooler. I figured it was something we put in to entertain the truckers or help them meditate to relieve their stress from driving or some such. She looked at me like I had two heads. I was already on thin ice from the abandoned-register thing, so I kept my mouth shut and restocked shelves for three hours like I hadn’t said anything.
The third time, though, I was ready. I packed a backpack with snacks because who knew how long I’d be gone, and a sweater because I worried that space was cold. I waited until three a.m. because that was always slowest and I knew someone would be coming in at five to brew fresh coffee and start another day.
What did I have worth coming back for? A childhood of government cheese and an adulthood that wasn’t turning out to be much better. I grabbed a Twisted Tea off the shelf as I walked through the beer cooler to the secret door – technically stealing – and let myself into the mysterious universe. I stepped out into a million pinpricks of light and kept walking.
