Speeding down I-75, Janet turns up the radio and blasts some pop song from the speakers. The band follows the girls in a van, and the Irish boys fist-pump to some song with too much bass. Elizabeth covers her ears as some whiny voice escaping from Janet’s stereo pleads for her to “Call me maybe.” She stares out the window at the passing cars and diminishing city lights, wondering at her inability to say no to the girls she was beginning to consider her friends. Maybe they are right. Maybe she does need to get out more, but what do they know about what she needs in life? Why on earth is Janet insisting that she “hook up” with Justin?
She and Justin had gotten to know each other fairly well after the band finished their set, but that didn’t mean Elizabeth was looking for a relationship. She especially wasn’t looking for a relationship with a man who was leaving in the morning for another city and who was eventually returning to Ireland. She had honestly just been interested in learning how a rock band from Ireland ended up touring across the East Coast.
Somehow, he never answered the question, but she remembers how his eyes lit up as they discussed favorite directors and authors. Elizabeth would have never thought a rock and rolling guitarist would know so much about Shakespeare, Yeats, Christopher Nolan, and Helena Bonham Carter. He is very talented and well-read; Elizabeth has never heard anyone call T.S. Eliot a “pretentious twat” while singing his praises.
“Elizabeth, girl, why are you so quiet?” Janet asks.
“I don’t know this song, Janet. You know I don’t really listen to this genre. Besides, why would I want to ‘call her maybe’?”
“But it’s such a fun song, just give the music a chance. Also, you guys are going to get in the lake, right?”
Addie and Katie’s blonde heads perk up, and they turn around with wide eyes.
“You mean we’re going to get in, like in in?”
“Addie, why would we go to the lake and not get in?”
“You mean, like, skinny-dipping?” Katie asks excitedly.
“Oh no. No no no, take me back now, I’m not getting in that lake; no one is seeing me naked.”
“Calm down, Elizabeth, you can keep your clothes on and still get in.”
“But Janet, I’m wearing white.”
Elizabeth groaned and let her head rest on the window. This did not sound like fun anymore. Oh, why didn’t she stay at the dorm and do homework like she wanted in the first place? She turns her head to look at the passing cars and the blurred lights of the highway.
As if the conversation had not taken place, Janet turns up the radio and flips her hair, singing something about “You don’t know you’re beautiful.”
“Janet, this song makes less and less sense the more I think about it. If the girl in the song is beautiful because she is unaware of her beauty, then isn’t the fact that they are singing to her and making her aware of her beauty contradictive?”
“Elizabeth, you’re doing it again.”
The Mustang speeds toward exit 4 and turns left on Bells Ferry, slowing down once the cement roads turns to dirt.
“You guys should know my parents are out of town, so no worries about being loud or anything. There are drinks in the fridge, if y’all want. Oh and towels - I’ve got lots of towels in the house for the ride back.”
Janet eases the car down the dirt drive and signals for the band’s van to follow her slowly. The dirt crunches under the wheels, and the cars stop at the end of the drive, the front wheels sinking a little into the smooth sand. The headlights turn off, but they’re not needed; the full moon and its bright reflection in the lake illuminate the night.
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