How to Read a Roadmap When it Doesn't Matter Where You Are

I have been grading papers since 5 am, including unknown lengths of time spent staring into space or eating or stretching or reminding myself I'm alive. Semester exams are Thursday and Friday and then grades are due. God! Maybe there is an easier way of doing this "grading papers thing", or at least not hating it so much. I find myself renting movies set in tropical climates as a feeble attempt at escape. I watched 50 First Dates last night, which was set in Hawaii, but Blue Crush would have been better. Waves. That's the ticket. And a nice soundtrack. I love the ocean.

My friend Veronica and I, at 15 years old, sat on the beach in Hollywood, Florida and saw our futures approach us like sandy conveyor belts of wealth and happiness. Her family spent weeks there each winter, and I was the lucky friend that year, chosen to keep her company, and we were perfect beach bums.

Veronica and I met in kindergarten as I flew buzzing like an airplane up a row of school desks. Our eyes met, she joined me and we were immediate best friends, which continued through elementary, junior high and into high school. Veronica's father owned a car dealership in our small town but the differences in our way of life were lost on me until high school, when I started "philosophizing" too much, as Dolly put it. Dolly liked it that I had friends like Veronica. She didn't so much care for those on the "other" side of the tracks.

Veronica was wild. Not in a random way, but in a calculated, logical, skimming-above-the-surface way, not even touching the ground and getting dirty like the rest of us. We reveled in grassers, kissed the boy-next-door, mixed our blood through fists, through love, but not Veronica. She held out for guys from bigger towns, she grew bored and tasted forbidden waters. She hustled high school teachers and had visions of "Italian men" in her future. Veronica was beautiful and rich and all the local boys wanted her.

On a northern summer evening, cool and full of anticipation, she picked me up in her big blue Eldorado convertible that her father gave her for an early graduation present. Approaching the City Fruit Market, a hovering cloud of fruit flies dimmed the light above a steaming mountain of soft black bananas. To enter was to pass through a veil of their deep sweet odor, and the Junebugs crunched under our feet and stuck to the screen door as it slammed behind us. Back in the car, we poured rum into our glasses, added coke, took a deep warm gulp and headed north, to the Palladium.

Leaving town was like crossing the border, entering a new climate. Once the lights of town were behind us, and the sun setting at our left, the cool night bit at our necks as we squealed and yelled at the darkening sky and tipped our glasses high to let the sweetness run down our throats. We were in strange land. No map, no navigator, just the memory of dirt roads, a familiar-looking house here, we stopped to pee there once, I think. Do we turn there? No let's try this road. Headed north on the backroads, we pass a familiar car, we stop to talk with other pilgrims, all of us headed north, to the Palladium.

The Palladium was an enormous rustic wooden three-level dance hall that sat on a lake surrounded by pine trees and cottages. Roads wound around the lake's edge, snaked around the houses and into the countryside. These were dirt roads, the kinds kids know best, the remote ones where you meet and talk at 3 am, or the ones where some friends have to die in a car in the middle of the night. But this is part of our teenage life in this land, isn't it? The death in cars, the wondering if our friends were lying out there in the dark, smelling the weeds so close to their face, thrown from their car, listening to tires speed by out of sight, or if they heard the sounds of kids partying in the air before the sun rose.

The Palladium is lit up like a huge firefly above the dark lake, its' reflection gently lapping on the surface. We want to get wet. We want the cold water to close over our skin, deep and complete. We want to go under.

Leaving the dance hall, Veronica and I stagger to the car, the top still down, stale drinks waiting on the floor. The coke tastes flat and we feel numb. The liquor has no effect and we drink some more, trying to keep tomorrow away. "God, Veronica. You can't drive for shit!" Veronica is laughing and she is driving fast down the cool black road, into the soft dirt at the side, then swerving back, gripping the road again and laughing, driving faster. We ignore the 90-degree turn and we are traveling sideways on the grass, the car sliding, spinning. I glance sideways and squint as the corner of a white farmhouse moves next to me. Slow and easy, I can touch it with an outstretched finger, and then it is gone.

I am relaxed, enjoying the graceful movement and the force that pushes me back against my seat and tight against the car door. My face to the stars, I close my eyes to stop the spinning. I am laughing too, with Veronica, as her tires cut deeply into spongy lawn, as we jerk back across the ditch onto the road and head south, toward home.