Sweet Memories 1

It was a starry warm spring night and the 5 of us were squeezed into Rachael's Honda, listening to a "Graduation 2011/Rachael's Car" mixtape 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 up on the dashboard.  We didn't know what to do, so we somehow came to the decision to go to a strip club.  We drove through the back-roads of Ithaca, reading directions off Rachael's iPhone GPS. The trees were draped with a moonlight glow; everything outside of the car felt perfectly silent and still as we rushed by.  Rachael was undoubtedly speeding.  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.  It seemed like an appropriate tune for that moment.  Our lives were about to change, we were about to graduate college. The car grew silent until 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 it felt like everyone in the car exhaled.  We pulled up to the strip club only to find it was closed.  Like an epitaph to the moment we all started laughing. We decided to buy 40's, drive to the graveyard and drink there instead.