Blind Ambition | ✓

08 | Guys With Ties

Rochelle gave me one more warning glance before sliding out of the passenger seat as Jordyn approached my car. I had my steering wheel in a death grip, bracing myself for the inevitable. They hugged, but I knew by now that was just a bullshit part of their girl code of conduct. My existence was the only thing that mandated their diplomacy, but that didn't deter them from trading passive aggressive verbal punches. Jordyn took the first swing.

"Oh my god, you got great color at cheer camp, look at those tan lines. I'm jealous."

"Did you do something to your hair?" Rochelle was next, all sugar and none of her usual spice. "It looks so much shinier than the last time I saw you."

For a moment, they resigned themselves to the quiet stillness of the morning. Warm summer morning or not, I felt the frigidness of their cold war from where I was sitting. This wasn't anything unusual. Same old battle, new weapons.

"After you, hun." Jordyn gestured to the back seat of my coup, which could only be accessed by crawling over the folded over front seat. While I'm sure that was the reason Rochelle even got out of the car, that's not how Jordyn saw it. She saw it as her way to wedge herself beside me by any means possible.

"Oh no, I insist." Rochelle gave Jordyn a pinched smile. "The backseat gets way less wind."

I let out a heavy sigh and cranked whatever ambiguous rap song came through the speakers, hoping they'd take the hint. "I hate to interrupt this lovely passive aggressive knife fight, but we need to get going. Chris will actually shit himself if he's late on the first day of school."

It was far from a ceasefire between them, and Rochelle knew that, which was why she surrendered the passenger seat to Jordyn. Lose the battle, win the war.

We drove away from the street that had raised the three of us, taking one last dive into the little rivers and estuaries we'd known our whole lives before being washed away into the ocean of actual adulthood. Truth be told, the thought of that alone was what kept me sane. Wash me the fuck away from here.

Chris was already waiting for us on his front porch and came running down the length of his immaculate front lawn, dodging sprinkler heads while balancing his backpack and his gym back with half of his blazer hanging off of his shoulder. He dumped his bags in the trunk before hopping over it and sliding into the backseat.

We took a long, round-about way to school, dipping down tree-lined side streets as we passed around our usual morning blunt. Jordyn lit it and held it to my lips, letting me take a long hit before passing it back to Chris.

I felt Jordyn work her hand through the hair at the back of my neck, and part of me was worried if she tugged too hard in one direction, my head would just come tumbling off my shoulders. I felt the wind hit me differently as we coasted along the side streets, intertwining with the music as it poured from the speakers and did circles around my head like a halo. There was a subtle normalcy to it all. The air. The sound. The high. All was right in the universe. My universe.

Everyone had their own cars to drive to school, but our carpooling had nothing to do with sustainability. Despite our bullshit, we were a tight knit pack, and we traveled together. Showing up to school in my car, walking in with me on the first day of school had a certain level of clout that asserted dominance and attracted attention. I knew that. So did everyone else.

It didn't help that the two-door BMW convertible my parents got me for my 18th birthday was such a blaring, unsubtle Cornell red that I might as well have had a siren strapped to it. Everyone knew when I pulled into my front row spot in the senior parking lot, and they circled like vultures to roadkill.