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I was already up and paging through travel guides whenThey rarely both entered the room at the same time, and I felt a ripple of nausea--o--before I reraduation day
"Ready, bud?"
"Yeah Iof a deal, but it’ll be fun"
"You only graduate froh school once," Mom said
"Yeah," I said They sat down on the bed across frole "What?" I asked
"Well, ant to give you your graduation present," Moreatest accoreat day for you, and we’re-- You’re just a great young man"
I sift wrapped in blue wrapping paper
"No," I said, snatching it fro at it It was the size of a key It was the weight of a key When I shook the box, it rattled like a key
"Just open it, sweetie,"paper A KEY! I examined it closely A Ford key! Neither of our cars was a Ford "You got me a car?!"
"We did," my dad said "It’s not brand-new--but only two years old and just twenty thousand ed both of them
"It’s mine?"
"Yeah!" my moled myself from my parents and shouted "thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you" as I raced through the living roo only an old T-shirt and boxer shorts There, parked in the driveith a huge blue bow on it, was a Ford iven me a minivan They could have picked any car, and they picked a minivan A minivan O God of Vehicular Justice, why dost thou mock me? Minivan, you albatross around s and few horsepower!
I put on a brave face when I turned around "Thank you thank you thank you!" I said, although surely I didn’t sound quite as effusive now that I was co it
"Well, we just kne--clearly convinced they’d landedaround with your friends!" added my dad And to think: these people specialize in the analysis and understanding of the hu pretty soon if ant to get good seats"
I hadn’t showered or dressed or anything Well, not that I would technically be dressing, but still "I don’t have to be there until twelve-thirty," I said "I need to, like, get ready"
Dad frowned "Well, I really want to have a good sight line so I can take some pic-- "
I interrupted him "I can just take MY CAR," I said "I can drive MYSELF in MY CAR" I smiled broadly
"I know!" my mom said excitedly And what the hell--a car’s a car, after all Drivingsomeone else’s
I went back to my computer then and informed Radar and Lacey (Ben wasn’t online) about the ood news Can I stop by and put a cooler in your trunk? I gotta drive raduation and don’t want them to see
QTHERESURRECTION: Sure, it’s unlocked Cooler for what?
OMNICTIONARIAN96: Well, since no one drank attheht
QTHERESURRECTION: 212 beers?
OMNICTIONARIAN96: It’s a big cooler
Ben came online then, SHOUTING about hoas already showered and naked and just needed to put on the cap and gown We were all talking back and forth about our naked graduation After everyone logged off to get ready, I got in the shower and stood up straight so that the water shot directly atas the water pounded away at o now, too, I thought I had a car just as o to the five spots on the map, and even if I didn’t find her, it would besu into SeaWorld It takes an immaculate plan, and then you execute it brilliantly, and then--nothing And then it’s just Sea-World, except darker She’d told ; the pleasure is in planning it
And that’s what I thought about as I stood beneath the showerhead: the planning She sits in thea road trip, using the hts "I tra she likes to i she likes to plan
But is it the kind of thing she likes to actually do? No Because Margo knows the secret of leaving, the secret I have only just now learned: leaving feels good and pure only when you leave so life out by the roots But you can’t do that until your life has grown roots
And so when she left, she left for good But I could not believe she had left for a perpetual journey She had, I felt sure, left for a place--a place where she could stay long enough for it to ood as the last one had There is a corner of the world soo Roth Spiegel in her black notebook
The water began to get cold I hadn’t so ot out, wrapped a towel aroundup Radar’s e-in It really was pretty cool First, I entered a zip code in don Chicago, clicked "location," and asked for a radius of twenty miles It spit back a hundred responses, from Navy Pier to Deerfield The first sentence of each entry cah the stood out Then I tried a zip code near the Catskill Park in New York Fewer responses this tianized by the date on which the Oe had been created I started to read
Woodstock, New York, is a town in Ulster County, New York, perhaps best known for the eponymous Woodstock concert [see Woodstock Concert] in 1969, a three-day event featuring acts from Jimi Hendrix to Janis Joplin, which actually occurred in a nearby town