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From
"Bittersweet
Ending"
by
Heather Marie
Margaitis
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"Just throw
everything in the back seat," Kyra instructed.
"I didn’t think I would
have a passenger with me this afternoon." She
tilted the rearview mirror down
to her eye level to check her appearance. A smear of
lipstick was detected on
her cheek. She wet a finger and rubbed it off. Satisfied
with the final outcome,
my friend shifted the car and sped onto the main road,
away from the church.
"Hey, I just remembered that I’ve got a little
something stashed away in the ashtray,"
Kyra said. "Go ahead and open it!"
With Kyra, I never knew what to expect. In high
school, she had been a regular
attendee at after school detention. She just couldn’t
control her desire to stay
out of the boys’ locker room. At the prom, she had
gotten so trashed that she
had taken off her dress and danced in the parking lot of
the Litchfield Inn half-naked.
She opened up the ashtray and withdrew half a joint
before I could even reach
for it. "Here," she handed me her lighter.
Some things just never change. Calm, not really.
Impatient, definitely yes. But
that’s what made Kyra, Kyra. For a moment, I felt like
I was eighteen again, rather
than twenty-five. I accepted the pot and inhaled two
hits off it. We passed it
back and forth, each of us taking a couple drags off it,
just like old times. From the
radio, Van Morrison sang about a brown-eyed girl. We
tried to sing along, but
did more giggling then vocalizing. Kyra, I thought, did
a great job of handling
the car while she was stoned. A few more miles, a few
right-hand turns and
then before we knew it, we were at the reception hall,
Candleview Inn.
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