The Stupidest Thing I've Ever Done

Part 2

My best friend Cass and I have been a dynamic duo since the first grade. We were a set item in our town. You wouldn't see one of us without the other. My cousin once told me it was unsettling to see me without Cass attached to my hip. It was just unheard of.

Anyway, it was around mid-July, and I had grown out my hair that year. It was easily one of the worst mistakes I've ever made, but I didn't know it then. When May hit, my wavy brown hair felt like a wool sweater on the back of my neck, so I was always keeping it back in a ponytail. Cass had blonde hair that she had cut just short enough to sweep her shoulders. One of the "perks" to having thick hair was that the humidity had both of us looking like lions.

Cass called me one day, and begged me to come along with her to the drive-in to watch the Steven Spielberg marathon that they were playing. The drive-in was just on the edge of our town, Sutton, and the neighboring town of Wooding. By car, it would have taken us fifteen minutes to get there from my house. But that was the problem; neither of us had cars yet.

Our parents refused to drive us. When I asked my mom she said that going to the drive-in was pointless, because we never stayed for what we paid for. Cass' parents said something similar, along with, "You've seen those movies a million times before anyway."

After being told we couldn't do something; we went with the only option we had. We walked there.

In our heads we thought it made perfect sense to walk to a drive-in. We grabbed my dads lawn chairs out of my shed, and we broke into our piggy-banks to grab the cash we made babysitting and dog walking. It was a little more difficult to smuggle my quilt downstairs and past my mother. I had it jammed inside my backpack. Corner pieces were sticking out of the flap of my bag, and when I ran past the kitchen I felt a little like Quasimodo.

"Where are you off to, Tryer?" My mom called to me from the sink. Her back had been turned, but she still heard the pitter-patter of my bare feet trotting along the carpet.

I gulped.

"Hangin' out with Cass," I said.

"To do what?"

"T'play soccer at the park," I blurted out my go-to albi. She had probably heard it a million times throughout my adolescence, and I don't think she had ever believed me once. I tacked on, "We're babysitting her niece later too, so I won't be home till late."

I crossed my fingers and wrinkled my nose, waiting for those words that would mean my freedom.

"Okay," she said. "Call me if anything changes."

I was already at the screen door.

Cass was waiting for me on the sidewalk, wearing both of the lawn chairs over her shoulders and a malevolent grin.

"I will, Mom!" I shouted back to her.

She said something back to me, but I was already racing Cass to the stop sign at the end of our street.