Cruising around was our favorite pastime, and usually there were way more kids riding in the car than was allowed. We stayed out until two in the morning most nights, hanging around the drive-in or the local skating rink, smoking cigarettes in the parking lots or fighting each other when we got bored. Jimmy showed us a few tricks, claiming he used to train with a boxer, and we watched him fight with awe and admiration. Everyone would get dropped off at home in the early hours of the morning, dead tired and with scrapes and bruises, but everyone was smiling.
Everyone except Jimmy. He laughed with us, and he smiled occasionally, but there was an unmistakable sadness in his eyes that he just couldn't shake. At the end of the night, when I was the last kid left in the car, we cruised around a little bit longer. I always brought along a tape with the latest songs that Green Day had finished, and we listened to them until we would inevitably pull up to the curb in front of my house. It was during these solitary drives (since I lived right around the corner from Jimmy's house) that I told Jimmy all about my stepdad, who I hated with a passion and avoided at all costs. He was fat, he was a drunk, and he made it so that I couldn't even recognize my mom anymore. She didn't act like she used to, and I couldn't stand being around her.
It was also during these drives that Jimmy began to rant about his home life. Apparently his dad enjoyed beating him whenever he felt a whim, and his mother was often sick and not fit to take care of Jimmy. When he pulled up in front of my house, I would linger in his car for almost an hour, letting him talk before he slowly came to a stop, staring out at the street light that always blinked on and off on my street. When he stopped, he would sigh heavily and then look over at me, cracking a watery smile and rubbing the tears out of his eyes. I would smile back, my head clouding with worry.
"Go on, get out of here. Your mom's gonna kill me if I keep you out here any longer," he always said, nodding at my house. The porch light was always on, and my mom was always either sitting on the couch with a frown on her face or asleep, leaned back against the cushions. I always either ignored her as she yelled at me, heading straight to my room, or I pulled a blanket off the back of the couch and threw it over her.
She inevitably stopped staying up when I never came home before midnight.
