Elizabeth?

So I had finally passed my test and sat through 12 hours worth of mind-numbingly boring lectures, spent enough hours with a cranky instructor and was sitting the final bit of the driving test. Cramped into a box with 4 wheels and an engine I sat, for ages, waiting in a long line of potential motorists for my turn to perform unrealistically unimaginative maneuvers before unenthusiastic uninterested examiners.

'Jangan bukak radio d'gan aircon!' we were warned. Fair advice, given that the cars were fickle enough as it was. Stalling the engine was an automatic failure, and the cars didn't need much encouragement. But after hours of mind-crushing boredom and body-crushing heat, common sense tends to be forgotten. 'To hell with that'. Up goes the volume, and the air conditioning follows suit. Soon I'm singing along to a favoured song, a 6ft boy rocking out in a car clearly designed for midgets and clowns.

I look into the rear view mirror, there's a girl. She's rocking out too, her mouth forming the same words. We look at each other through the mirrors, laugh, and keep each other company throughout the long wait, separated by glass and metal, conversing through the shared airwaves and our reflections.

We go through our test, grinning and daring the other to do it faster (I scraped the car doing this, nobody knows..except her, maybe). We pass, and we sit at the nearby canteen. We talk for ages, about everything near and dear to us, except about ourselves, oddly. We exchanged numbers, and promises that we'd meet up soon. We go off with our separate driving groups, the day at an end.

I lost my handphone the next day. It's been almost 3 years since, but I still think about it. I'm left with a fading image, and a vague feeling that I've been scammed out of something really amazing and beautiful. I still think about the great 'what if', and toy with the idea that one day I might serendipitously meet her again.

I'm sorry, I really meant to call.

I think her name was Elizabeth. I forget.