I pulled into the 7-11 late one afternoon, as the bruised clouds were starting to gather for the daily summer thunderstorms. I'd had an uneventful day at the office, and an uneventful drive back. With NPR nattering away on the car radio, I had glanced at the fuel gauge and noted that the gas was low, and ended up at that particular gas station while on mental autopilot. The sameness of my routines were second-nature, comforting. Work and drive. Drive and fill-up. I went through the familiar routine of pre-paying at the pump, filling up. My tank was low, indeed.

There's a sort of punctuated feeling you get when you stop to fill-up a car after some time on the highway; that sharp edge of memories that your mind gropes over as you stand there in the relative hush, the white noise of the highway temporarily halted. No, not halted. Shifted, and heard from a different perspective, outside the car, as if you're outside the normal spheres of reality, and you're watching life go by and not just cars. An out-of-car experience, if you will. The sounds around you are clearer, pricklier. It's as if you've removed earplugs, and can now hear the upper registers. Your stiff leg and back muscles suddenly called to action, the cool air on your face, the waves of sickly-sweet gasoline sweeping over you. Sometimes you get a little faint if you attempt the adjustment too fast.

It was in that type of moment that I noticed the boy. There was nothing at all out of the ordinary that might have given me some sort of premonition. Perhaps the uneventfulness of it all should have been warning enough. It was, literally and figuratively, the calm before the storm.

He was young, perhaps just starting college, and riding a new mountain bike. The college was just a block away. I don't know for a fact that it was a new bike, but afterwards, in reflection, that's the only thing that made sense. He rode the bike into the 7-11 parking lot, and swerved towards me as I finished topping off the tank. I caught a glimpse of cocky sunglasses and sun-bleached hair as he whizzed past a bank of pumps. I automatically assumed that he was taking a shortcut through the parking lot, and got back into my car.

As I started the car up, I saw him again, now out of his seat, riding around the pumps, circling around me. Growing curious now, I cautiously pulled out of the parking lot, keeping an eye on the boy. It was a good idea, as he insouciantly cut in front of me and rode out into the street ahead of me, headed back in the direction he had come from. My mind was filled with idle questions. Why was he going back the way he had come? Why was he riding around the 7-11 parking lot? Where did he come from? Where was he going? What the hell was his problem?

We both came to an immediate red light, and as I watched, he sort of slowed down, then rode out into the empty intersection, looping around in lazy circles. Cars were starting to gather, like an audience, at either ends of the intersection. He looped back around to my end of the intersection as crossing traffic became imminent. On his return flight, he bounced smugly on the bike, delighting in the shock suspension, delighting in his airy freedom while all we car-bound fools could do was sit and watch.

As we watched, he bounced and leaned and turned with abandon. He started to teeter off-balance, tried to right himself with a jerk, suddenly found his feet caught in the toeclips of his not-so-wonderful-anymore mountain bike, and fell into a tangled heap of chrome-molybdenum and limbs. I watched all this with my eyes growing wider until, in that single moment of clarity, I laughed my ass off. He picked himself up, sat at the intersection another moment, and shaking his head at himself, he rode off in the opposite direction.

That night, as thunder crashed around us, it rained a hard and clean rain.