The Boat
Two point two miles. Seven minutes if you’re in a car, and didn’t get stopped by a train. Forty-four minutes if you’re walking carefully and manage to not get hit by one of the crazies who somehow got a license here in town. There’s no bus that will take you from your high school to your father’s work downtown, even with a bus stop right in front of the school. Taxis are too expensive to use the four days out of the week your father can’t pick you up from school. So every school day but Thursday, you walk the two point two miles, thankfully downhill, to the big bland concrete building where he works. Most of the walk is nice, you get to pass through the older part of town, where all the houses don’t look the same. Not exactly the safest route, considering sidewalks aren’t prevalent and people never do the speed limit. You only have to cross three major roads, several neighborhood entrances, and one set of railroad tracks while cars rocket passed you as if the drivers think dying on the way to their destination is a good enough excuse as any for being late in the first place.
Our mutual friend lives a little over halfway from the school to your father’s work. She and I have known each other since the third grade, and my mom doesn’t mind going out of our way, so we take her home after school. We spend a month not noticing as we pass you by in my mother’s Le Sabre. Why should we bother looking out the window? Most days we’re too busy gossiping and laughing to realize that there’s life outside of the car. We drive the one point four miles from school to her house in four minutes, and you walk an extra forty minutes every day (every day but Thursday) until I take a long enough breath to look out the window. Mom doesn’t mind when I ask her to pull over for you, she had noticed you walking long before the giggling duo had, she just didn’t know we knew you. Neither of us even thought to ask you how you got to and from school, but both of us still wish we had looked out the window sooner in the school year.
We insist you ride with us every day, and you say Every day but Thursday. That’s the day your dad gets off of work early. I met you again in my mother’s ’98 Le Sabre, and you said it’s like a boat. The Boat. That nickname stuck until its demise over five years after you sat in it. A crazy was texting and ran a red light. You don’t have to worry, Mom is okay, she’s just paranoid of left turns at intersections now. The Boat was too trashed to repair, insurance replaced it with another Boat. Newer model, less miles, better cushions, CD player, same color. A Boat 2005.
We met for the first time freshmen year, but that didn’t really count. We didn’t have classes together and we only had mutual friends. I meet you again sophomore year in my mother’s boat. We have classes together this year. Second period English and Third/Fourth periods Computer Applications. Both classes are Honors, but everyone still goofs off. Second semester we’ll have Chemistry together during third/fourth periods. The school has a ridiculous hybrid schedule this year, making the most painfully dull classes “blocked” lasting two periods but only one semester long. A few months and then done. I guess it makes more sense than freshmen year’s obnoxiously long fourth period, which included all three lunches and a regular class period. School schedules never make much sense.