"it didn't turn out the way you wanted it to, did it? now you know this is what it feels like"
- nine inch nails

   The night hung above them like a theater curtain; heavy and smothering. Stars, like chips of ice, shifted from white to blue to red in the swirling atmosphere. Cheyenne rolled down the window and pressed her face into the hot wind. Out here where the road winds through low trees and over rolling hills, the humidity seemed less oppressive than in the city. Cheyenne closed her eyes, opened her mouth and imagined trying to catch snowflakes on her tongue. As a child up north, she spent many years chasing snowflakes with her pink tongue. Here, just like Santa Claus, snow was a myth.

   "You'll eat a bug that way," Jericho said. His eyes barely left the road but his right hand traced the curves of her thigh.

   He was three years older than she. In a few months, Jericho would graduate and study astronomy in a college out of state probably. Local colleges didn't hold any interest for him. In fact, he seemed anxious to get away. I love him but I'll have to start all over again, she thought, her stomach queasy with this knowledge.

   "Where are we going," she asked. She grabbed his hand to prevent it from trekking too far.

   "The Saucer."

   "Jeri, why can't we do anything else? Why don't we catch a movie or go out with friends?"

   The Saucer was a clearing beside a lonely dirt road a few miles from 380. Only cattle ranchers used the back roads out here and teenagers liked it for privacy. The rumor was that a flying saucer landed here years ago but no one seems to know really what happened. There wasn't any mention of UFOs in any of the local papers that Cheyenne knew about. However, everyone knew the rumors and claimed to have friends or relatives that either saw it or read about it. Personally, she thought that the Saucer was named that because of its shape.

   "Babe, I hope to get an apartment just as soon as I graduate and we won't need to go out to the Saucer."

   She weathered the lie.

   "Is that all there is?"

   His turned his eyes from the road to let them fall to the tight material stretched across her large breasts. He's only instinctual like a dog, she thought vaguely. His eyes stayed a moment before finding her face.

   "Of course not," he said. His face softened and a smile bled across his cheeks. "You know how I feel about you. And besides, this will be one of the last chances to observe Orion before winter."

   "I wish that it would snow," she said.

   When they first started dating, Jericho brought Cheyenne to the Saucer and they lay on the hood of his car, watching the sky and talking. The last time they were here, they both ended up naked on a blanket and she had to push Jericho away. She wasn't ready for sex yet. Not here, at least. He had acted hurt, quickly dressed and waited in the car while she gathered her clothes in the moonlight. Cheyenne cringed against the dirt in her underwear and picked at a burr in one of her socks.

   Not tonight either.

   "Do you love me?"

   His smile faltered and he checked the road again. No one was coming. The night was still, holding its breath. He turned back to her and held her hand, his smile bigger than before.

   "Sure I do."

* * * * *

   It wasn't hard to like Jericho. What was there not to like? He remained athletic, playing basketball and baseball for the school. Cheyenne was spellbound after watching them lose a basketball game to the Broncos. He had a lean, muscular body that seemed a bit too white under the harsh glow of the gymnasium. She had giggled when he stumbled over another players feet and his brown hair fell across his brown eyes. When her friend asked what was so funny, she simply laughed harder unable to stop staring at the boy sitting on his ass on the court. Jericho seemed to hear her and found her red face in the crowd, a sheepish grin inking over his own.

   Plus, Jericho wasn't a dumb jock. He kept his GPA above a 3.5 and excelled in science and math. Astronomy was his baby; he had told her when they met for the first time. She had been in the library looking over notices for tutors when he stumbled across his own big feet this time and nearly sent her sprawling into a fire door, probably setting off alarms all up and down the campus and with her luck, setting off the water sprinklers.

   "What the hell-?" she said, turning her face towards her attacker.

   "I'm so sorry. Here, let me help you."

    She felt hands pull her to her feet and was astonished and embarrassed to see Jericho hastily picking up her school books.

   "I'm such a klutz."

   "I think you're cute." Had she said that out loud? What was wrong with her?

   Cheyenne searched the floor for an abyss to fall into.

   "Here," he said. "Again, I'm sorry." He acted like he hadn't heard her so maybe it had been in her head. But later on, he asked her to accompany him to a nearby coffee house after class. She agreed and ended up staying out past dinner time, pretending to study but instead, she studied Jericho in time measured only by the passing of songs on the radio and measured breaths. They were dating soon and Cheyenne had felt more complete than she had in her whole life.

* * * * *

   The headlights felt out the twisting road before them like a pair of pale hands guided by impulse. Cheyenne leaned her forehead against the side window and watched the landscape reel by. Her thoughts whirled constantly like the lull of the tires. What made Jericho change? Or were all boys like him? The trees blurred by, reaching out their branches for her, as if they wanted to take her up on their shoulders and present her with the night sky.

   She turned slowly to look at Jericho so as to not draw attention to the fact that she was doing so. He was oblivious. He had his head tilted forward, mouth slightly ajar in a dopey grin. The music on the radio was bland college rock and he drummed his fingers along the steering wheel, keeping rhythm like an oiled machine just getting started. When he retracted his hand from her thigh to pull the Coke bottle from the drink carrier, she held her breath. Jericho took a long swig and placed the bottle and his hand back to their former positions.

   "Almost there."

   And yet, he never turned to look at her. He never even noticed that she was watching and waiting. Waiting for ... what? Cheyenne didn't know. All she knew is that she loved him more than life and she had a hard time imagining having the same feelings about any other person ever again. She was sure that he loved her. He was just a bit distracted about nearing graduation and all the pressures associated. He wouldn't push any boundaries with her because he respected her and loved her too.

   I'm just being silly, she thought.

   Cheyenne squeezed the hand resting on her thigh and felt it tighten in response. He turned and winked at her.

* * * * *

   "Cheyenne, I'm sorry if you didn't want to come out here tonight."

   A breeze ruffled her hair and tickled her face.

   "Nah. It's beautiful." Cheyenne swallowed a large gulp of coconut rum and Coke from her plastic cup. Warmth pushed into her belly.

   "I just wanted to spend more time alone with you."

   He batted at a mosquito and scratched his leg. His shorts ruffled in the breeze. She couldn't remember the stars ever being as vivid. She felt like she could reach up and shake the tunic of night.

   "Do you want any more?" Jericho asked. His eyes were dark pools pulling her into him.

   "A little, please."

   Jericho walked back to the car parked behind them. Cheyenne finished the remainder in her cup and fingered the soft blanket beneath her. It felt good against her skin. The ground beneath it felt like warm breath. She kicked off her flip-flops and pressed her gaze into the void beyond the tree tops.

   She could imagine a large saucer of rapid rotating lights seeking her out, flashing from the farthest star and humming low over the humid earth. Maybe it would pause in this clearing, illuminating her in the purest white light ever witnessed, drowning the background into negative. She wouldn't be afraid. She would laugh into the sky and reach her arms around the pulsating heat, welcoming it into her like sunshine. It would be love. Love in the purest form.

   Cheyenne felt pain, sharp and swift. The light dissipated like wisps of fog into throbbing discomfort. Jericho was above her, a dark silhouette against the cold gaze of faraway star systems, pushing into her, harder and faster.

   "Jericho ... what ... what are you doing?" she asked, wincing in pain. She tried to get up.

   "Shh," he said, pressing her back down. "I love you. I love you, Cheyenne."

   This isn't happening! She felt his hands pushing her bra up and then clawing at her breasts. Tears welled up and ran across her cheeks, adding to the humility. He pushed into her harder, trying to get inside to her most intimate thoughts and feelings.

   "No," she moaned.

   "Shh. I've always wanted you. Don't you know that?"

   "Not like this."

   She tried to get up again, cutting her hand on a ragged pebble of glass. Broken beer bottles gleamed like slivered pieces of moonlight in the grass. She felt the hot liquid bead on her palm and begin to flow between her legs. Jericho panted like a horse after a morning run, his muscles taut and unflinching. He continued to mumble about love.

   "I wish that it would snow," she whispered. She let her mind drift elsewhere.

   "I wish that it would snow if only for one last time."

   Cheyenne squeezed her eyes shut and imagined the brilliance circling the treetops for her, searching to take her to another world. She was numb. Her eyes rolled backwards, back in time, into her self, searching for the perfect snowflake. Almost there, she thought. The night blew a cold breath across the clearing and her skin dimpled in the breeze.

   There. I can feel it now.

   Grabbing onto Jericho with numb fingers, she felt the taut, flexed muscles of his ass slow and then falter in movement. He shivered. Then, she was pulling him closer, deeper inside her; fingers raking his back.

   "Hey! What?" he asked.

   The air was like an icicle against the skin. Cheyenne opened her eyes. Her breath came out as steam and rose around Jericho's steaming body, swirling together as one entity. She searched his surprised face with a hint of sadness; her dreams forever gone.

   Jericho made no attempt to pull his now flaccid penis out or to break free from Cheyenne's iron grip. Instead, he craned his neck to the spectacle presenting itself above them.

   It appeared as if all the stars had been jarred loose from the sky. Brilliant streamers of white-hot light flared across the disturbed night, falling as far as the eye could see. The forest resonated with fierce shudders and Jericho began to scream.

   Cheyenne joined his terrified gaze and smiled when the first snowflake landed on her tongue.