Ashley is chain smoking more than I have seen her smoke in years. It's been two hours and we've been sitting at the same picnic table with the same group of girls. Our fathers put us up to this. Her father in particular. He decided her life long dream was to be a 2nd grade teacher and because we are tired now, because we turned eighteen and then twenty one and then kept turning ages, we nod our heads. My father has agreed to this because I am in general a disappointment. Both of us are disappointments to our parents but we are good with kids, we are good with the youth.
It's the first day of activities and we were twenty minutes late. We had breakfast with Nick first, which was probably a bad idea. He looked handsome because he was driving a truck.
"Where do you think he got that?"
"Not fucking his. That's for sure."
I am thinking about a dinner I had at my ex-boyfriends. His husband had prepared a meal more elaborate than I could cook. I was twirling the ring on my finger. Why were we in Florida? I thought all roads led to Rome.
Some voice in my head that is maybe my own says "They all lead to U.S 19".
I text Jordan Scott that the paper will be late. He doesn't respond because he probably knew already. I want to call Jackson from a pay phone, but I havent seen one in an over a year. I want to call him because I stopped writing him back. He could still look at me that year, when the rest of them couldnt.
We don't ask when we climb in, we just pretend, and I sit in the mail. Ashley is going through cigarette after cigarette but Nick and I are at a loss. Despite lack of trying we could never become addicted, the best we get is half a pack between us when we're drunk. It's summer and we're returning from our respected places of living. Nick is the only one that graduated on time so I try not to beat myself up because of his advantage. And he had his fair share of shitty jobs. I hated it when he worked at the movie theatre, and I didn't really believe in him when he worked at the bank but now he is a legitimate journalist. Press pass and everything. Sometimes the three of us get to cover things together, but mostly we are seperated across the country. Somehow-- not because we are fortunate-- just because we are aligned, we still end up in the same cars during the summer. We are going to save the youth and he is going to write it down.
I don't know why Nick is better at filling out forms than I am. I can't decide which one of the three of us is a better writer and that makes me really happy. It makes me really happy because we could all argue both rationally &in fits of hysteria on who does the best job. And in this one case we wouldn't say "me"-- I mean none of us would use the word for ourselves. We would give the credit to someone else.
I order a really sloppy breakfast at the drive-thru. I wonder why I never married Nick and I don't know if it's because he really didn't love me or if he loved me too much. Ashley is wiping napkins down my blouse which my best friend designed but did not sew herself. I keep wearing these tops because finally something is named after me. I look at Ashley's face for a while and for a minute it surprises me. Her cheekbones are very defined, parts of her face are hollowed. She has the thinnest she has ever been but at the same time she doesn't look different to me. We kind of all look how I always saw us.
I text Ilana
"Cheese on blouse- dry clean?"
She responds to tell me her mother is throwing a fit, flying cross country for the millionth breakdown. We are all older, we have all become something but the fundamental things are not different. Nick tells me I look beautiful and I wonder why I didn't marry Nick.
To get to the building we have to keep driving and driving and driving basically to the center of Florida.
"It's not the center, it's the panhandle", Ashley is correcting me. She has her feet on the dash and I tell her in one breath that she will both break her legs and that her toes look really good.
She says "In Ohio, we were chased by dogs," with a big smile on her face. But she is not saying it as the start of something. She is saying it for solace. The story became a novel and it sold. Really, really sold. So many things started selling that it all became surreal. None of us knew the difference.
"Shirt is ruined." Ilana texts back and I am just happy that she has a blackberry because she's always had the shittiest phone. She still refuses to get anything with a touch screen.
I remember writing once that Nick kissed the same way that he drived. I think I was disappointed.
"Can we look at the GPS?" The middle seat is making me uncomfortable, and I don't know if its going to be twenty minutes or two hours before we are at a picnic table of teenage girls.
It surprised me when my father didn't want me to be a teacher after graduation. I figured it was a safe bet and something I liked. It excited my mother too. I think it excited her mainly because she thought this would somehow lead to me having children earlier. Which it would have, before everything changed.
I guess I don't want to get into that year. The year that everyone just stopped talking or left the country. Most of them couldnt look at me in the face. I couldn't blame them but I looked at my face all the time regardless.
When we got there, we were late. I tried to explain to the girls at the picnic table that the feeling wears off but they didn't know what I was talking about. They were young girls and they believed that they knew everything. They believed that this was all a brand new thing, the music, the sex, the boys, the abandon. They believed it was a new thing and well, to them it was. We understood that. Nick was off on a different group and I whispered in his ear that he would have no advice for sixteen year olds beyond "Mariah your on fire" and he just said "yep. yep. yep." I don't know what he did tell them.
Ashley and I passed out the surveys and some of the girls knew who we were. Some of them cared, were excited about it. This alarmed me because I knew if they did like us. They liked us for all the wrong reasons.
I hate when people name their children names that are just words "Destiny" and "Hope" were sitting at the table. I scribble on a 3 x 5 card "is this irony?" to Ashley she scribbles "You want eleven dollar bills Daniela Scrima," breaking the silence and the whole exercise I laugh "but you only got tens??" No one understands.
"Okay girls, I know you don't want to be here. I know that it's the summer and that it's a Saturday and that you are only here because you have to be here. So make the best of this for yourselves. You don't have to trust me right now, you don't even have to believe me. Pretend this is like getting a drivers license".
"I'm fourteen," says a girl named "Autumn". I say with my eyes to Ashley that seasons as names piss me off too.
Ashley goes on, because she is not a 2nd grade teacher and she is better at this
"If I was you," she goes on "I'd start by writing 'I clearly fucked up and this is why' or 'I like the jail where they serve grap jelly."
Nick brings me a Diet Coke which I don't want. I don't feel like we are helping.
I say, "You know when we were your age, we didn't have to write any of this. When we were sixteen and pregnant we had enough goddamn common sense to have an abortion."
The three of us are hoping we won't be asked back. The three of us are forgetting that we don't have a choice either. In the car on the way home I know why I didn't marry Nick. I get the window seat and Ashley accidently burns his arm because she forgets she's holding a cigarette.
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