Standing on the overpass that night, watching the occasional car speed along the two-lane country highway below us, we felt infinite. Larger than life. Just three kids in our Sunday best with rolled up sleeves and loosened ties, illuminated by nothing but the pale glow of the full summer moon.
We never wanted that night to end. We wanted it to last forever. But tomorrow would bring big changes for us all, and we knew it. After years of talk of leaving this town, it was finally going to happen. Tomorrow Kyle would move off to a university, tearing our life-long trio apart. Of course there would still be John and I, but we both knew things would never be the same.
John set another empty beer bottle on the bumper of my car. He was starting to feel a bit tipsy. We all were. We hoped the alcohol would soften the pain of change.
None of us spoke, but we were all thinking the same thing. We were afraid. Afraid of change. Afraid of growing up. We didn’t want things to change. We didn’t want that summer to end. We wanted to stay young forever, living without the responsibilities of adults, but still having the independence to party every night and drink until we passed out.
But that night did end, as we knew it would. Kyle went to school and moved on to bigger and better things than us and our town and those nights spent drinking and talking of dreams, hopes, and whatever else came up on that overpass. I hear he’s married and has a kid now.
Eventually I stopped hearing from John, too. I found him passed out on the overpass, surrounded by broken glass. I took him back to his home, then learned he had died of alcohol poisoning that night. I wrote Kyle about it but never heard back. He wasn’t even at the funeral.
I wish I could relive that summer where the three of us stood so tall and strong against the world, walking through the streets like owned the town, staying awake for days on end and drinking ourselves to sleep and waking to a nasty hangover. We knew everyone and everyone knew us. That summer was the climax of our lives.
I still pass by that overpass occasionally, and I still see the three of us standing there together, ready to face the world, side by side.
Traverse
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