section 17

author's note: falling asleep, sorry, love you all my darling readers, good night.

“Where are we going?” I asked, breaking the silence. It wasn’t a bad silence, not an awkward silence, just a silence. He had driven me out of Denver pretty far though, school had been out for at least a half hour. The trees and tall buildings were starting to turn in to mountains. You never got too far away from mountains when you lived in Denver, but when you got closer to them they were immense.

I looked at the road signs that passed by when he didn’t answer. “Wait a minute,” I looked around at the surroundings, “are we going to Boulder?” Dad’s brother had lived up there before moving to Boise and we had driven the way there on pretty much every holiday because the house was bigger than ours and circular and Andrew liked running around the house in circles. Uncle Craig had three little children who liked playing with Andrew, they thought he was just an overgrown toddler.

When Devyn didn’t say anything I realized that we were in fact going to Boulder. “Devyn, I can’t go to Boulder. My parents think that I’m at the library,” I looked back at the highway behind us, as if I was thinking of getting out of the moving car and walking back home. “I don’t break rules, Devyn. My parents have enough to handle!”

Devyn laughed, it was silent but he looked up at the ceiling with disbelief. “What happened when you came home last Thursday, pretty girl? What’d your parents have to say about your cigarette breath?”

That made me stop my mini-hysterics. My parents hadn’t noticed that my eyes were red or that my voice had been hoarse, they hadn’t noticed that my breath had smelled like nicotine or how fidgety or paranoid I was. They hadn’t noticed anything.

“And how did you feel after that cigarette?” he said cigarette like it was a dirty word, like it was something far worse than what it was.

I felt… well, the truth was I felt a little nauseous and I had a pretty bad headache until I went to bed… but the feeling of getting one over my parents had felt pretty good. It was like something that I could hold over them, something that they didn’t know about. It was something that they wouldn’t let me do but I was still able to do. They wouldn’t let me go to the dance and there was no way around that one… but I could smoke a cigarette. I didn’t exactly like it, but I could do it.

Screw them.

I noticed Devyn looking at me and I must have had a smile of some sort on my face because he justed nodded and said, “That’s what I thought.”

I sighed and resigned myself to whatever it was that Devyn had planned. I didn’t exactly trust him… he was an okay driver if that meant anything. Especially for being fifteen…

“So,” I started, “what are we going to do if we get pulled over?”

“What do you mean?” he asked it like I was trying to say something else. Like he thought we were going to pop open a few beers and start drinking them while on the way to Boulder. I snuck a glance behind the seat to make sure there weren’t any beers there.

“Well, you’re fifteen,” I stated, “you can’t drive.”

For the first time Devyn looked uncomfortable, but it was only for a second. “I’m sixteen, actually. I was held back.”

“That must have sucked.” I wasn’t surprised though.

“I didn’t really care.” And he really meant it.

I fiddled with the radio station and leaned back in the beat up seat, it was uncomfortable and had no support but it felt nice. The sun was beating in through the untinted window and warmed my face, it reminded me of being six and mimicing my Mom at the pool as she sunbathed.

“So what are we doing in Boulder?” I wasn’t sure if he would answer, he was about as cryptic as a Greek textbook without a translation.

Without turning on his blinker he merged through three lanes and made it off the exit and started driving through downtown Boulder. I loved downtown Boulder. It was new and pretty and well placed, it was decorated though so that it looked like it had been there for years. The shopping center was permeated with touches of the surrounding nature, but still had the clean look of an outdoor mall. The contrast of the shopping district and mountains was beautiful.

“We’re getting high.”

“Wait… what?”

word count: you don't want to know