Cigarettes. The car smelled of forgotten cigarettes. It’s a specific smell, the smell of an old car, not smoked in for years, but still the ghost of cheap,
gas station cigarettes lingers. The dash was yellow. Maybe it was supposed to be yellow, maybe not. The light glints through a large crack in the dirty windshield.
A Bruce Springsteen song plays, barely audible, the radio only slightly on. I got this car in junior year, my first car. It was old, probably from the 80s. It had
seen a lot, bringing home drunk friends from that party at the end of senior year, that panicked, unremembered drive through the dead of night to the hospital, or
that long, loney trip to the coast that gray and foggy day last November.
The windows were down, and the cool fresh air of early Saturday billowed through the car. It was one of those mornings when the sunlight felt fresh, the air clear.
There was nothing but grain in either direction, a field of waving gold to match the fresh sunlight spanning the horizon, save for the strip of old asphalt. A line
of gray through endless gold. I brush the hair out of my face, in disarray from the wind, and take a drink from the fast food drink I got in the last town. There was a long
road ahead before the next stop, but I didn’t mind. I put my sunglasses back on and accelerate.