All of a sudden we were out of the lot and on the highway next to the mountains, flying. I put my hand out the window, and then I put my head out. I felt my hair blow behind me and the air rush into me, and I forgot for a moment to worry about how I was supposed to be. Because I was perfect right then. Everything was. And Sky was a perfect driver. Not scary. Just steady. And fast. I wanted the music to last forever.
When I brought my head back in, Sky looked at me and kind of smiled. “Sit closer,” he said. So I moved to the middle of the bench seat, and everything slowed down except the car. The song and its drums were going. He put his hand on my thigh. High up. Right on the skin where my skirt ended. His fingers moved, just the littlest bit. Such a little bit that if I looked down, I probably couldn’t even have seen them moving. But I felt them, just enough that I knew he knew what he was doing. He’d done this before.
For a moment, I went somewhere else. I remembered how it felt, those nights with May, when we were supposed to be at the movies. I got scared suddenly, and I tried not to let Sky know that I was breathing too fast. I stared straight ahead at the road and imagined I was above the earth, looking down through the window of a plane. The road would look like a streak of lightning laid across the land. Sky’s truck would be a tiny toy car.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“Nothing…”
“Do you want to go somewhere?”
“No, I like driving.”
And then he took his hand off of my leg, and his hand found mine, and he held on to it, and he seemed like an anchor to the earth. I was back in the car with him, and he kept driving, fast but never faster, and never slower. He stayed just right the whole time.
Yours,
Laurel
Dear Amy Winehouse,
In a way you were like the singers from the sixties, like Janis and Jim, and from the nineties, like Kurt, because your fearlessness seemed like it came from a different time. When your first album was released, you still looked innocent, a pretty girl who said she thought she was ugly. But by the time your second album came out, it’s like you’d invented a new person to be. You would step onstage in your little dress, sipping a drink, with your big beehive hairdo and Cleopatra eyeliner, and sing with a voice that poured out of your tiny body. You wore your clothes like armor, but in your songs you opened all the way up. You were willing to expose yourself without caring what anyone thought. I wish I was more like that.
You were always wild, even as a kid. You got kicked out of your theater school in London when you were sixteen because you pierced your nose and because you didn’t “apply yourself.” Hannah told me this. She doesn’t really apply herself, either, even though the teachers are always telling her how she’s so bright.
Today, instead of forgetting our gym clothes, Hannah suggested ditching PE altogether. She said that Natalie would ditch her last class, too, and Natalie’s mom would be at work until late, so we could go get some booze and drink it at her house. I was worried about getting drunk in the daytime, but I called Dad anyway and said, “I’m going to Natalie’s house to study after school, so I might be home a little late, okay?”
“Okay,” he said, and then he paused. “I’m proud of you, Laurel. It’s not easy, what you’ve been through, and you’re out there living your life.”
He sounded like he meant it, and it was more than he’d said about anything in a long time. My stomach sank with guilt. I wondered what he would think if he knew what we were really doing.
I swallowed. “Thanks, Dad,” I said, and hung up as quickly as I could.
On our way to the store, Hannah sang “Valerie,” because that’s Natalie’s favorite of your songs. Hannah said that you had the best style of anyone, and then Natalie said that you had tattoos of pin-up girls, and Hannah said that she thought you even had affairs with a few, but she added, “Amy wasn’t a lesbian, she said, at least not without a little Sambuca.” Then she laughed. I wondered if this is what Hannah thought about herself.
When we got to Safeway, the pounding rain was sticking the bright leaves to the sidewalk. The way to do it, Hannah explained, is you just stand outside the door, trying to look pretty. And when a guy walks by, you stare at him in that way. You give him the money, and when he comes out and asks what you are up to, you take the bottle and run. You feel the whole rush of it. Natalie said Hannah is best at this, and that the guys always come when she looks. But Hannah made me try. Eventually a guy with a black ponytail and jeans with a patch that said XTC came over. He looked like a rocker left over from twenty years ago. I got my eyes ready, and he noticed me and said hi. I guess the key is to act like maybe he’ll get something in return for the favor. That’s what Hannah told me. It made me nervous, but I tried not to show it.
Then, when we were standing outside the door waiting for him to come back, I saw Janey, my old friend from elementary and middle school, walk up. Oh no, I thought. My heart started racing. She was holding hands with this cute soccer boy wearing a Sandia uniform. Her hair was perfect and pushed back by a headband, her skirt just the right amount of short with matching tights and rain boots. I wondered what she was doing here. Janey isn’t the type for ditching, I thought, but then I realized that by now the school day must have been over. I tried to turn away so she wouldn’t see me, but unfortunately it was too late. Janey’s eyes fell on me and froze.
“Hey,” I mumbled.
She glanced back at the guy she was with, and I wondered if she was embarrassed to be talking to me. “Hey, Laurel.” She paused for a moment, and I hoped that she would just go inside. But she walked up closer and touched my arm, the way you would if you were a doctor who had to tell someone they were dying. “How are you?”
“Um, I’m fine.”
She pursed her lips into a sad smile. “I miss you,” she said.
“Yeah, you too.”
I was about to ask her what she was doing when the XTC guy came out of the store with a bottle of Jim Beam. I knew I had to grab the bottle and run. So just as Janey gave me a freaked-out look, I said to her and the XTC guy both, “We gotta go,” and I grabbed the bottle and ran as hard as I could, Natalie and Hannah chasing behind me.
When we got far enough away that we slowed down to catch our breath, Hannah asked, “Who was that?”
“Oh,” I said, “just a girl I used to know. From middle school.”