once upon a time there was a girl. some said she was cute. some didn't say anything at all. she said that she was dramatic and narcissistic but she thought, secretly, that sometimes those qualities were endearing. so there was this girl. and then there was this place. this place wasn't very cute. at the best it was bearable. it was full of greasy smells, wire boundaries   and people who didn’t smile or even meet her eyes. but it had the beach. and that made it livable. but this girl was going to leave as soon as she could.

this girl packed her white Honda accord with a typewriter, a beanie, 3 tape mixes, and a lifetime supply of chai tea bags; adjusted her mirrors and set off for cities that she hoped would bring surprises like flowers growing in the cracks of cement, hidden statues, good acoustics, and air that smells more like good Indian food than smog.

this girl knew that the only way to go on a car trip was to a) see a lot of sunrises, b) get a lot of phone numbers, c) collect everything for her journal, and d) buy as much fruit   from roadside stands as she could handle. 

she also kept a notebook about all the characters she met on the way. there was one boy who asked for a clove and talked about how they were made of stardust. she remembered how the streetlamp reflected off of his hair and thought it was more than likely. she liked the way the light filtered through the smoke, but didn't like how it hurt to sing along as she drove down the dusty highways after she'd smoked. Stardust gave her his phone number, a ring made of pine, and a bag full of avocados. she stared at him with big eyes under her beanie and wondered if it was a good idea to leave.

That night she got her type writer out and sat with her fingertips resting on the cold metal for an hour. She felt like she was sitting in the top of a redwood tree. older than the hills, and more precarious. she looked up and saw stars, and wondered if that meant her and Stardust were the same inside. if that had been a pickup line, she liked it. she never did much typing. the keys warmed beneath her fingers and she could see figures taking shape in her white breath.

she stayed awake all night. the avocado's slowly ripened in the bag, the earth rotated beneath her, and her car started getting restless for the open road. after the last star had disappeared in the morning sky she decided. she would go. she had philosophies on this trip, remember? she was going to get somewhere. do some things. getting attached enough to a person to exchange tape mixes and vegan recipes was not in the cards. not even in the stars.

but when she buckled her typewriter into the passenger seat, it seemed so heavy. she didn't heave a sigh though, when she drove away. she didn't even breathe. the steering wheel was cold, but the tires seemed to make an extra effort to make the road smooth. that night she smoked a clove while she drove down a freeway, choking with traffic and smoke. her stomach ached and she thought maybe she'd eaten too many of the peaches she'd picked up that morning. she stopped at a gas station to wash her face and get a grip. to smell the smells of the real world and maybe buy some junk food. her body felt like the thin crinkly Ruffles Potato Chips bag, all grease, and tear-able. her lips were chapped like burnt marsh-mellows and she hadn't been able to dream lately.

she suddenly missed where she'd come from. with it's beauty and poison; sunsets, beautiful people only scarred on the inside from their surgery, oleanders. the way all the rivers came encased in cement. she missed graffiti. she met an old man eating peanut butter and jelly on crackers and he told her that the secret to happiness was in bottled water. "eternal youth" he told her. "the people here drink more bottled water than anywhere else. they think it'll make them young again." she had given the man some peaches and left. she thought that if they were made of stardust then people shouldn't worry about getting old. stars are the oldest things, right? and they still know how to wish.

she realized she was thinking about that again, and tried to stop. but her tapes were getting old. and there wasn't much   to keep her mind off of the fact that she had no idea if she wanted to go forward anymore. even her car seemed like it was getting tired. she felt old suddenly. not old-wise, but old-achey. the road just never stopped. she didn't believe in the pot of gold at the end of
rainbows anymore either now. she had thrown out the last of the avocados away that day. they'd gone bad. that made her bones feel even more tired. like nothing would ever taste good again.

she made an illegal u-turn and went the other way. maybe it was the fact that she had just broken a law (even though she snuck into movies and jaywalked, she hated doing even the tiniest bit of lawbreaking.) or that she still had the ring made of pine on her finger, but everything glittered. there were clouds building up, more full than the trunk of her car, more rich than the creamiest chocolate cheesecake, and more inviting than the ocean. her fingers tapped the steering wheel and she speeded just a little bit going around the turns. suddenly she had xray vision and she could see Stardust's phone number from where it glowed through the pages of her journal. she turned off the tape and rolled down the windows and sang the lullabies her mother used to sing her to sleep by. she laughed out loud twice; once when there was an unexpected bump and she mistook it for flying for all of half a second, and once for no reason at all.

as she was flying (of course) down the freeways and highways and back ways of all these places she'd meandered through, going the opposite direction, she saw entirely different things this time. suddenly things weren't gray. people weren't cold. fruit wasn't rotten and she wasn't feeling restless. her typewriter smiled at the world from it's seat, and she was warm enough to take off her beanie. she stopped at a payphone and called the number that she'd tried not to memorize. he was there. he didn't seem at all surprised to hear that she was here too. he'd be there, he said, in a minute. the girl was happy, and also foolish. she slipped the ring off of her finger and into her pocket as she saw him walk towards her a few minutes later. she gave him a hug and he smelled like smoke and apples. she wondered if he thought she smelled good. he got in the car, with the typewriter on his lap and gave directions. she liked how he gave landmarks and a story to each one.

they passed the house where he used to have piano lessons till the woman got pregnant and moved away, the coffee shop where he'd had his first job, passed the shopping center that used to be the empty lot where he grew wildflowers and played soccer. when he laughed his eyes crinkled up and matched his the-blue-before-the-sky-turns-to-dusk shirt.

he told her to park next to a crazy tall house that looked like a breath of steam could blow it over, that it's wild colors would shatter and leave mosaics all over the ground. the ground was covered in sand, and as the girl got out of the car she smelled the air and realized that they must be near the beach. they left their shoes in the car and scrambled through the sand to the water. she ran to the waves and laughed with real delight as it splashed up past her knees. he sat on the sand and watched her as she splashed sea gulls and those little birds with long beaks that dig for crabs.

he rolled up his pants and got up to join her. he took her hand and put it on his shoulder. "we should dance" he said, and they did. she stumbled over her wet skirt, the waves and his feet and he kept her steady even on moving sand. just when   everything was perfect, like a short story or a postcard, he looked at her hand and frowned. "did it break?" he asked her, like her answer might make him break too.

she reached into her pocket and pulled the ring out. she thought about the ages of trees, how you count them by their rings and felt herself become ageless. he looked at her with a look that was one part wisdom, one part relief and one part plain cuteness. she looked around her and realized that she liked this place. Stardust hadn't let go of her hand. She thought forward again; to a place where they would eat avocado sandwiches in yellowgreen fields, tear up chunks of cement to plant flowers in the corners of parking lots, coach a kids soccer team, interpret each other's dreams, and type, sitting side by side, for hours. about how they felt as strong as redwoods, as old as the hills. as changing as the ocean and as beautiful as the stars.