You need a few things before you hop out the window.
Always bring a pair of rain boots. You never know when you’ll be traipsing through a gutter or frolicking in a muddy field, and it wouldn’t do to get your Maddens dirty. No, that wouldn’t do at all. Second, you need lighters. A few of them, as you will loose one tonight, inevitably. You need a flashlight, or a knife, something with some utility value. Lastly, you need about two bucks, for the renting of a video from the movie store around midnight, right before close.

The nights go on like this. Call around 10:30, say “Tim, come get me” and just like that, 10:45 and there is a grey Nissan, lights off, with the quiet hum of 101.1 leaking through the widows, waiting two houses down. Jump out your window, creep through your gate, sprint down the front lawn and hop in.

Breathlessly, “Hi Tim.”

With a grin, “Hey Mer.”

With mischief, “Let’s drive.”

101.1 blasting now, the sounds of Handel or Chopin, piano screaming down the high way, triple bass throbbing through the gut of an empty I-35.
He has fireworks tonight and you should go and light them, then run from the cops. Good thing you brought your rain boots, because the chase involves some gutter street running tonight, through moss and beer cans and white plastic bags, clogging the wet drainage ditches.

Thank god you brought your inhaler, because the sirens are right over head as you hide under the bridge on MacArthur, the on by the dentist office. Tomorrow maybe, tomorrow you’ll go climb something, but tonight is the chase, and that’s good too.

Tired, exhausted, laughing, you rent a movie..
American Dreams now, maybe Pocahontas or Clock Work Orange tomorrow. The pick isn’t significant, as the nights are endless. You have the world to yourself, you and Tim, Tim and Mer, the famously lame, famously platonic duo, out to claim the night in the name of Symphony, Cinema and A Lust for Companionship.

Enter the house, smelling like car litter and cheap beer, shoo off his cats and settle on the couch. Set your alarm for before sunrise. It wouldn’t do to wake up late. In the meantime, peal off your soiled socks and curl up. Remember, this is your home, not that microcosm of crazy you escape from every night, like a rat off the Titanic. Don’t think about your parents, or about the seven hours of slavery you attend to every day. School can wait, and three hours of sleep makes everything feel better anyways.

You’re here, your home and you’ve left Carrollton in the taillights, and at three am, as you loose consciousness, you realize that you’ll never leave, not really. You’ll always be here, even when you’re in Carrollton, or in college, or in hell. Part of you, the part that matters, won’t quite be given the chance to leave. This couch, this kid, that rush of a good night’s adventure, that’s what matters, ya know? That s why you put up with everything else. With the minutia, clogging the ditches with the trash and leaves, the graded paper and the to-do lists. Those couldn’t matter even if they tried. The competitions just too stiff. The nights are just too young. This is just too perfect.