They had taken it a little too far. It was twenty years old, out a taillight, approaching 350,000 miles. The tank was at less than a quarter and it was dark. It was deep into June, so it must have been real late.
“You just got nothing up there. Nothing dying to get out. That’s your problem! You’re not in enough pain.”
She put her left hand over her left eye, covering half a frustrated smile, and scratched her eyebrow though there was no itch. “I think I’m in plenty of pain, thank you.”
They’d just left a party and still might have been a bit drunk. But Holly felt okay driving, even on the dark backroads. Nothing Sam was saying was helpful in any way, but she hoped that she’d keep talking if only to take her out of her own head.
“They’re probably talking about us,” Holly said.
“Shut the fuck up.”
“Oh my god. Sorry.”
Sam opened the window by cranking it, the car was that old. “I can see the stress coming out of you. It’s warming up the car. You didn’t drink enough.”
“I don’t even know where we’re going.”
Sam smiled, and she made sure Holly saw it. “Good.”
“Thanks for coming with me though.”
Whatever, Sam thought. She thought she said it but she didn’t. She didn’t even remember why she came with Holly. Just that she was soaking up everything so carefree about that house and replacing it with a worriedness that needed to be stopped.
They might have been silent for a while. No music from the radio nor other cars on the road. Crickets in the trees and the sound of the wind through the open window but they weren’t going very fast. Holly waited for Sam to say something but after a few moments she just entered the void of her head again, wondering whether or not she’d told her mother she loved her before she left and then deciding that, if she did crash this car, and if she was drunk, then that would be her legacy– a daughter who didn’t love her mother and was so ungrateful to her that she decided to drive after two beers just out of spite, get herself killed, and would do it over again. It would be a terrible funeral, so much crying, a priest who never knew her reading the eulogy, they weren’t even Catholic, her father just grateful that it wasn’t his son, every aunt and uncle and cousin and family friend thinking in unison that, hey, if one of us had to go…
“Oh Jesus,” she said aloud when she tasted the salt from a tear land on her lip. “You were wrong,” she almost laughed. “I am in pain.”
On her third attempt to do so, Sam said the words, “About what.”
“Well, I don’t know,” she said in the reticence of a sob. “Myself?”
“Goddammit. Don’t make me therapize– don’t make me a therapist in here.”
Something then swirled back around in Sam’s head, perhaps a feeling that maybe she shouldn’t have said that, that maybe it was rude. “Sorry,” she slurred. “I don’t mean that.”
“It’s okay–”
“You gotta care about someone more than you care about you. About yourself,” said Sam.
Holly tried to understand this, but she couldn’t, and chalked it to Sam being drunk. She was probably trying to say something else but said the words out of order or something.
“What?”
“You care about you too much.”
Holly nodded in confirmation that she had understood correctly the first time. She felt really hurt by this. “Aren’t I supposed to?”
“Sure, man, a little, but… I’m trying to say something and I can’t say it right right now.”
“It’s fine.” Holly wiped the last of the tears from her cheek and looked over at Sam, who was trying her best to steady her breathing. “You know, when I take care of myself by staying in, I just think too much. And when I tell myself I need to let loose and I go out, like tonight, I start thinking, like, What am I doing with my life? That nobody wants me here? And every choice I make is wrong.”
“I’m so sorry Holly. I’m gonna throw up.”
Holly sat in the car with the blinkers on while Sam vomited over the guardrail and into the brush for two minutes. She got back in the car and put her seatbelt on.
“There’s some gum in the glovebox there.”
Sam slowly brought a piece to her mouth and chewed it.
“Every choice you make is wrong,” she then said, and Holly lifted her head.
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t just puke, though.”
She smiled. “True.”
Sam smiled back. She felt proud of herself, and very relieved, because she had no idea what else to say.
“Are you okay,” asked Holly.
“I’m fine.”
Holly showed no signs of putting the car back in motion. She was sitting all limp with her arms folded on top of the steering wheel and her chin on top of her arms, her seatbelt still on, the blinkers clicking rhythmically, the dim headlights exposing a thousand little gnats and mosquitoes and moths before the light faded into the dense lush of the woods. Sam’s door was still open and the air smelled clean and warm, crickets still chirping, an owl far off somewhere.
“Why didn’t you just go home?” Sam asked.
Holly thought for a second. “I guess like I said. I can’t stay in, I can’t go out. I just wanted to drive?” She sighed. “Why’d you come with me?”
“I kissed someone I shouldn’t have,” Sam said. Holly shot up and was about to start laughing. “And I wanted to see if you were okay, too.”
“Who was it?” Holly pleaded.
Sam shook her head. “You don’t get to know. I want us to be friends, so you don’t get to know.”
“Uh oh.”
“It’s bad.”
“It wasn’t… it wasn’t Shane? Right?”
“God. No. No!”
Holly laughed more than she’d expected to, more than she thought was possible. It wasn’t even that funny.
“Don’t ever say that again,” said Sam, who had her face in her hands, giggling.
“So I was your getaway car then. All I’m good for.”
“Not even worth it with how much you complain. I mean. You’re beautiful. You’re smart. You don’t kiss idiots. You got nothing to complain about.”
“Well. I’ve kissed an idiot or two.”
“But no one that bad.”
“No. No one that bad.”
Sam closed her door and let a hand drop out the open window.
“I don’t know where to go,” said Holly.
“Are you hungry?”
“Not really.”
“Ice cream?”
“Everywhere’s closed.”
Sam tapped her fingers on the outside of the door. “We could go back to the party. It’s not that late.”
“Think Shane’s still there?”
“Shut up! Do you wanna go or not?”
Holly laughed. “Well… I definitely don’t wanna go home.” She put her hand on the shift. “It’s a nice night. We could keep driving.”
“So you don’t wanna go back.”
“Are you gonna kiss him again if we do?”
Sam frowned, looking Holly in the eye, unsurprised that she learned her so quickly.
“Let’s keep driving.”