Gone

I pulled to a steady stop in Manny’s driveway, leaning back and honking my horn loudly to alert her to my arrival. Knowing that she was going to take at least five minutes to show her face out the door, even on the first day of school, I leaned over and turned up the generic, electronic-riddled pop song on the radio. Although I had no idea what it was, the music was kind of catchy, and I found myself bobbing my head to the beat, tapping my black acrylic fingernails against the plastic band that stretched across the middle of my steering wheel.

As I’d anticipated, Manny bounced out the door seven minutes later. Her incredibly long dark brown hair was curled to perfection around her small face, and she was wearing a pair of short light-washed denim shorts and a blousy-type patterned tank top that accented her summer-tanned skin perfectly.

“This car,” she said as she plopped down her butt down in the leather passenger’s seat, “is fucking incredible.”

“I know,” I grinned, putting the car in reverse and checking behind me to make sure there were no other cars approaching before pulling out into the street.

There were perks of having a father who was an antique car dealer, though I wasn’t able to reap the benefits until I got my license in April. It was then that Dad showed me the beauty that would soon be my baby: a 1969 dark blue Mustang Coupe. It was completely redone on the inside, and the engine was upgraded, so it worked just like any other car on the streets. It just looked so much better.

The only part that sucked was that I was forced to drive a crappy VW van around almost all summer until my dad felt satisfied that I’d be able to drive a really expensive car without crashing into anything. Which I would never do. I was a really good, careful driver, and being surrounded by my baby only intensified my natural instincts.

On the way to school, Manny chatted a little bit about her night, ranting about how her father wouldn’t let her get out of the house last night to meet her summer boyfriend, Trevor. He was probably the goofiest-looking kid I’d seen in a while, with a sort of smushed face and gangly limbs that made him look like he was a walking disaster waiting to happen. But for some reason, my incredibly beautiful best friend thought he was charming.

“So what happened with him, anyway?” I questioned, pulling to a stop and checking both ways before proceeding through the intersection. “Didn’t you say you wanted to keep your options open for your senior year?”

“Yes, and I do,” she replied. She pulled down the visor in front of her to check her makeup, pulling out a thing of lip gloss and dabbing her lower lip with it, making her naturally ruby lips shimmer in the sunlight. “I told him that it wasn’t going to work out, and he flipped the fuck out.”

“What do you mean?” I laughed. Manny changed the guy on her arm like I changed underwear, and if there was one thing I learned about the long series of faces in the four years since Manny and I had become friends, it was that they all took breakups really differently. Some got emotional, some got pissed, and some just accepted it. I had pegged Trevor as the emotional type, so the fact that he freaked out at her surprised me.

As I pulled into my parking spot and reached behind my seat to grab my backpack, Manny explained, “So I just told him that I didn’t want to hang out anymore, that I didn’t want to be attached to anyone once school started. It was no big deal. But he started screaming and raging, like, ‘You fucking bitch! I was fucking going to ask you to fucking marry me and be my fucking wife! You just ruined everything, and I hope you get fucking raped and killed and left in a ditch to rot.”

“Whoa,” I laughed. “That’s pretty intense. And he was going to ask you to get married?! Does he realize that getting married at eighteen isn’t at the top of your to-do list?”

“He kind of thinks that I’m twenty-two, so…”

“Manny!”

“Sorry,” she whimpered, throwing her bag over her shoulder before shoving the passenger’s side door open. “But he was in college, and I didn’t want him to think that I was young and immature. After all, I’m only a senior in high school.”

“Twenty-two is still young to get married,” I pointed out. “Not to mention that you guys were dating for, like, two months. I knew that guy was crazy.”

“I do remember you telling me that you didn’t think he was stable,” Manny laughed. “But whatever. I’m done with him, and he’s out of my life forever. He can go marry some other mentally unstable chick. Hopefully, they don’t procreate.”

“Right. And God help those children, if they’re ever made.”

The two of us started to walk toward the school, Manny calling out various names along the way to wave to them. It was weird, how almost everyone seemed to be in a good mood on the first day of school. The rest of the year was always miserable and dreary, with kids complaining about various teachers and projects and homework assignments, but on the first day, everything was different. We could all pretend that school wouldn’t be that terrible this year, that maybe our teachers wouldn’t be douchebags, and that the administration wouldn’t be quite as power-hungry.

Of course, it was all proven wrong. But optimism always helped.

When we entered the school, we stopped in at the office and picked up the schedules that had our names written in Times New Roman font at the top. I winced at the sight of my full given name, hating the old-lady charm of it. The one thing I really hated about the first day of school is that every teacher, without fail, called out, “Francine Waters?” without pausing to think that, maybe, an eighteen-year-old wouldn’t want to be called Francine.

“What do you have?” Manny asked, putting her face into my personal space and squinting to read the small print in the first box of my schedule. “Ugh. Pre-calc. Remember how much I hated that last year? Good fucking luck.”

I rolled my eyes and glanced at her piece of paper, noting that she had AP English. Manny, although she didn’t have the best of reputations, was definitely one of the smartest people in my school. She somehow managed to be in every AP class the school offered, including AP Calculus (fucking weirdo), and she pulled A’s in all of them without breaking a sweat. I was the kind of student who was smart, but I didn’t put a whole lot of effort into the school thing. Sports were much more important to me.

“Frankie!” Manny shouted, snapping her perfectly-manicured hands in front of my face. “I’m going this way. Are you going to smash into any lockers if I let you walk by yourself?”

“What?” I laughed. “No, I’m fine. Just…thinking.”

She rolled her eyes and fixed the way her purse strap laid against her shoulder. “Whatever, Freakshow. See you at lunch.”

“Bye!” I called with a smile before merging back with the rest of the crowd. It always confused me how everyone dressed up for the first day. I guess making first impressions were important, maybe, but it could easily get erased. Like, if someone wore a sundress on the first day, but they wore sweats every day for the rest of the year, it was unlikely that anyone would remember that sundress.

Shaking my head to get rid of the philosophical thoughts, I stepped into my pre-calc classroom and sighed, noting that my teacher was the same one I’d had the year before that narrowly avoided failing me. All because I refused to go up to the board and write out one of the homework problems that I hadn’t even started to understand.

I just hoped it wasn’t foreshadowing for what the rest of my year would be like.