we are racing down the highway windows down as the sunset paints the world around us a hazy tint of orange, tinted with pink as if we are looking through rose-colored glasses, la vie en rose. you are playing something on the radio, and i feel the sound waves reverberating through my body. summer heat sticks to my skin and releases as salty dewdrops. you’re driving a toyota camry—not the kind of car that fits into the image in my mind of those coming-of-age films where the main characters are flying down a highway and young and wild and free—but we manage to be those main characters anyway, or at least we try. somehow i look at the stereo and see that of all things, we are listening to jazz, which i deem completely abominable for this scene. play something else, i tell you, like 80s pop rock or 90s nostalgia hits but not jazz because jazz is sophisticated and elegant, but right now we are young and wild and free. in truth, i might’ve said something else, because i can’t hear anything except the breeze as it rushes by my ears and carves weightless paths through my hair. i press buttons, switching through radio stations until i find an 80s pop rock one and turn the volume up, my sweaty hands leaving sticky wetness on the knob. the sound hits me at once, like crashing into a wave of silence, and then we continue our journey as maybe-main characters, music blasting in my ears and you step on the gas and the credits roll.
Jennifer Chiu is a student from Memphis, TN. Her prose and poetry have been awarded by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, and can be found or is forthcoming in Rust + Moth, Blue Marble Review, and Heritage Review, among others. When she's not writing, she can be found admiring the sky or bullet journaling with one of her twenty-one 0.38mm black pens.