"Park that car, dream about me."

September 2009

She gives her heart to the sound of guitar coming from a distant radio, to the star-flecked corner of sky shining through the car window, to her own skin glowing pale above a plunging neckline. She mistakes it for the sensation of falling in love with him, which is not a feeling she's experienced before.

She'd assumed- wrongly- that love would be obvious, self-explanatory, as easy to pinpoint as anger or sadness. The complication isn't that it's more complicated, because it isn't always. She just hasn't realized how easy it is to jump the gun or, more importantly, how many things it can be confused with.

She lies stretched across the front seat of her mother's borrowed sedan and tries to stay suspended in one moment, the heartbeat in which that feeling broke over her, as strong as a crashing wave and just as disorienting. It doesn't work. By the time the song is over, she's left clutching at the ankles of who she wants to be. (That doesn't work either: in an ideal world, she must be faster.)

Someone raps on the window, one-two-three, and opens the door without waiting for an answer. The hem of a dress, black and glittering, sweeps across her line of vision before Maya's voice says- "Of all the places to end up after prom, you're sleeping alone in your mom's sedan. Parked on some random street in front of a stranger's driveway."

When she shakes her head, the tiny dark curls of her hair bounce. When she thinks about Maya, this is the first thing that comes to mind- the careless rattle of curls, followed by the half-bitter honey of her voice. "You don't even have the windows down. I'm surprised you haven't baked to death."

Maya grins at her. With the streetlight's sodium glow slicing in through the window she is beautiful, unfairly so, her skin like a sweep of cocoa up her cheekbones and her dark eyes rich as soil. Anyone should look harsh with their face divided into planes of dark and light, but the white glint of her smile turns her into a Cheshire cat, one you want to follow when they disappear.

"Did you take Patrick home already?" Usually Maya would follow this with a string of teases, and though she fakes annoyance, she knows it's funny- having to pick him up for dates, his midnight curfew, no exceptions. But Maya knows how to weave through this sensitive territory, skilled and nimble as a spy. She's had years of practice.

"Yeah," she says. Her voice sounds ragged and she realizes she hasn't spoken since they left Maya's house. She got out of the car at Andrew's house, but when he said goodbye she just tilted her head up and waited for a kiss. He puts his hand on the back of her neck, thumbs soft on her jawline, holding her like he was keeping her from breaking.

At the time it felt tender, but now when she thinks of it, it makes her angry. Did he think he'd managed to turn her into a china doll? Some imbalanced time bomb on the edge of a meltdown? (If so, he was right- she was ready to punch a wall or laugh until she cried or curl up in a corner, maybe all of the above. But the credit wasn't his to take.)

She past the anger now, fading out of the split second of love (or something like it), done with the sullenness and everything else. She's empty, suspended in nothing, and she likes it. She can imagine living here. Taking up residence in the corner.

"Do you regret it?" Maya asks.

"Prom? A little. It wasn't worth three hundred dollars."

"I meant sleeping with him. Do you regret it?" Maya's voice is the first clear thing she's heard in hours, simple hard sounds that slice through her fogged-up brain and land solid in the center. She's curious, but she isn't asking the question for her own sake.

"It's a little early for regret."

"But you will, sooner or later?" It's only half a question. The other half is breaking the news to her gently, making her picture herself in five years- talking to her husband, telling him the story with a rehearsed blend of wistfulness and maturity.

It will seem so commonplace when she tells it out loud, so mundane. The typical players, a girl in a pretty dress with hairsprayed curls and a boy with bad skin who's barely old enough to shave. The scene- a darkened bedroom upstairs from an after-prom party, the carpeted floor thumping beneath her bare feet as the stereo's bassline trembles up the walls. The sex itself, a little uncomfortable, a little awkward, but nice enough- not as bad or as good as different sources led her to expect.

She will tell all this to some future husband and it will remind him of a scene from a movie. It won't bother him because it'll all seem too far removed to be a threat.

That said, she will regret it.

"How can I be upset?" she says. "It was my idea. I'm the one who asked."

The sound of the distant car radio shuts off. She hears a door slam and she sits up, wincing at the ache that's taken up residence in lower back. She looks forward, out of the windshield. After hours lying down, it's disorienting to see things right side up.

Maya opens the door and takes her hand, not tugging, but waiting for her to climb out on her own. "I'm talking about how it really is," she says. "Forget what you deserve."