* * *

I don’t know how I made it home that night. My legs managed to mechanically walk back up the long trail to the docks across the now rain-flooded beach and to the parking lot where Marti’s car was still sitting.

  I discovered that she had left her keys in the car, which was unlocked. Stupid, but I was grateful none the less. I opened the door and climbed in, my wet legs sticking to the pleather seats. The engine growled its usual grinding growl and started up. Driving hasn’t always soothed me. When I started out, I was nervous as a mouse in a lion’s den. My dad helped me by stating,

 “Always remember: you’re driving a two ton weapon down the road at high speeds. You could kill someone like that.” He snapped his fingers. Way to calm a kid down, dad. But after a few months I discovered that driving could actually relax me when I was stressed. It helped me think, and sort things out inside my head. It sure helped me that night.

As I drove back to the house the cogs and screws were winding in my head faster than the pouring rain.

  I was beginning to suspect that Marti had planned for this, which lit a fire of anger inside me. Abandoning your best friend at a “beach bash?” Cruel. Annoying. Rude. Dumb. Hurtful. Betrayful. Not a word, but I didn’t care. I was officially riled, and when I’m riled I make up words.

I was more angry than I’d ever been at Marti.

Mostly because deep down I was still worried about her.

 And I had no idea how I was going to face Uncle Gerry. How do you tell a man that you stood tongue-tied on the sidelines while his daughter got in a car with a stranger and drove away?

 

Yeah. Thanks Marti.

Still, she’d done her best to dissuade me from coming. I had to give her that.

But the more I thought about the whole situation the more I began to see all the signs that had been pointing to this all year. She’d been growing farther away: changing subtly.

The way she’d been acting and talking, all her new friends, all her late nights being even later than they’d ever been. I suddenly remembered the mysterious phone calls she’d made during lunch hour at school last month. I remembered her showing up to class in the same outfit two days in a row, as if she hadn’t gone to sleep at all the night before.

I remembered her sudden excuses when she claimed she “forgot” our get-togethers. At the time I had thought it was nothing. But now?

The streetlights gleam menacingly along the highway.  

Something was happening now, but not just now. Something had been happening for a long time. And I hadn’t noticed. I’d been too busy with my petty jealousy, my own little problems, scholarship applications, date-night cancelations, and my silly worries to see that something was not at all right with Marti.

She hadn’t just been growing up.

She’d been planning something.