The Road Ahead

Chapter One: It's Over

Charlotte

"I'm so glad we can finally leave this place." Gabby says, liveliness in her voice. Gabby has always been too big for this place, too big a dreamer to be here. She always tells us how trapped she feels. How she just wants to go somewhere big and do something big. To be known and appreciated to her fullest extent.

She flits her eyes shut as I lift the eyeliner pen to her face. "Won't you miss me?" I ask jokingly. I see her roll her eyes while I'm moving the black paint from one corner to the other. "Well, obviously I'm going to miss you," I pull the brush from her eye and she turns toward Tate, "But good 'ol Tate here will fly all of us out to see him at least once a year. Ain't that right Tate?" Tatum's eyes shoot up from his conversation with Danny.

Tatum almost responds before Danny cuts in "Well of course he will, Tate here would do anything you ask. You've got him whipped." I purse my lips attempting not to laugh at Danny's comment. We all knew it was true. Tatum thinks the world of Gabby, always has. But Gabby, she doesn't want to be tied down, every boy she has ever been with dimmed her light and it hurt Tate to see that happen. He used to cry to Danny and me and just ask why she wouldn't give him a chance. So after three brutal ends, Gabby swore off men until she had graduated. Which happens today... So who knows?

Tate shakes his head in disagreement "Shit Danny, like you aren't in a very similar situation?" Danny laughs and changes the subject while I continue fixing Gabby's other eye.

I leaned into Gabby's ear, "I knew he liked May Dean, why that sly dog!" Gabby pulls her ear away from me and says, "Are you serious?" I squint my eyes, trying to understand what she means. May Dean and Danny have been hanging out for a few years and last year she friend-zoned him. I assume that is what Tatum means. She laughs and says, "Well, I'm sure everything will come out during the road trip, huh?" I nod and go to Gabby's closet, grabbing all four of our graduation gowns.

"Do you all remember when we were so little and we would rotate having sleepovers at everyone's houses?" I ask as I hand each of them their gowns. Before our parents got worried that hormones would get in the way, they allowed us to have a sleepover every weekend.

Danny grabs his gown from my arms, "Yes, I do. I remember staying up way past our bedtimes, telling poorly made spooky stories."

Tate grabs hold of Gabby, shaking her shoulders. "Don't you remember me scaring the shit out of you that one time? When D was telling the story about the twig man and" Tate couldn't even make it any further in his sentence due to the wheezing coming from his lungs. I continued the story for him, "and you jumped behind Gabby with a bunch of twigs in your hand brushing down her back, drawing a scream from her that was loud enough to wake the entire neighborhood. I think we all remember the tongue lashing I got from my Dad after that too." Everyone was laughing along until that point. Took it too far. I do that way too often.

I swallow the lump in my throat and change the subject, "Maybe we can tell some new and improved spooky stories on our road trip."

Clearing his throat Danny nods along, "Yea, that would be great Lottie. Maybe you could finally finish that one you were telling that had two parts and then our parents collectively said 'No more parties, we don't want any babies.'" I only vaguely remember the story D is referring to.

"The one with the firefly women?" A bright smile shines across his dark complexion. "That's the one." What a tragic ending their story had.

Gabby looks at me knowingly. She knows how that story ends, the firefly women become the closest of friends, living out the rest of their numbered days together in the hollow of a tree. One day both of the firefly women confess their love for one another. The next day one of them is caught by a young child and put into a jar. The other decides she will spend her last hours with her lover so she flies near the young child until he stuffs her into the same jar. There, the firefly women die in one another's arms.