Regina woke from her nap to a tapping sound. Rat-Tat-Tat…. Rat-Tat-Tat. She rubbed the sleep from her bleery eyes and headed toward her window. Outside was the her counterpoint, her relief. Michael was waiting for her with what looked like a backpack.
“What?” she said with what she hoped sounded like contempt.
“Look I’m sorry about today, the guys, the just don’t understand. They think its funny, like its a joke or something.”
“Michael you shrugged me off at lunch and then ditched me after school! Why would I go anywhere with you?”
“Regina I’m sorry, I’m trying to make up for it, I’m trying tomake it work.”
She paused for a moment. He seems sincere, I want to go with him, I miss him. I’ll go “Whats that for?” Regina asked.
“Stop being so nosy and get out here already, we have to hurry.”
“You’re ridiculous!” Regina said laughingly and climbed out the window.
The two of them climbed into the beat up old 1990 Landcruiser that Michael had gotten for his 16th birthday and pulled away from the house. They drove and drove until they reached the end. The place where they always went to get away. To everyone else it was a parking lot next to a small airport perched on a peninsula between two shipping channels. They parked the car where channel met. That one point where two different paths coming from different cities combined.
To them it was a launching point to a place without boundries, rules, guidelines, or pressures. A place where they could just be. There were sailboats and houseboats dotting the water. Across the channel the sulfur mines
billowed that familiar odorous smoke into the blue and orange sky. As the sun continued to fall and the world began to gray, they would lay in the bed of the truck wrapped in a blanket and like the smoke, just drift away. They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to.
