My Summer

No Body Knows the Troubles I've Seen

Odd things always happen to me. It is a fact of life that I have come to terms with. Every once-in-a-while something so wild occurs that I have to stop, and take inventory of the events that led up to the unfortunate occurrence. My friend Jocelyn and I have grown up together, every summer she comes down from Virginia to stay with her grandparents for a month. It is during that time that she and I usually find ourselves in a great deal of mischief, by no fault of our own, of course. Our adventure of 2006 was no different.

The summer breeze was soft, warm, and sweet. I took a deep breath and felt the rejuvenating oxygen float into my body. I imagined that I could feel it traveling with my blood to all of my organs, giving a breath of new life to my being. I herd the shuffling of Jocelyn's feet before I even saw her petite figure in the enchanting darkness.

"What time is it?" I asked her as she sat down beside me at the top of the hill.

"It was 12:00am exactly when I crawled out of my window. God, this has got to be the most fricken awesome part of summer! How long have we been sneaking out of our houses and meeting up here?"

I thought about it and replied "Almost six summers, it's our own secret tradition isn't it?"

"Yeah I guess it is."

After a comfortable silence, I asked what she wanted to do.

"I'm hungry, lets go get some doughnuts," Jocelyn was already standing up and moving towards my car.

"Jocelyn, you are 5'2" tall, and 97lbs. How is it that you can eat a dozen doughnuts and not gain an ounce? Sometimes I wonder if you are even human."

"Maybe I am not and you just don't know it…yet. Maybe I have gotten to know you these past years with the full intention of sacrificing you to my heathen alien god! Muah, ha, ha, ha."

"Jocelyn, do the words straight jacket and white padded room mean anything to you?" I said with a laugh.

I walked around to the driver's side of my car and opened the door to get in, ducking to avoid smashing my head on the unrelenting metal of the car door frame. I waited for Jocelyn to fasten her seatbelt before I began to quietly back out of the drive way. The car rolled slowly back, hardly making a sound, slowly inching its way onto the rough, hard pavement of the hill. We continued creeping down the hill this way until we were well out of sight of either of our houses, and then with the flick of a wrist and the push of a button the lights and the radio came on at a full blast.

As usual she and I began to sing along to every song that came on, whether we knew the words or not. I liked those the best because we would break out in laughter with every missed word. The roads were all but deserted. We passed a stray car every so often, but for the most part we were totally on our own.

Suddenly, out of the all compassing darkness came the beacon of hope that we had begun our journey searching for. Shining like the Star of David over Bethlehem, showing use the way, hope had finally come. The red letters of the neon sign made us gape in awe, 'Hot Doughnuts', shone brightly against the dark night sky. Yes, Doughnuts proof that there is a God and that he loves us and wants us to be fat.

We drove around to the speaker to place our order and came to a slow stop. We both viewed the display board, like a child entering a candy shop with $10.00 and no limit to what she could have. When we finally knew what we wanted I rolled down my window and sat patiently waiting for some one to take our order. When the voice finally came on the speaker, Jocelyn and I both jumped. I placed the order and drove down to the window. After a short struggle trying to find enough loose change in my car, I paid, mostly with quarters and nickels. As the box was handed through the window the sweet haunting smell of the tasty treats inside wafted up to my nose.

With my car now smelling like sweet glazed dough and the promise of thunder thighs, we headed back towards home. The Funny thing is that as I prepared to turn down the road that lead to our houses Jocelyn spoke. "Let's not go home yet. Why don't we take the long way over the mountain to your house? That will give us time to finish partaking in these devilish delights." Wanting to spend some more time with my best friend and just talk, I agreed. With my right turn signal blinking red in the night we turned on to the outlet that would take us up and over the Grove Park Inn and bring us out a street above our houses.

As I have a thousand times before, I raced along the curves crawling up the mountain, pretending to be on a roller coaster. With a sharp turn to the left and immediate turn to the right, we raced along, only to approach a hill so high that it seemed that we would surely crest it to find that we were going to plummet back down to the earth and our impending doom. We were both laughing uncontrollably by now, and when we passed a certain house we both did a double take. Craning our necks and peering into the houses front window we discovered, a coffin. This is no joke; a coffin was sitting as big as you please in the common room of the house.

"O MY GOD," we yelled in unison.

"We have got to go back and see if that was really what we think it was. Who keeps a coffin in their living room?!" The way Jocelyn said this made me laugh. She had made the statement as if we had just driven by a woman wearing white striped pants and a bright purple polka-dotted shirt. Everyone knew that you didn't keep a coffin in the main room, Duh.

I have to admit that I was curious as well, so when I found the first suitable place to turn around, I did. The place that I had chosen to turn around was precarious to say the least. The mountain seemed to say I give up and just stopped stretching out. The thick twisted branches and trunks of the trees did nothing to conceal the sudden drop off into oblivion. We were so high up that the twinkling lights from the city looked like tiny dust particles floating through the air. I am terrified of heights to begin with but to be this close to the edge of the mountain and be up so incredibly high insured that I was painstakingly cautious as I eased my car around in a three point turn. I turned my wheel to move with the curve of the ledge and ease my car around. There was a hollow thud followed by the stomach churning crunch, grind, and hiss of a cars soft underbelly being scraped over a hump of evil gnarled pavement. And then my car would move no further.

I will never be able to describe the speed at which my heart bombed into my stomach. I could feel the blood leave my face and drain from my head. My best friend and I were perched in a two ton car with one wheel and some of the body hanging over the mountain ledge. Jocelyn, never at a loss for words chimed in with, "Good going Mario Andretti, I hope you know how to fly." If looks could kill, Jocelyn's ashes would have been piled in a gray chalky mass on the floor. "Don't worry, maybe I can just put it in reverse and pull it back up," I said as I put the gear into reverse and pressed the gas peddle. I must have wasted a third of a tank of gas trying to budge that car but nothing happened. With the shock finally wearing off and the adrenalin from fear kicking in, my mind began to work at a frenzied pace. "Let's get out of the car and try and put some weight on the back. It might make the wheel's grip the pavement better." Opening the doors we both got out and ran to the side farthest away from the edge. "Here Ill climb up on the back and then you can drive," Jocelyn was half way on top of the neon by the time she finished say this.

"Jocelyn, the weals aren't even close to the ground, you're to light! I'll have to get up there."

We switched places and with me shouting directions to her in the driver's seat about how to switch into reverse we tried again to move my car. Just as before nothing moved.

Beginning to panic we decided that the best way to move the car was to push and lift it back onto the road. I made sure to put the car into neutral as we walked around to the front of the car and stepped softly onto the sloping of the edge. As we both found sturdy footing and a somewhat solid stance, we began to lift. We strained so hard that the muscles in both of our arms bulged and our legs began to cramp in protest to their heavy burden. The tears that slid down our faces went unnoticed, and the curses said under our breath went unheard.

"It's not moving!" I yelled to my friend over the buzzing sound in my head. We slumped against the car in utter exhaustion. For a long moment the only sounds that could be heard in the damning night were that of our labored breath and our shaky inhalations.

"We can't give up. If our parents find out about this we will never be allowed to do anything together again. Sneaking out is bad enough, but if they find out that we almost drove the car off the mountain and were killed, God only knows what would happen." I paused to take a deep calming breath before I continued. "We have done some stupid crap together but never anything this bad. If we want to live to see graduation from high school we have to fix this."

"I want to live. Let's try again. Otherwise we will have to walk down to your house and get help." Jocelyn's voice was small, but strong. With unrelenting determination we stepped back into place. I don't know who said it, but a soft 'God help us' could be heard. With the last amount of energy that we had we began to lift. I don't know if it was the prayer or if it was just an angle helping, but Jocelyn and I lifted a two ton red, dodge neon, back on to the road. It took us a few moments to realize what we had just accomplished as we stood there with our eyes, and mouths wide open. We simply stood there looking at each other. I began to laugh, out of nervousness or what I don't know, and Jocelyn began laughing with me.

These are the moments that I will always cherish. "We did it." I said. With a loud high-five, we begin to celebrate, jumping up and down and squealing. A while after that, when we finally got back into my car and drove home, the coffin forgotten. The rest of the night was relatively uneventful. We made it home safe and sound and spent the rest of the night congratulating each other for our amazing accomplishment.

The next morning when my mom went outside to get the newspaper she seemed to notice that my car looked like hell. When I was questioned about it, never one to lie, I told her the truth. I thought that she would be furious and ground me until death, but instead she burst out laughing and said, "You remind me of myself! Just don't tell your dad." "Don't worry," I said "I will take this secret of misadventure with me to the grave