“Where the hell are we?” I flicked my cigarette out the window and turned down the radio.
Molly inspected the outdated compass ball attached to the dashboard of the Buick. “Apparently we’re going northwest,” she said.
“Actually…we’re not. That thing is broken,” I said.
“Oh great. Your mom’s piece of shit car is helping us out a lot today,” Sam said, leaning over the front seat and snatching the map from Molly’s hands. Every time Sam moved, the smell of sunscreen lotion radiated throughout the car, nearly gagging us all. I rolled the window down as far as it would go.
“No! Roll the window back up, it’s too cold,” she said.
“Then why are you wearing so much sunscreen?” Molly scrounged one more time through her soccer bag for the hand-written directions her dad had given her before the game. “Damn, I sure wish I could find those directions.”
“Molly, zip up your bag. It smells like feet in here.”
“Well, if we have a map, we shouldn’t need directions,” I said. “All we need to do is go west and we’ll run into the beach sooner or later.”
“Yeah, but if we wanna know which way west is, we have to figure out which way we’re going now,” said Sam, sighing loudly.
I looked in the rear-view mirror at the red Sundance following me. Boy, I bet they’d hate me right now if they knew where we were. Hell, I wish I knew where we were. Nicole and Alex were bouncing up and down, clearly singing along with the radio. Obviously they had no idea that I’d gotten us completely lost.
“We’ve been driving for an hour and it’s already 3:30,” Sam said. “We should just pull off somewhere and ask for directions.”
I stopped at the corner and read the street sign. I looked around for signs of life, but we were the only two cars on the entire stretch of road.
Sam squinted at the map and said, “Turn left.”
I hesitated for a minute, then said, “Won’t that take us in a circle?”
“No, trust me. Go left,” she said.
Nicole honked her horn behind me. I turned left.
* * *
Eighteen seconds to go. I stood near the goal post and waited for the corner kick. We were down by five. I really didn’t care, though. It felt weird to play soccer on a Saturday, and all I wanted was for us to hurry up and lose so we could start our weekend.
The buzzer sounded, and the other team gathered in the center of the field to squeal and scream. We trudged off the field and sat down on the sideline for the coach’s routine talk. God, I hated staring at his stupid moustache every day.
“Ladies, you’ve had a phenomenal season and you played well today. Being your coach this year has been a pleasure and I hope you come back to play again next spring. All right, I can tell you’re all anxious to get out of here, so go out and enjoy the rest of your Saturday. Monday, we’ll meet after school to turn in uniforms.”
Nicole and I took off our shin-guards and cleats. “Do you think it’s too cold for the beach?” she asked.
“No way. We’ve been planning this all season. We have to go.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Okay, just let me go get the car keys from my mom. As long as she doesn’t give me the third degree, I’ll meet you guys in the parking lot in five minutes,” she said.
“Okay,” I said.
On the way out of the stadium, I heard my dad say, “Don’t get lost.”
* * *
“What is she doing?” Nicole said. “She keeps slowing down and swerving all over the place.”
“She’s probably trying to listen to the radio and talk at the same time.” Alex laughed at her own joke.
“It sure is taking us a while to get there. I thought my mom said it would only take us about forty-five minutes. It’s been longer than that.”
“Molly said she knew how to get there. That’s why she’s “navigating” our trip,” Alex said, making air quotes with her fingers. “We’ll get there eventually. How hard can it be?”
Then it happened. Nicole slammed on her brakes, but to no avail. The front end of her tin-can toy car crashed right into the bumper of my Buick on the corner of the street. Alex jolted forward, and let out a high-pitched scream. I pulled over onto the side of the road and got out of the car.
“Oh man. Nicole is gonna kill you,” Molly said, turning around. She watched Nicole pull over behind me and open the door. “I can’t watch.”
“Colleen! What were you doing? My mom is gonna kill me,” Nicole said, flailing her arms in the air. I stepped out of the car and walked toward her.
“I’m sorry. I had too many people navigating and I had to make a quick decision.” I said.
“Isn’t Molly supposed to navigate? Listen to her, duh,” Nicole said, glaring at Sam.
“Okay, will you guys stop saying the word navigate?” Alex said. “It makes you sound like idiots.”
I looked up and down the street for a car, a house, a store, a highway, a cute boy…anything. Nope, just trees, road-kill, and ditches. Damn. The girls bickered among themselves while I thought of a way to get us out of this mess.
“Okay, why don’t we just get back in the car and go straight. We have to eventually run into a main road. And when we get there, we’ll ask for directions. Deal?”
“All right,” Nicole said. “Let’s go.”
* * *
“Hey, I’ve seen that church before,” said Molly, pointing ahead at the steeple.
I narrowed my eyes. I thought it looked familiar too, but I knew I’d never actually been to a church, let alone this one. Then it hit me. “Oh my god you guys.”
“What?” Sam asked.
“The reason you’ve seen this church before is because we passed it about an hour ago. We went in a circle!”
“Does anyone else want to navigate?” Molly asked, tossing the map over her shoulder and into the back seat.
“Pull into the church parking lot and we’ll try to figure this out. This time, don’t crank the wheel so hard,” Sam said.
We piled out of the car again. Alex walked over and said, “Too bad it isn’t Sunday. Maybe we could ask the priest for directions.”
“Maybe we should just go home. We can just go to the beach another day,” Nicole said. I had almost forgotten how excited I was to go to the beach.
“Yeah but which way is home? None of us have any idea,” Molly said.
“Come on you guys, where’s your sense of adventure? This is the only good thing that comes out of being sixteen. We can drive wherever we want to,” Alex said. She has a point, I thought.
“Okay, back in the car guys.”
* * *
Finally. Other cars. It had been a good half hour since the church parking lot, but seeing other cars gave me hope. I rolled the window down. Maybe I’d be able to smell the beach. The sun was disappearing behind the trees quickly and the breeze sent chills through my body.
“Hey, what does that say,” Sam asked, pointing to the brown sign on the right side of the road. I smiled at Molly and got in the right lane. Nicole followed, honking her horn freely. Alex hung her head out the window and waved her arms around in the air.
* * *
“Brrr, this is freezing,” Molly said. She dipped her toe into the water. The waves were crashing violently against the shore. As the sun started to disappear behind the water, it painted a vibrant red circle on the pink horizon. I looked around and realized that the place was completely vacant. I kind of liked it, though. I felt it was a good spot for us to start expressing our independence.
Alex ignored Molly’s warning and jumped in. Sam, Nicole, and I joined Molly and dipped our toes in, too.
“Get in you guys.” Alex was standing at the sandbar waiting for waves to ride.
We held our breath. “One…two…three.”
* * *
It had been forty-five minutes. We were sitting in a Taco Bell parking lot waiting for Nicole and Alex. My goal at that point was just to make it home before dark.
“I still can’t believe they went the other way,” Molly said. I couldn’t believe it either. As we were leaving the beach, Nicole insisted that we had starting off going the wrong way. Our third car conference led to the splitting of the Buick from the Sundance. “I still think we should turn around and go find them.”
“Let’s just wait. They said they’d be here,” I said.
“Yeah, but they also said they knew a faster way to get here.” Sam was looking down the street for any sign of the little red car. I started to worry that they were more lost than we were. We sat for another half an hour on the curb, hoping to flag them down if they drove past. The guys at the oil change place next to the Taco Bell were staring and whistling at us.
“Here they come,” Molly said, standing up. She walked out near the street and waved her hands furiously as the Sundance passed by. Nicole turned around in the oil change parking lot and pulled up next to us.
She rolled her window down. “Let’s go back to getting lost together.”
We piled into the Buick for what we hoped would be the last time that day. Molly switched on the radio and I lit a cigarette. Interrupting our rendition of “Bohemian Rhapsody”, Nicole’s Sundance pulled into the other lane and rode next to us. Alex pressed a piece of white paper against the window. I squinted and mouthed the word “What?” at them and she motioned for me to roll my window down.
“I have to pee!” she said. They sped in front of me and pulled over onto the side of the road. I drove up behind them and got out of the car. Sam and Molly exchanged confused glances and got out too.
“Where are you going to pee?” I asked.
“In the ditch,” Alex said. “Hey, Nicole. Go grab your towel.”
I could only imagine how crazy we looked standing in a ditch in our bikinis at night in the fifty degree May weather. Cars were passing now. Random people honked and yelled obscenities out their windows.
Nicole retrieved a towel from the backseat of her car. She walked down the grassy slope and said, “Now what?”
“Hold it in out front of me while I pee.”
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