GRADUATION TRANSITIONZ:
(Plus Pix of Rachael & Sophia in Ithaca, NY)
It was a starry warm spring night and the 5 of us were squeezed into Rachael's Honda, listening to the "Graduation 2011/Rachael's Car" CD I had burned. All the windows were rolled down, and we stuck our hands out into the night, feeling the air rush by. I sat in the front with my bare feet on the dashboard. We were speeding towards some strip club located in the backwoods of Ithaca, NY. We couldn't think of anything else to do. Outside the car the trees were draped with a moonlight glow; everything felt perfectly still as we rushed by. A song came on, a sadder, quieter song I used to like in highschool: "Used to be one of the rotten ones and I liked you for that. Bleaching your teeth, smiling flash, talking trash under my window. Park that car, shut that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me." I turned it up.
Our lives were about to change. We were about to graduate college. The car grew silent.
Then Blanca started crying: "I love you guys so much, and I will never see you guys, you all live on the East Coast and I am going to be in California. I'm going to miss this, I'm going to miss you guys." We consoled her. We said we'd all see each other, that we'd talk, reminisce, and things would be fine. We all knew things would be fine. But different. We loved these drives together, these college nights together, and they were about to become memories. The song ended and everyone in the car exhaled.
We pulled up to the strip club in anticipation. It was a small, one-story, concrete box of a building, painted all black. The neon signs in the window (Budweiser and Girls) were not lit up. The place was closed. We all started laughing.
We decided to buy 40's, drive to the graveyard and drink there instead.
...000...
