Backseat Drivers

Before the Neon

Before the neon, they were on a road - free of artificiality and intoxication. It was normal, content - blissful unawareness.  In the passenger seat of the car was a boy, no older than seventeen, his polo-collar popped, and black Ray-bans resting on his nose, so that his eyes were just visible over the top. A cheeky smile was splashed across his face as he pushed his tongue against his teeth and pumped his shoulder in time to George Thorogood's vibrant pulsing from the radio. These antics provoked laughter from the others in the car, even the ever-skeptical boy at the steering wheel who was doing his best to keep his eyes on the road. Determined to get an audible laugh from him, the dancing boy slowly wound down his window in time to the song, flashing his friend a mockingly flirtatious look. 

"Calum -" Sean started, exasperated, but he couldn't continue to speak or he was sure he'd laugh. Calum now had his hand out the window, tapping above his head in time to the drums, bopping his head everywhere as if at one of his raves. One of the girls in the backseat - Cindy - had opened her window too, and now she had her head out of it, her noisy glee lost in the wind. 

"My baby come on home, I love you, come on home," Calum continued to sing, biting his lip - the old image of a budding, delinquent rockstar. "If you hear me howling, calling on my darling!"

Following this line, he threw his head backwards and let out an almighty howl, earning a slap from Cindy in the back, who'd clearly been startled. 

"Alright Prince, we're done," Sean said, flicking the switch on the radio, so that the gentle grooving of The Detroit Emeralds chimed into their surroundings - a long, grey road that stretched out to where the sun was nearly clouded out by the pink fog of an early sunset. Aika sat in the middle seat in the back of the car, her leg up on the leather with her arm draped over it. She only knew two people in the car - that is if Cindy counted, she'd barely spoke to her before. Sean was the connecting wire in the circuit, he knew everyone. Well, of course he would, it was his trip - his car. The other two boys she'd never seen before, though she was getting acquainted to Calum quite quickly - he put on a fun show. The other sat on the right of her, dwelling in a calm silence. She still hadn't asked him why he had a fish-tank with him; it was small and circular, filled with water, and he'd been holding it carefully for the entire twenty minutes they'd been driving so far. 

"Hey - why do you have a fish-tank?" she asked him, and his head lolled over to look at her. 

"For a fish," he replied. His outgrown buzzcut was tinted pink, and the letter 's' was tattooed in small print just above his left eyebrow. The slight twinge of a smile on his cheek was ambiguous - Aika couldn't decide if he was serious or not. Cindy was looking over as well, touching her tongue to her teeth in confusion. 

"Where's the fish?" she asked, the small subtleties of an Italian-New York accent in her intonation. 

"I don't have one yet, I'm gonna find one."

The boy with the fish-tank was called Roy, if Aika had remembered correctly, and Sean knew him from an art course at his college. At the front of the car, Calum was adjusting the mirror in front of him, tilting it so that he could make eye contact with the three in the back. His glance honed in on Aika, and he smiled amusingly, before slowly panning it across to meet eyes with Cindy. He winked; she just let her head tilt, holding a striking gaze, brown curls cascading past her lashes. There was an underlying meaning in the eye contact - or maybe Aika's tendency to over-analyse the psyche was resurfacing, in the presence of strangers. 

"I think Calum's forgotten the map," Cindy then said, a skepticism in her voice.

"The map? Where we're going, we don't need maps," Calum replied, deepening his voice into a thick American charade, and she gave him a shrug. At the wheel, Sean placed a cigarette between his lips, and with a flick of his finger on metal, a flame messily sparked into life, igniting it. No one had yet asked him where they were going; no one felt the need. They were no longer growing older with every second - they felt suspended in a colourful haze, a new feeling. With each passing second, it only became more exciting.