Diving Into The Wreck

Prologue

Admittedly, driving from Ohio to Florida by myself wasn't the best idea that I've ever had, but making the trip with two twenty-something guys in the backseat was somehow even worse.

I don't think that I would have minded being on my own for the eighteen hour drive. In fact, it might have been a nice opportunity to unwind. It would have been just me and the endless expanses of the open road. The whirring of the engine would have kept me company, and I could have had a chance to relax before my third year at Egmont College began.

Instead, I tried my best to pretend as if the two young men in the backseat didn't exist as I backed the gray sedan that I had bought over the summer out of their driveway. The car is even older than I am, but it's still running, and to a broke college kid like me, that's what matters.

"Liam, give me the AUX cord!" Logan whined from the backseat.

"I thought we talked about this," Liam said. "I'm playing music for the first half of the trip, and you can play whatever you want for the second half of the trip."

"I don't want to wait that long."

"Sorry, but we did talk about this." Liam grabbed the AUX cord and plugged his phone in, but he couldn't get the music to play. Sometimes, it was hard to remember that Liam and Logan Callahan were college students too, especially when they were acting like children.

As Liam tried to resolve his technical difficulties, I tuned him and his brother out. It had only been a few minutes since I had left, but I already missed everyone back home. Just this morning, Sydney's senior pictures had arrived, and we had all sat around the table, fawning over how great she looked in those photos. I hardly recognized my sister in some of those pictures, and I wasn't sure if it was because of how much she had grown up in the last few years or if it was because she wasn't dressed in that American Idiot T-shirt that she wears all the time. Sometimes, I swear that Sydney is permanently frozen at age thirteen in my head.

After breakfast that morning, Mom and Sydney helped me pack all of my bags into the trunk of the car, and I said goodbye to both of them. "I'm going to miss you a lot, Sydney," I told my sister as I gave her a hug.

"Me too, but we'll Skype each other, right?" Sydney said.

"Of course," I said. "I'll let you know if I see any good punk bands while I'm in Florida."

Sydney walked away from me and laughed. "Are you kidding? No self-respecting punk rocker wants to play for a crowd of retirees."

"It's not like the music scene in Ohio is all that much better." I climbed into the car and shouted, "See you later, Sydney!" Mom and Sydney both waved to me as I drove off to the Callahans' house, and that's how I ended up on the road with Liam and Logan, pretending like they weren't in the backseat still fighting over the AUX cord.

It only occurred to me later that I never said goodbye to Jason, who was still in bed that morning, nursing a hangover. Perhaps I should have said goodbye to him too, but in the end, I wasn't his daughter.

I merged onto I-75, and then my heart stopped.

Just as I was about to change lanes one last time, I spotted a red Mazda. It was going at least ninety miles per hour and cutting in and out of traffic. I couldn't get a good enough look at it to tell if it was the red Mazda, but even if it wasn't his car, it looked a lot like it. I tried to drive a little bit closer to see the driver or the licence plate, but I was at a bad angle, no matter what I did.

That was when I noticed that I was drifting out of my lane. I quickly turned the steering wheel to the left, and the car nearly swerved right into oncoming traffic. I took a deep breath and corrected myself while the red Mazda sped off into the distance.

"Dani, are you okay?" Logan asked me.

"I'm fine," I answered. I told myself that I was overreacting. That car probably wasn't his, and even it was, did it matter? It wasn't like I could roll down the window and yell his name, and everything would be like it was four years ago. Besides, he had probably changed since then, just like I had. There was no way that I could instantly become friends with him again, even if I wanted to.

Thinking about Blake made me wonder about the other people that I knew in high school. I had tried my best to leave that period of my life behind, but sometimes, I couldn't help but wonder what had become of my old friends. Tanner was my only friend from high school that I still talked to, and the rest of them had somehow dropped off of the face of the earth after junior year. I wondered if Devon was still studying math, or if Tommy was managing another band now, or if Madeline was still playing the cello. However, every time I thought about them, it circled back to Blake and his red Mazda.

I took a deep breath and gripped the wheel. I needed to clear my mind, and it definitely wasn't a good sign that I was thinking about high school again. I followed the highway as it headed south, but just as I was starting to relax a little bit, Liam shouted, "I've got it!"

A familiar drum roll played through the speakers in the car, followed by a guitar riff and the sound of Rivers Cuomo's voice. "Beverly Hills! That's where I want to be!" Liam shouted when the chorus started.

"Seriously, Liam?" Logan complained. "You couldn't have picked a better song?"

"It brings back memories," Liam said.

I hated to admit it, but it brought back memories for me too. How many times had I sat in the passenger seat of Blake's car, screaming along to the sound of Rivers Cuomo's voice? Even now, I couldn't help myself. I started singing along on the second chorus, and Logan reluctantly joined us. Before long, all three of us were screaming about rolling like a celebrity. Just because of that, I had a smile on my face all the way until we crossed the border into West Virginia.

The hours ticked by, and the mountains of West Virginia disappeared into the distance as we crossed into Virginia. We continued down the highway into the Carolinas and Georgia, and I knew that we were getting close when we saw our first palm tree.

In the dead of night, we finally arrived in the town of Egmont Beach, and everything was just as I remembered it. There were still gated communities with their outdoor pools and identical houses. The sand on the beach was still softer and whiter than it had any right to be. Tropical flowers were perfectly planted in rows along the highway, and there were overpriced cars waiting in the parking lot of the Publix next to campus. For all I knew, they were the same Mercedes and Rolls-Royces that were there when I left at the end of sophomore year.

If there's one thing that I've learned since I came to Egmont, it's this. When people my age need their daily dose of artifice, they turn to neon lights and drum machines. When people my great aunt Shirley's age need that same daily dose, they move to Florida.

I drove past all of that until the city lights led us to the Egmont College campus. As I looked out the window, I spotted the "Egmont College: Not Your Ordinary College Experience" sign, the brick building that I lived in freshman year, and the dining hall, which I thought looked like a castle when I saw it for the first time. I now know that two-thirds of the dorms aren't air-conditioned, the food at Egmont is mediocre at best and gag-inducing at worst, and I'll be swamped with homework as soon as classes start, but somehow, the magic of arriving back on campus never quite goes away, even after all of these years.

I dropped Liam off at McKnight Hall and helped him get all of his stuff out of the trunk before Logan and I headed to Wallace Hall, where we would both be living for the next year. I parked the car and stepped out for a moment to appreciate how beautiful the campus looked in the moonlight and to feel the warm Florida air on my skin.

However, even when I was over a thousand miles away from home, I couldn't stop thinking about Blake. Maybe it was the red Mazda, or maybe it was the Weezer song, but for some reason, the way that our friendship had ended kept replaying in my head. Eventually, my mind drifted back to that one fateful night at a concert four years ago, when all of my problems truly began.