Driving With the Top Down by Beth Harbison Page A

like you’re supposed to, then I graduated and married my boyfriend, thinking I knew the life I was in for, and was excited about it.
    Happily ever after.
    But that didn’t happen. I don’t believe in that anymore. I remember when I did, as clearly as I remember believing in Santa Claus. And I miss believing in happily ever after just like I miss believing in Santa Claus. A lot of magic went out of life with the realization of how ugly and stark and unfair things can really be.
    You’ve probably danced with that a little yourself, whoever you are. Seems like everyone has done their time with disappointment. I know some people have had it worse than me, much worse, but some have had it better. It’s not really about what everyone else is doing in life, or how they handle things, it’s about what you can handle and what you can’t.
    I couldn’t handle the change in my life.
    So everything fell apart, and now here I am, frustrated and alone, with no one to call. No one to cry to. No one to even write a suicide note to. I think that’s the most pathetic thing of all.
    I have a gun in my car. There’s no way to say that without sounding dramatic. But I do. It’s a cute Smith & Wesson. Very girlie. I’m trying to decide where to do it. Maybe on the side of the bridge? Maybe in some pretty church. I don’t know yet. After I leave here, once my favorite diner now my Last Supper (pardon me the grandiose moment), I guess I’ll drive around until somewhere seems right.

 
    CHAPTER SIX
    Tamara
    “I used to come to this place all the time when I was in college. It was cheap, greasy, and good.” Colleen collected her wallet and things, and opened the car door.
    Tamara got out too, taking the little jump that was necessary to get from seat to ground.
    “You went to school around here?”
    “Yep. Small college right outside of town. So, basically, this is the college town right here.” She took a deep breath and looked around. The light from big ugly parking lot lights illuminated her face and she looked … alive. “I can’t believe how the same it looks.”
    Tamara also looked around. There was basically nothing around. It didn’t look like how she’d always thought of college towns. She had been to Towson University once, when Vince was sure they could get into a bar there, and that had felt like a college town. The big long street was crowded with college students going from bar to bar. People played cornhole outside one bar, everyone was dancing inside another really loud bar, and at one place there had even been some semi-legit band playing.
    The bar they had been assured they could get into, Lil’ Dicky’s, was a cramped hallway of a place. It was kind of awful, but still, it felt like what you expected out of a college area, full of energy. This was more like a place you’d hear that the walk-in fridge in the back was haunted. By old potato ghosts. Before they were chopped up and turned into French fries.
    She laughed a little to herself as they went into the diner, and thought briefly about sharing her mental image of an evil Mr. Potato Head floating like Casper in the back kitchen, but she decided against it, figuring that was too weird, and would probably be a fast way to have Colleen call up her dad and say she was on drugs—or maybe just actual-crazy.
    She didn’t need anyone else making him think that.
    They were taken to a table next to a bunch of girls, all shrill and squealing at each other. Tamara wondered if Colleen was the type of adult that would tell them to calm down, or if she would just get really annoyed until they left or passive-aggressively change tables. If she had been sitting there with her dad, he would have muttered that they were a bunch of PILs, which stood for “Pigs in Lipstick.” It was a nasty term he used for the kind of girls who were generally average looking, but put on “a hot-girl costume.” Too much makeup caked on, fake hair color, usually wearing a dress or