Damon didn’t know how to drive around curves. The car titered across the white, dotted line marking the left lane. It didn’t matter much considering we were the only ones on the road at midnight. Either way, we made a game out of it. He wanted to limit himself to ten times skidding over. I wish I could remember what number he wound up getting up to, but it became irrelevant later. My music blasted from the speakers towards the front of the car because I had spent the whole day prior begging Cedric to let me make the playlist. Damon drove, Cedric sat shotgun, while Brianna and I sat in the backseat. I sat behind Damon to the left, and she behind Cedric to the right, like always.
With Brianna heading up north to Coeur D’Alene in a few days, we wanted to have some fun before losing her for two weeks. Night drives were a casual thing for us. They didn’t happen often, usually when we had the time to drive for a little over two hours. If we took them, it was almost always to Idaho City and back, and Idaho City was about forty-five minutes from Boise. But with Bri going out of town, and me going up to Moscow in about a month, it was one of the last things we were really going to be able to do with all four of us.
Driving was better at night because of the color of the forest. Stars twinkled just through the treeline, and the trees themselves looked as tall as the sky. There was something oddly comforting about the blacks, navy’s, and army greens that surrounded us. The further I got away from Boise, and the further I went into the woods, the more at home I felt. Brianna and I had a writing project we were working together that we discussed in the backseat while the boys exchanged stories in the front.
We had only planned on driving to Idaho City before turning around. Eventually, we drove through the small town. At 1am, it looked like a ghost town. The only light pollution came from the local Sinclair. Despite being the dead of night and closed, the lights still reflected from inside.
“I want to keep going,” I announced. No one said anything. “Is that okay?”
“I’m good as long as everyone else is,” Damon said, continuing to drive without turning around. “I guess it’s up to Italy?”
“Yeah, sounds good,” Brianna said. She liked to draw in the car, and then complain when Damon took a sharp turn and messed up her stylus stroke.
“Okay, then let’s do it.”
We drove for another forty-five minutes. The further north we drove, the closer we got to Loman, and the closer we got to a forest fire. Through the so far thin smoke, the moon took an orange hue. It peaked through the treeline when Cedric finally suggested that we turn around.
“Yeah, I want to get back to your place. Can we stop at WinCo and get some tea?” Brianna asked.
Despite the wonder of the forest, my eyelids grew heavy, and I found my head starting to fall on Brianna’s shoulder. “Sounds good to me.”
At this point, no one was on the road, so Damon did a u-turn in the middle. It was only about ten minutes before we heard an odd graveling sound.
“What the hell is that?” I asked
“This must be an uneven section of the road,” Brianna suggested. Since it was only two lanes, and almost the middle of nowhere, I accepted this for another few minutes before Damon pulled over.
“What are you doing?” we asked.
“We think it might be the tire,” Cedric explained as he and Damon got out of the car. We didn’t think much before Damon asked me to roll down my window.
“So there’s a hole in the tire,” Damon announced.
“Do you have a spare?” Brianna’s eyebrows raised.
“We have a donut,” he told us as we heard the sound of it clanking and Cedric almost dropping it on his foot.
“SHI-”
“I guess that answers that question,” she sighed.
The hour was quickly reaching three, or as Brianna proclaimed, the Witching Hour. At 3am, the forest I once found so comforting started to change entirely. The silence echoed through the trees, amplified by the light buzzing of moths in the car’s headlights and the rushing of the river. Towards the end of summer, Southern and mid-Idaho were still burning hot, but in the night, cold air crept in through the open window.
“Cedric!”
Sweat on his brow, Cedric poked his head in through my still open window. “What’s up?”
“Do you still have Damon’s car keys?”
Before we stopped the car, we were playing my creepy songs playlist, but in the Witching Hour in the inky black forest, it hardly seemed appropriate. I had downloaded my music beforehand because once you got past Lucky Peaky Dam, you lost cell service entirely. With the car keys, we turned the bluetooth speaker back on, and the first song that played from the second playlist I had made was a loud, over the top in the best way, Lizzo song. From the gay boys to the playboys, go and slay boys, you my fave boys! Before too long, Damon came back to the window.
“You should have seen it,” he was laughing. “Cedric just murdered a moth with his bare hands.”
“Did you have a point?” Brianna asked him
“Oh yeah. So I don’t think we’re gonna be able to fix the car.”
“Why?” was the first word out of my mouth.
“We’re going downhill, and the emergency break isn’t stopping the car. It’ll be okay, the hole isn’t too bad. I’m sure we can make it back to Boise on it.”
“Are you sure?” Brianna had a look of exasperation on her face that was specifically saved for Damon and Cedric.
“Yeah, there won’t be a problem. It isn’t even that bad,” Damon’s grin betrayed the panic in my chest.
“This sounds like an awful idea,” I told him.
“We’ll be okay, I promise,” with that, we had come to the end of the conversation.
After putting the donut back in the trunk, Damon and Cedric got back into the front. By turning the music up louder, Cedric seemed to think he was covering up the grinding of the tire against the road, and our own fears. Blasting through the speakers in contrast to the dark night was an infectious Big Time Rush song. Wooohooo! All the windows down! When I’m rolling through your town! Cedric rolled down all of the windows. Between the obnoxious music, and the roar of nearly popped tire, every deer in the five mile radius must have sprinted away. Through the open windows came the smell of burning rubber and a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. We all chanted along to the song, screaming at the top of our lungs. The chilled wind rushed through me, adrenaline pumping. The next song started, Woah, oh, oh, oh, oh– BANG. With an ear-shattering bang, the tire popped of the car and rolled straight into the winding river. Radiant sparks of orange and gold exploded that only Damon and I got to see before a screech echoed through the forest.
“Get out of the car! Get out of the car!” Cedric shouted while Damon slammed on the breaks.
I don’t know if I ever moved so fast in my life. I pushed open the door with a force I didn’t know that I possessed, and slammed it with an equal amount. In stunned silence, we all stood on the other side of the road looking at the car missing a front right tire.
“What do we do now?” I asked, breaking it.
“Well, I guess we have no choice but to put the donut on,” Cedric said. “At least we’re further down the hill.”
After checking to make sure the car wasn’t going to catch on fire, Damon and Cedric took the donut out of the car once again. I walked out onto the middle of the highway, hugging myself in the cold. At 4am, birds were starting to chirp in the trees, their voices far too cheery for my mounting fear. The river was just on the other side of the road, the sound of it rushed by, the tire probably far gone in the current. It had occurred to me when they first stopped to put on the donut that we were out of the range for cell service. It was a peaceful isolation. A weight fell onto my shoulders, a shriek almost echoing through me. Turning around, Damon was behind me having set a jacket of his on me. Brianna, behind him, had one as well. Cedric was on the ground underneath the car, trying to unscrew four of the five remaining lugnuts.
“How long do you think it’ll be before you get the donut on?” I asked.
Damon sighed, running a hand through his long hair that’s blue dye was fast fading. “I don’t know. The hill is still pretty slanted here. If you guys want to play music again or something, I’m gonna try and help him.”
I slipped into the driver’s seat, putting the playlist back on. The car blasted a Sabrina Carpenter song at full volume. Brianna and I both went out in front of the car and started to dance together. Delirium had hit probably the moment the tire flung off of the car. I can make it nice and easy, I’ma take the lead. They ain’t even looking at you, baby, they looking at me.
That being said, delirium was something that could quickly turn into exhaustion. Before long, Brianna and I were back in the car. She was drawing on her tablet, and I was falling asleep on her shoulder. Damon tapped on my window. Again. It was like Groundhog Day.
“We need your help,” he said once I rolled down the window.
When we got to the scene of the crime, Cedric was sweating and breathing harder than I had ever seen him. He got up once he saw us. “I need your guys’ help lifting up the car.”
“Why?” exhaustion seeped through Brianna.
“I can’t get this on my own,” he went off on some long winded explanation that didn’t make much sense. I wasn’t sure if it was nonsensical, I was exhausted, if he was exhausted or all three.
No matter the answer, Brianna and I stationed ourselves at the front of the car, and Damon stationed himself at the back. When that didn’t work to Cedric’s liking, we changed our positions. When it didn’t work again, we changed again. We did this until Damon was on his knees, chest heaving.
“ Are you okay?” Brianna kneeled next to him, setting a hand on his shoulder.
“I feel a little sick, but I’ll be okay,” he dry heaved against the pavement. We could see his breath in the nearly morning air.
Brianna, Cedric, and I all shared a look. Cedric was quick to get his phone out of the car. We watched as he wandered a little past the car, and held his phone in the air, walking desperately to try and get a signal. Bri and I helped Damon up and he got his phone as well. I had driven up to Idaho City enough to know that I wouldn’t have anything. Brianna and I stood side by side watching them try and get a signal. We were about to go back to the car when Damon started shouting.
“I got a bar! Oh my god, I got a bar!” he started yelling. Brianna and I automatically threw our arms around each other as Cedric pumped a fist into the air. “Wait. Who do we call?”
We all paused at a question that none of us considered. They couldn’t just call a tow truck. They didn’t have jobs, they didn’t have savings. Brianna and I were about to be broke college students.
“My dad,” I told them.
Cedric and Damon started to argue with me. They hadn’t met my dad yet, and they didn’t want his first impression of them to be almost killing his daughter in the woods at the Witching Hour. As mad as I knew he would be, I also knew he would also get us out of this. Since it wasn’t my phone, and my phone didn’t have service, I was outnumbered. Brianna and I sat back down in the car and returned to our respective places of attempted napping and drawing. As much as I wanted to sleep, I couldn’t bring myself to do so. I was no longer afraid of the woods outside of the car. All that was left was the fear of never going home again. Of staying lost out here. Of not getting the chance to get out of Boise and go to college.
I was drowned out of my thoughts by Cedric this time tapping on my window. I rolled it down again. Rather than saying anything, he just handed me Damon’s phone. I got out of the car and listened to the far away dial. I had to keep walking further to make sure that the call went through. When it finally did, he didn’t answer. I called again. Same dial. Same steps. Same voicemail box. I handed the phone back to Cedric without saying anything. Instead of walking back to the car, I just walked forward in the middle of the highway.
“El, where are you going?” Cedric asked.
I didn’t say anything. I lost all capability to speak.
“Ellie?” it was Damon’s voice this time.
I kept walking. Out of the corner of my eye, I could tell that Cedric was following me. It took the voice in the back of my mind begging me to finally pull me out of trance. I sat down and screamed. At the top of my lungs. I did it twice. With my voice, I gave away all my autonomy over the situation. I knew that it was out of my hands. I didn’t believe in any sort of god, but nonetheless I handed my control of the situation to some otherworldly being. I got back up and walked back to the car, Cedric still following me.
“Thank you, you don’t know how much this means to me. We owe you. We’ll pay you back.”
“Who was that?” my eyes were firmly on him as Brianna got out of the car.
“My boyfriend’s dad. He says he’ll get us a tow truck.”
I don’t know if I’ve ever felt that kind of relief before. It flowed through my veins instead of blood.
We all waited in relative silence for the tow truck. My ‘ellie’s super fun party time night drive mix’ playlist was heavy on the nostalgia bops. As the sun came up, Burnin’ Up by the Jonas Brothers had been turned down somewhat as the world started to wake up. I’m slipping into the lava, and I’m trying to keep from going under. Baby you turn the temperature hotter, cause I’m burnin’ up, burnin’ up for you, baby. It occurred to me at this point that I had watched the world go to sleep and wake up again. I had been awake for twenty-two hours. As it became daylight, time moved slower than I thought capable. I could see what surrounded me and what once filled me with fear then filled with me with numbness now filled me with something entirely bittersweet.
“Is that… a car?” Cedric said.
Wind was rushing faster as the smell of diesel filled my nose. We stood up as a large lumber truck drove by. It pulled over a few feet from where we were pulled over. An ordinary looking guy got out of the truck, walking towards us. A stereotype with his dark brown beard and flannel.
“You guys need help?” he asked when he walked up.
Damon and Cedric quickly explained the situation. He was thoughtful for a moment before offering to help the boys put on the donut. Meanwhile, Brianna walked to the river bank. I followed her up as she picked up a large stick.
“Do you think I could use this as a staff?” she asked. What she was holding up half of was a branch that must have fallen off of a tree in a thunderstorm. “I’m going to hack it off with Cedric’s machete.”
“It certainly is big enough. Do you want to keep it in the car on the way back? And are you sure you’re not too tired to use a machete?”
She opened her mouth to corrected me, but her eyes trailed off to the kind stranger currently putting rocks behind the remaining tires to keep the car from sliding down the hill. “Why didn’t we think of that?”
I didn’t answer as we walked back to the boys and the stranger. She dragged the branch across the road with us. He now used the jack that Cedric had been struggling to use earlier with ease.
“You have a branch,” Damon commented.
“It’s gonna be a staff,” she corrected. “Can I use Cedric’s machete?”
He nodded his head as Cedric and the lumberjack started to screw on the donut. Meanwhile, Brianna aggressively hacked at the branch. With parting advice of making sure to fill the tire with air once we got to Idaho City and making sure not to go over twenty-five, he was off. We all got back in the car, this time without getting to fix any danger. The happy playlist was back on as we slowly started to drive again.
“What the hell happened?” I mused.
No one answered. Poor decision after poor decision was what happened.
“The world has no right to be this happy,” Brianna said. And she was right. The sun was out, shining brightly through the windows on our exhausted faces. The warmth that covered my features like a cozy blanket was almost cruel. You could look right down into the river and see the brown rocks at the bottom as morning mist was covering the mountain top trees.