Waltz of Her Life

When they had sung an album's worth of songs, Linda lost her musical train of thought.

She gazed at the road signs. "Navigator, navigator, I need your help. Where do we turn?"

Lauren shrugged. "Not till Louisville. It's quite a ways yet."

"And then what?"

"Then, we just stay on that all the way to Louisville. It's a piece of cake. Then in Louisville we catch I-71 and that takes us all the way to Cincinnati."

"Are you sure? I don't want to take a wrong turn and end up in Nashville or somewhere."

"It's easy! I've made the trip three times."

"Yeah? Were you driving?"

"No," Lauren replied.

"It's different when you're driving. You've gotta pay attention. Remember that party you said was 'just down the road' and we ended up in Podunk Missouri?"

Lauren shook her head again. "I wish I had some weed."

Linda laughed. "Like that's going to help. We'd end up in Chicago."

Lauren narrowed her eyes. "Hey, don't be ragging on my home town, farm girl."

"I'm not from the farm," Linda murmured. "How many times do I have to tell you?" She reached over to her glove box, flipped it open and checked inside for maps. All she could see was the registration and a pamphlet about the Illinois State Fair. When she glanced back at the gas gauge, she saw that the needle had dropped a hair below a quarter of a tank. It caused a twinge of regret. She could hear her father start to yell at her not to tempt fate.

They stopped for gasoline at a highway interchange in the middle of farmland. Linda felt glad that the rain had tapered off to a drizzle. "Okay. Let's fill her up," she said, opening her purse to get at her checkbook and wallet, for the twenty dollars she'd withdrawn from her bank that morning. "Want to contribute for the cause?"

Lauren poked around in her backpack and pulled out three dollars, grinning.

She handed them over to Linda gleefully, as if she'd been giving her a check for a thousand dollars.

Linda received the dollar bills, staring at them in disbelief as they wilted onto her palm. "That's it? That's all you've got?"

Lauren shrugged. "Hey, it's four gallons. It would get us all the way there, almost, right? Your car's a stick. It gets good gas mileage, right?"

"Not that good. What happened to that money you had last weekend? When you talked me into going on this little jaunt?"