all 9 of us put our money together and bought a '78 silverado that had a ****** up transmission, loose timing belt, blown headgasket, all the works. i can't remember much from that night. i fell asleep in the tailgate in the lap of some guy who had a budweiser in one hand and a backwoods blunt in the other. he kept calling me "babygirl" and he'd chug another beer and yell "LET'S WRECK THIS *******!" i got it from my mama. the ability to fall asleep to the classic rock station and the sound of teenage boys livin' their dream.

2. i broke all of their hearts on day three because i was so hung up on the one who played baseball and never stopped asking questions. maybe too much. he was the only one i wanted to love with every centimeter of my soul. the funny thing is this: i never had him to begin with.

3. august was a weird month. i never wanted to do anything except lay face down on the grass while drinking whiskey straight from the bottle. we liked to tell pointless stories and talk **** about congress while watching the sun fall deep into the crevices of the olympic mountains. his girlfriend and i had something like a thursday night ritual of going fishing then coming to the house and grilling silvers while i chainsmoked and sang songs reminiscent of her hippie days. big kahuna and i spoke to each other in dialects, okie accents, chi-town street slang when i was burning on thursdays. the crash always happened on saturdays. they tried to keep me from drinking but i didn't know how to tell them that it wasn't the borderline alcoholism that was killing me - being around so much love ignited a fire in me that wasn't there when i had nobody. i was in love with the world, so in love that it became a kind of insanity.

*-z. vega