It was the first Saturday morning of our senior year, and Jan was determined to avoid going to college. His ongoing plan is to become YouTube famous (he's never gonna make it, and I never say never). He texted me at the crack of dawn and BEGGED me to be in one of his videos. I decided to help. It was a parody he pitched as The Force Awakens meets How I Met Your Mother. I wasn't sure exactly what that entailed, but one of my general policies is if it helps out a friend, why not? He needed one more lightsaber (which I had lying around somewhere) and somebody to play Maz Kanata. I wasn't gonna play Maz Kanata. My plan was to convince him to let me be Poe Dameron because that is the type of character I am. I get Poe. Also, I am half Hispanic. I have the right look. I might not be as gorgeous as Oscar Isaac (be still my heart), but that doesn't mean I don't got some kinda swagger.

So I was foraging around in my closet for my lightsaber when my mom walked into my room, yapping at me in Spanish. She likes to do this from time to time because she thinks it'll keep me connected to my heritage. Lulz. I mean, I already gravitate to Poe Dameron. (Then again, my attraction to Poe has more to do with the fact he's a BADASS than Oscar Isaac's ethnicity, but Mom doesn't need to know that).

Fun fact: my mom speaks Spanish with the most white bread Americana accent you'll ever hear. Grams makes jokes about that to me, when Mom's not around. The story behind that is that both Grams and Grampa (RIP) came from Puerto Rico to Linden Valley as kids in the forties. They grew up here, met each other here, got married here, Grampa got a job at the steel mill, and Grams got pregnant. They made the decision not to teach Mom or her sister Spanish, because they thought it would help them integrate more with the rest of the town. That's Grams' official excuse whenever people grill her about it. To be frank, though, I don't think she or Grampa really cared all that much. They had other things to do than make sure Mom and Aunt Rosie were eloquent, native speakers of two languages. Like pay bills and hand-sew prom dresses and go to Mass and whatever. Mom ended up taking Spanish at high school, and got SUPER into it. She joined all these Latina groups in college and is now part of some Linden Valley Latinx Medical Association. She made sure my brothers and I were as bilingual as we can get (which, admittedly, isn't thaaaat bilingual). Still, I've got a better accent than she does. Grams told me so. I like to watch her snicker every time Mom trills her rs.

"English, por favor?" I requested, still in my closet. I found a rolled up poster of Zayn Malik, but no lightsaber yet.

"Fine," my mom said, but it wasn't actually fine, because then she groaned. "Would you look at me when I'm talking to you?"

I set down my poster, turned, and looked at her.

"Were you listening?" she sat on the trunk at the foot of my bed.

"Not really," I admitted. As soon as I hear the words 'college applications,' whether in English or Spanish, my brain kinda zones out. It's a problem I have. I'm not as bad as Jan, but I could stand to be more like Stevie when it comes to the future.

"Have you given any thought to what you want to do?" I noticed some lines on my mom's forehead that weren't there before. I couldn't tell if they were a permanent feature of her age or part of the worried expression she had plastered on her face for the morning.

"Not really," I said. Annnnd there were more lines on her forehead. These ones were definitely from worry.

"You've got application deadlines," she said, "and what school you should apply to depends on what you want your major to be."

"I figured I'd kinda make stuff up as I go," I said.

My mom massaged her temples.

"What's Stevie going to do?" she asked. "Has she thought about it?"

"Oh Stevie. PFFFT," I snorted. "Stevie found out how much bank there is in pharmaceuticals in 9th grade and has been dead-set on that since."

"Is that something you'd be interested in?" There was glimmer of hope in my mom's eyes. I hated to crush it, but...

"HELL NO."

No way would you trap me inside a Target pharmacy. Or a hospital. I don't even want to drive by hospitals, let alone work in them.

"Valerie," my mom cringed.

"I don't think we should use Stevie as a role model. She's obsessed with security," I argued. Whenever I made fun of Stevie's plans for pharmacology school, security would always pop up right after $money$ as her number 2 defense.

"Stevie's smart," my mom crossed her arms. "It's smart to think about security-"

"Yeah there's no such thing as security-" I noticed something blue behind the slits in the headboard of my bed.

"What about medicine?" my mom suggested as I got up to investigate. "You always seemed to be curious about it."

"I'm curious about the medieval period, doesn't mean I wanna be a historian." I climbed onto my bed and over my pillows. "Why did they paint babies with adult man faces back then, what's that abou-"

"You read medical journals!" my mom interrupted me. "Average teenagers don't do that!"

I resented the implication I wasn't average, but I wasn't gonna start a fight over that.

"Yeah, but I'm not seriously interested in medicine-"

"You're going to need a serious interest and a secure job with a good income," my mom stood up. She stuck out her shoulders like we were in Spain and she was about to fight a bull.

"It'd probably be better for everybody if I was poor. I'd just waste my good income on Jukebox renovations or some shit," I peeked behind my headboard. BAM. The blue thing I saw was in fact my lightsaber. I grabbed it.

"Think about your health insurance!" my mom continued. "The way the world is, you might lose your coverage if you have to rely on a shitty job. Who knows what will happen-"

"Exactly," I did some cool Jedi moves with my lightsaber, then rolled off my bed. "Why worry about it?"

"Valerie!" My mom cringed again.

"I gotta go film a video," I took my phone and my car keys off my desk. My mom looked pissed, so I anticipated trouble. Better make some shit up. "It's for my AP Brit Lit class. Hamlet. Our summer reading, you know?"

She accepted that. Or at least I think she did.

I ran down the stairs before she could say anything else.

***

It was the first Saturday night of our senior year. And Stevie and I were at the Sheetz.

After I got done helping Jan, there wasn't much going on for a Saturday. So I jumped in Gus and picked up Stevie, kicking and screaming. She wanted to stay in, watch Say Anything again, and try out a new nail polish like a couple of normies. Stevie's a big 80s movie fan. She'll watch anything with Bill Murray in it (we've made it a thing to watch Scrooged on Christmas Eve with Mr. O'Shaughnessy, Ghostbusters on Halloween, and Ghostbusters II on New Year's Eve. She tries to make me watch Groundhog Day every February 2nd, but I can't take it. There's a line I won't cross, and that line is a ham-fisted reincarnation allegory). She also harbors an undying affection for John Cusack, even though he's a real sleaze now that he's hit scruffy middle age. Now don't misquote me, I am not immune to the charms of a young John Cusack -those eyes! those eyelashes! that somehow-naïve-generation-X angst! Bellissimo!- but it was also only the first week of September. The weather was still warm, there were people still out and about, life to be tasted, mischief to be had! Besides, it had been four days since I had completed my first feat of courage, and I didn't run for senior class president for nothing.

I think when Stevie discovered that I intended to go on with our pact, she panicked. When we stopped at this cool, big playground a little before sunset, she flatly told me she "would not jump from anything high." As if that was something she ever would have done. I've known her since the age it was still socially acceptable for us to loiter at playgrounds. It's almost like she didn't understand that the point of the second Augustus Van Pact was to train her out of her social anxiety, not to break her legs. She has very poor landing form, I never do parkour with her. Carla on the other hand- brava! Then later, when we drove by the abandoned train station alongside the Munsee Creek, Stevie insisted that she wouldn't trespass inside, because ticks and rusted nails and tetanus shots. But I mean, I still haven't ordered the EMF reader or the EVP recorder on my Amazon wish list, so it's not like we could hunt any ghosts. And again, not the point of our pact. When it was well after dark and we had already exhausted the free water supply at the Wegmans, and were just driving around, Stevie seemed satisfied with herself. She shouldn't have been, because I got a real good idea then. Sheetz.

For those of you who don't know, Sheetz is to an average gas station as Wegmans is to an average grocery store, as Target is to Walmart. That is to say- it's the upscale version. Fancier. Bigger sometimes. What's unique about our particular Sheetz is that on any given Saturday night, gearheads, speed demons, and other reckless individuals gather in the parking lot, admire each other's muscle cars and Jeeps and arrange drag races down the road along the Airport. But when Stevie saw me turn into the parking lot and pass the 'Stangs and the Camaros, she didn't seem concerned. Maybe because I'm still driving Gus. My parents don't believe I've yet learned responsibility. Which is to say, I haven't. That and my dad has been driving my Jeep to work every day since it got out of the shop Tuesday. At this point, I don't know if I'll ever get my baby back. In the meanwhile, nobody at Sheetz will want to race me in Gus. Stevie knew that. I knew that. That wasn't my plan. See, Stevie haaaaatteeees gas station food. She's afraid of it. Why? GMOs? Listeria? I don't know. All I knew was that there had to be something I could make her uncomfortable with in Sheetz's café.

  "Why are we stopping here?" Stevie asked as I pulled into a parking space.

   "There's a lot of interesting food here," I put Gus in park, "and I'm peckish."

  "Janey Mac," Stevie sucked in her lips. "Gas station food?"

I yanked her topknot.

***

A/N: Thanks for reading, voting, and commenting! Almost forgot to update today! No bueno, friendos. Next update, Tuesday!