Girls and Their Cars by Emily Reed

Most nights, we drive around with no destination, taking different back roads onto the main road, looking out for cars we know.

Lowrider sees us and flashes his lights from the Gas ’n Grub parking lot. Lowrider is my stalker; he follows me every chance he gets. He watches us pass and starts his truck. We laugh, knowing we’ll see him again.

Chastity rides shotgun and works the tape deck in my car, an ‘85 Mustang Coupe. It’s a luxury model with a map light, slim and silver, that you tug down from its cradle on the ceiling. We call it the dick light.

I call Chastity “titty,” and she calls me “slut,” even though I’m still technically a virgin. We greet one another with “Hey, slut” or “Hey, ho.” We’re best friends even though sometimes we hate each other.

Singing along to John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Wild Night,” we drive to the Fast Mart for sodas. Across the parking lot, we see Julia standing outside her big truck with her CB radio friends. She flips us off and mouths the word “sluts.”

Once, while driving alone, I pass Lowrider standing outside his pickup by the library. It’s a regular-sized red truck, but we call him Lowrider because he’s short, with his chin just above the steering wheel. I slow down as the light changes, and he sees me and signals me over with his hand. Lowrider is old, maybe 30 or 40. Something tells me he’s not harmless. Not like the old guys Chastity and I sometimes make flirty faces at in the pizza parlor. One of them ordered us a pitcher of root beer once and made a big show of it.

Lowrider waves again, urgent, unsmiling. As the light changes, I step on the gas, and he climbs into his cab and starts the engine. I disappear down the hill, then take a quick left up the steep driveway to the Overlook Motel and down into the parking lot, where I turn off the engine and finally exhale.

I look up at the motel. Chastity worked there two summers ago. Sometimes I’d join her while she cleaned, lying on the stripped beds and watching TV while keeping an eye out for her boss, Ron, who didn’t like his maids having friends stop by. Ron used to give the maids booze and go in the hot tub with them after work. His wife works at the Bi-Mart and is always nice to me. She buzzes me in even though I don’t have a membership.

Chastity’s car is her second, a black Honda Civic that used to belong to Mr. Gorman, our history teacher. She rear-ended someone with her first car. I went to see her in the hospital, where she was taken for observation. I’ll never tell her, but Chastity is a bad driver. I feel better when I drive, so I always say I’ll pick her up when she calls. Chastity’s mom watches from the kitchen window as I back us out of their long gravel driveway.

I do like to ride with Sonya in her El Camino. She installed new speakers, and we drive around with Tone Loc’s “Wild Thing” rattling the windows. We aren’t that close, but Sonya has my back. When Toby started going out with Samantha, Sonya was the only one besides Chastity who knew me and Toby had messed around. Toby would never acknowledge me in public, and Sonya said that made him a dirtbag.

Once, we were driving past Toby’s house when we spotted Samantha’s white Sidekick out front. Sonya reached over to roll down my window and hollered toward the house, “Toby Bolchick has gonorrhea!” She punched me with her arm and startled, I blurted out, “Samantha Nilson is a whore!” We saw the porch light go on and Sonya gunned the engine. We flew down the highway and pulled into the parking lot of Dave’s Tires, parking behind the mountain of bald tires. She turned off the lights, and we crumpled into silent laughter, watching as the Sidekick roared past us.

In the fall, I start taking classes at the community college. The drive is 22 miles each way. I know when to speed up for every passing lane and get around the log trucks. I know where the state troopers like to park. I’ve only been pulled over once and got away with a warning. The cop leaned in close and put a hand on my shoulder, his chewing tobacco breath on me as he told me to slow down.

Chastity stops calling when I’m never free to hang out. She’s almost always at Denny’s trailer with Janice and her kids. She says she’s babysitting but Janice never goes anywhere. When I went there once, they were all sitting on the couch watching cartoons, and the baby had slipped between the couch cushions. I tried the stuff Denny gave them one time. It made me clench my teeth, and I couldn’t stop rocking for hours.

At the end of the semester, I get a pixie haircut like Winona Rider in Reality Bites. The back of my car fills with bags from the thrift store, where I find velvet blazers and colorful polyester shirts. Sometimes I see Lowrider when I’m filling up at the Gas ’n Grub. He doesn’t follow me anymore. Maybe I look different to him, older, like someone with somewhere to be.

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EMILY REED — Emily received Bachelors degrees in English and Spanish from the University of Oregon and, after graduation, taught English in Spain. She lives in the Pacific Northwest, where she works in publishing and writes in her spare time.

Art by RAYDON BARROW — Raydon lives in Toronto but was born and raised in Guyana with dreams of becoming an artist, author, and filmmaker. His short fiction has appeared in Microfiction Monday and Scribes Microfiction while his artworks can be found at daydreamersinc.art. Raydon loves to create and meet others who share that creative passion. Feel free to say hi!