#cherry bars

We're on the wrong side of the street, speeding up the hill that we can't see over--a car coming at us or not, a kid chasing a lost softball or not, an anything or not. I suck in a breath like I'm leaping into a pool and I don't know how cold the water will be. My fingers squeeze tighter around the handle hanging from the Quantum's ceiling. Angie's arms are locked straight on the wheel, she's pressed back into the seat. No singing or laughing and I don't know what song is playing. We dive over the top of the hill and the road underneath us is empty. We speed down the slope, pass the slow cars; drivers' heads turn to see who could be so stupid. Nothing happens though because we're invincible. Our bodies and also our friendship. We have to live on past this ordinary afternoon or else we'd never know what a time it was, it was. I wave to the glancing drivers, Angie pulls the car back into the right lane. We both scream.

We're listening to the lyrics of 'The Sound of Silence,' trying to figure out a meaning no one else has ever found. This song means more to us than it did to them, and by 'them,' we mean the people who were around thirty years ago when this album was originally recorded, specifically our parents. We were born in the wrong time. Angie tie-dyes T-shirts in her back yard, and I wear round sunglasses like John Lennon. We relive these memories even though they aren't ours because our parents had hippies and protests and pot and JFK and Vietnam and what do we have: nothing.