The Prius wasn’t...a new car. It was several years old, actually, and even if it hadn’t been Lucinda’s family would have done good work on it and you might have thought that it was. A booster seat was buckled haphazardly in the back next to an abandoned McDonald’s bag that held a single decaying fry, which clung to its short fast-food life with all the desperation of students on their last day of summer.
I could relate.
When I got in, my friend apologized for the “old weed” smell - her older brother had taken the car earlier in the week. I shrugged. She had a car, I didn’t. I wasn’t going to be picky.
The front seat that I squeezed onto had a strange brown stain on the left side, and I perched to the right of it for the majority of our ride. I watched the digital speedometer above the …show more content…
Elliphant yelled about getting younger and my toes tapped along on the dashboard, the beat pulling my broad Flintstone-feet to life. That blank country road stretched before us, a faded gray and yellow snake with no slither, filling my stomach with fluttering hope of what was to come. It didn’t matter that we had no idea where we were going, that we were more or less hopelessly lost and potentially out of our town entirely. We were together and it was a sunny day, a day where anything seemed possible, with no classroom walls and monotone voices to trap me - the looming threat of mandatory education made it all the sweeter. Our windows were down and our inhibitions lost in the wind. I loved my best friend and she loved me and this moment filled me with child-like trust and unadulterated joy. No adult was telling us to straighten out and find our way home. No schedule bound us to make it back at a certain time, to make sure we got nine hours of sleep and an hour of exercise every day. We were, maybe for the first time, absolutely
I could relate.
When I got in, my friend apologized for the “old weed” smell - her older brother had taken the car earlier in the week. I shrugged. She had a car, I didn’t. I wasn’t going to be picky.
The front seat that I squeezed onto had a strange brown stain on the left side, and I perched to the right of it for the majority of our ride. I watched the digital speedometer above the …show more content…
Elliphant yelled about getting younger and my toes tapped along on the dashboard, the beat pulling my broad Flintstone-feet to life. That blank country road stretched before us, a faded gray and yellow snake with no slither, filling my stomach with fluttering hope of what was to come. It didn’t matter that we had no idea where we were going, that we were more or less hopelessly lost and potentially out of our town entirely. We were together and it was a sunny day, a day where anything seemed possible, with no classroom walls and monotone voices to trap me - the looming threat of mandatory education made it all the sweeter. Our windows were down and our inhibitions lost in the wind. I loved my best friend and she loved me and this moment filled me with child-like trust and unadulterated joy. No adult was telling us to straighten out and find our way home. No schedule bound us to make it back at a certain time, to make sure we got nine hours of sleep and an hour of exercise every day. We were, maybe for the first time, absolutely