Despite the haze, I noticed the hitchhiker straightaway, standing by the roadside in the distance. A tiny black dot upon the horizon with a smaller dot protruding from it that I presumed was the hitchhiker's arm. As I got closer I could see another larger blob above the main one, as if the hitchhiker was holding something above their head. I started to release the pressure from the accelerator pedal and shifted it to the foot that was on the brake pedal.

She had an umbrella: an umbrella in the desert. That was the first thing that struck me about her, along with the fact that she was dressed from head to foot in black. They weren't heavy clothes like an overcoat or anything, but I was surprised to find someone waiting in the Arizona sun wearing black. Okay so I was wearing black as well, but I was driving a car so I was alright, and anyway the umbrella seemed to be doing a good job of keeping her in the shade.

The next thing that struck her about me was her face. Her face was really pale, yet not in a sickly kind of way. She looked very young: about seventeen, yet she had this aura of wisdom around her that you could only get from age. She was completely monochrome: the beautiful paleness of her whole skin complemented and contrasted her midnight black attire, even her eyes seemed black (or was that the way her makeup was?). The only other colour I could see was silver Ankh that hung around her neck. As she climbed in, she gave me the most beautiful smile I had ever seen, like the smile you would give to someone you really love.

"Thanks" she said, in a friendly voice that seemed neither childish nor aged.

"Your welcome" I said as I started the car again.

I carried on down the highway with my passenger in the seat next to me. She put on a pair of sunglasses and started to root through my collection of tapes, eventually picking up one and putting it into the car stereo. Immediately "The Sanity Assassin" by Bauhaus started to blare through the stereo. She had good musical taste.

"So where are you going then?" I asked her.

"Oh, just somewhere. What about you?"

"I'm going to see a friend of mine" I replied. "Cassandra. She's ill you see."

"Cancer?" She asked, in a way that was comforting rather then intruding.

"Yeah. The doctors say she's only got a month or so to live. She moved out here from England a couple of years ago and I haven't seen her since then."

I wondered why I was telling Her this: a complete stranger that I picked up on the highway.

"She lives in a small town called Corville about twenty miles down the highway here. I'm stopping there for a while so if you want to go further, I'm afraid I can't help you."

"Corville's fine." She said, in that beautiful voice that comforted me just to hear it.

Cassandra had been diagnosed about six months previously: a cancerous growth in her left breast that the surgeons said was inoperable. Her condition was terminal and she had no choice but to sit back and slowly die. She had been one my true friends: one of those people you could tell anything to in strictest confidence. One of those people who would always be there for you: only it was now grimly apparent that Cassandra couldn't. Even so, I vowed to be there for her, but the thought of her lying there in pain almost overwhelmed me.

"Are you okay?"

I snapped out of my daydream and smiled a rather pathetic excuse for a smile. "Yeah, yeah I'm fine".

"No you're not" she said. "You're crying".

Trying to concentrate on the empty road ahead, I reached for a tissue in my pocket and wiped my tear-soaked eyes, yet the tears kept on coming no matter how much I tried to soak them up. I stopped the car for a brief moment to compose myself.

"I'm sorry" I said, trying to hold back the tears, "I'm just having trouble keeping myself together."

She looked at me in a way that expressed more sympathy then anyone can give in their whole lives.

"My younger sister has the same problem."

She smiled that smile, and I found myself smiling too.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't inflict my emotional baggage on you."

"That's okay" she said "you can't carry it all on your own can you?"

I expected her to come out with some cliched quote like "a problem shared is a problem halved". Okay so I'm lying, I didn't. I knew she would come out with something original that would cheer me up. Admittedly what she said amounted to the same thing, but it WAS an original way of presenting it and it DID cheered me up.

The final lines of "Bela Lugosi's Dead" were wafting from the car speakers as we pulled into Corville and I stopped a few block's away from Cassandra's house at my passenger's request. Her boots made not sound as she stepped onto the sidewalk, with her umbrella in hand.

"Well, I hope you get to where you're heading."

"I will" she said "but I'll wait a while first."

"Well, goodbye" I said.

She smiled that sweet smile of hers again. "I'll see you later Michael."

I drove to Cassandra's house, unsure of what I would see when I got there. I walked up the garden path and knocked on her door: it was a couple of minutes before she answered. She was fully dressed and tried to put on an air of normality, but the look on her face was enough to convey the pain she was in.

"Michael, It's you! What a surprise! How are you?"

I gave her a hug. "Shall we go inside?"

We spent the evening together on the sofa in front of the TV, but most of the time was taken up by talking. I told her what I had been doing with my life, showing her some of the stories I had wrote and some poetry I had composed. I told her that I knew about the cancer and I told her what I had been harbouring all these years: how much I truly loved her.

In return, Cassandra told me of the pain she was in, how she had to take gallons worth of drugs just to control it and how she wished with all her heart that it would end. I was in tears by the end of it not because she was going to die but because of the agony she was in. I couldn't think of anything else to do but hold her in my arms. I looked into her eyes for what could possibly be the last time, then I kissed her.

Cassandra died the following morning: and She was waiting.

She was standing by the TV set with her hands behind her back, her feet together and a smile upon her face. A sort of "I'm really, really sorry Michael but it has to be this way" kind of smile.

"She's dead?"

She nodded.

"And you are...?"

She nodded again.

"You said you would be seeing me again."

"Yes, I did."

I held Cassandra's hand in mine to find it was still warm. "Where is she now?"

"She's just somewhere."

"Can't tell me, huh?"

She shook her head. "No, but it is somewhere nice."

I nodded and took a look at Cassandra's face. It was so different then when she was alive: a look of peace, of freedom from her torment. I looked at her then I understood. "She couldn't have coped with the pain any longer could she?"

She was sitting beside me now, with that look in her eyes that seemed to reach out and hug me so tightly that I couldn't breath. We sat there: the three of us, in silence for several minutes.

"I'll have to go now Michael." She stood up and walked over to the door. "Do you want to say a last goodbye?"

I followed her to the door and saw Cassandra standing at the end of the garden path. She looked so happy, so relieved that her pain was over. She waved to me, and I waved back. "Goodbye Michael" The hitchhiker said.

I thought back to the night before, when Cassandra told me of her pain, before I gave my response.

"Thank you"

She smiled, then headed down the path to join Cassandra before they walked off down the street, towards the sun that was rising in the distance.