Marcus looked in the rearview mirror, his smirk widening as the school vanished behind a cloud of blue exhaust.
"Alright guys, what's next? Where do we wanna go first for senior skip day?"
Suddenly, the car went dead silent. The heavy, existential realization hit the vehicle like a brick: we had spent a week planning the escape, but absolutely zero seconds planning the actual day.
Marcus groaned, slamming his hand on the steering wheel.
"Come on, guys! Don't tell me we haven't thought this through... we don't wanna waste the day! We gotta do something rebellious!"
I didn't say a word. I just slowly crossed my legs, reached deep into my backpack, and pulled out six identical pairs of cheap, plastic, pitch-black aviator sunglasses I had acquired under questionable circumstances. Without looking back, I passed them out to the crew.
Everyone let out a low laugh, the tension instantly evaporating as the glasses clicked onto their faces. I pushed my own sunglasses up the bridge of my nose, leaned my seat back, and threw my converse sneakers right onto the dashboard, completely nonchalant.
Suddenly, the vibe in the station wagon transformed. We went from a panic-stricken herd of nerds to an elite, unhinged cartel of suburban rebels. Marcus reached over, cranked the volume knob on the radio, and the iconic, soaring synth intro of Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" blasted through the blown-out speakers.
In perfect unison, all five of our heads began to slow-nod to the beat. Cool. Calculated. Ridiculous.
Brad leaned back against the fiberglass pirate head, crossing his arms over his chest like a budget action hero. Tiffany tilted her chin up, looking out the window like she was starring in a high-fashion commercial for delinquents. Artie even stopped wheezing, adjusting his collar with a terrifyingly smug look of academic superiority.
"First stop," I said, my voice dropping into a low, gravelly, tough-guy monotone over the music. "We are going to buy alcohol."
"Yeahhh," Marcus murmured, his voice equally low and tough. He rubbed his hands together over the steering wheel, a devious smirk cutting across his face. "Hehe. Excellent."
"The ultimate morning refreshment," Brad grunted from the back, his head still rhythmically nodding to the heavy synth bassline. "Packed with dopamine and complete defiance of the first-period attendance roster."
"I want a cherry-lime margarita!" Tiffany demanded, not even lowering her compact mirror as she adjusted her dark lenses. "And if it isn't freshly squeezed, this entire rebellion is a failure. I didn't risk an administrative detention for concentrate."
Artie leaned forward, his sunglasses slightly lopsided on his nose as he tapped his legal pad.
"Technically, an influx of natural fructose and low amounts of alcohol at this hour will spike our blood sugar and stimulate us, giving us the necessary stamina to sustain a full twelve hours of truancy. Strategically, Sam, it's a flawless opening gambit."
Mal stares intensely at her reflection in the dark lenses of her glasses, a creepy, knowing smile playing on her lips.
"The juice of the forbidden fruit. I can already taste the sweet decay of our academic standing."
"Alright, cool guys," Marcus slicked his mini-fro hair back with one hand while gripping the wheel with the other, completely leaning into the low-budget movie aesthetic. "We hit the grocery store. We walk into the alcohol aisle like we own the place. Nobody blink. We need to look like we’ve done this before."
"Just drive, Marcus," I sighed, tapping my fingers on the dashboard in time with the song. "Before the beat drops and we're still idling at a red light next to a crossing guard."
"Wait a minute, guys," Artie suddenly squeaked, his voice cutting through the thick layer of cool we had just established. He pulled his sunglasses down to the tip of his nose, looking panicked. "We can't just walk in there and demand high-end, alcoholic beverages. We need IDs! The grocery store clerks in this town are ruthless, corporate mercenaries. They check birthdates for everything, even high-fructose corn syrup! Not just alcohol!"
Marcus didn't even look back. He just smirked, reached into his leather jacket, and pulled out a thick stack of laminated plastic cards. He tossed them over his shoulder like a casino dealer.
"Please, Artie. I've had this covered since sophomore year," Marcus said. "I ran these through a high-end thermal printer. As far as the state is concerned, we are all officially twenty-five years old."
Brad snatched them out of the air, his jaw dropping.
"No way! Brother, these look hella real! Look at this holographic seal! According to this, I am a twenty-five-year-old forklift operator named 'Brock.'"
"I'm a twenty-five-year-old aesthetician from Vermont," Tiffany murmured, inspecting her card with genuine respect. "The lighting in this photo is actually doing wonders for my cheekbones. Marcus, you're a criminal artist."
With our new identities officially securing our adulthood, Marcus cranked the radio volume up to the absolute max. The speakers literally rattled the rust on the doors as the second verse kicked in:
It's my own design It's my own remorse Help me to decide Help me make the most of freedom. Nothing ever lasts forever. Everybody wants to rule the world.
Brad, completely swept up in the cinematic euphoria of being a twenty-five-year-old forklift operator, pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his letterman jacket. He popped one between his lips, still perfectly nodding his head to the heavy synth bassline. With a low, mischievous cackle, he handed them out to the rest of us in the car.
"Yeahhh, haha," Marcus chuckled, taking one and slipping it behind his ear like a seasoned grease monkey.
I actually don’t regret this. This is great!
Brad went down the line, flicking a chrome Zippo lighter with a satisfying clack. He lit Marcus’s, then Tiffany’s, then mine, and finally Mal’s, who accepted the flame with a look of pure, chaotic satisfaction. We all sat there, completely enveloped in a thick cloud of rebellion, synchronized-bopping our heads like an elite cartel of absolute idiots with cheap plastic sunglasses. Tough. Cool. Nonchalant.
The music soared to the bridge:
There's a room where the light won't find you Holding hands while the walls come tumbling down When they do, I'll be right behind you…
I leaned my head back against the headrest, took a slow drag, and casually blew a perfect plume of smoke toward the cracked windshield, a deeply cynical smirk plastered across my face.
We were unstoppable. We were twenty-five for today. We were the masters of our own destiny.
So glad we've almost made it So sad they had to fade it Everybody wants to rule the world…
The song finally hit the legendary, soaring guitar instrumental break. The vibe was immaculate.
Then Artie took a drag.
The entire cinematic illusion shattered into a million pieces. Artie didn't just cough; he unleashed a violent, catastrophic, full-body convulsion that sounded like a blender trying to process a leather boot. His sunglasses flew right off his face, landing directly in Tiffany's lap, as he hacked frantically, his face instantly turning the color of a ripe eggplant.
"Oh, fuck! I forgot about that!" Tiffany shrieked, instantly abandoning her high-fashion pose and frantically swatting the smoke away from her face. "Get the windows down! The nerd is imploding again! I cannot handle a secondhand asthma attack at twenty-five!"
The station wagon was a swirling vortex of complete, unhinged disaster.
The Tears for Fears guitar solo was still shredding through the blown-out speakers as Artie let out another earth-shattering hack. The sheer kinetic force of his lungs propelled his cheap plastic aviators straight across the cabin like a heat-seeking missile.
WHACK.
The glasses struck Marcus dead in the temple with the uncanny precision of a sniper bullet. Marcus’s eyes immediately rolled back into his head, and he collapsed face-forward onto the steering wheel, his forehead planting squarely onto the horn button with a dull, heavy thud.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONK.
"OH! IS HE DEAD?!" Tiffany shrieked, clutching her face as her neon shopping bags spilled all over the floor. "OH MY GOD! ARTIE, YOU KILLED HIM! YOU LITERALLY BIOLOGICALLY ASSASSINATED OUR DRIVER!"
Artie frantically jammed his inhaler into his mouth, took a massive rattle-gasp of medicine, and squeaked,
"No I didn't! That is structurally impossible! Plastic frames do not possess the necessary mass to cause fatal cranial trauma!"
"Man, Why the hell would you do that, Artie?!" Brad roared, abandoning his cool posture and frantically trying to shield the fiberglass pirate head from the impending collision. "You just took out our pilot!"
"OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!" I panicked, my nonchalant attitude completely evaporating as my Converse sneakers slammed off the dashboard. The car was veering wildly across the yellow lines. I leaned over the center console, violently slapping Marcus across the face.
Smack! Smack!
"Marcus, wake up! Wake up, you idiot! Oh shit, he’s not waking up… Oh my god, Artie actually killed him!!!!!"
Suddenly, the windshield was entirely filled with the grill of a massive, fast-approaching semi-truck. The truck’s air horn blasted a deafening, apocalyptic roar.
HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONK.
Everyone in the car screamed at the top of their lungs. The sheer terror blew all of our sunglasses clean off our faces.
In a surge of pure, adrenaline-fueled survival instinct, I lunged across the seat, grabbed the trembling steering wheel, and yanked it violently to the right. The station wagon tires shrieked in agony as we narrowly swerved past the truck's massive tires, the vehicle spinning out into a wild, clockwise horizontal drift across the correct lane.
"WE'RE GONNA DIE! O-M-G!!!!" Tiffany screamed, her voice hitting a frequency that could melt glass. “We are drunk driving before even getting drunk!!!!”
Right on cue, the radio roared into the chorus:
I can't stand this indecision
Married with a lack of vision
Everybody wants to rule the—
Say that you'll never, never, never, never need it
One headline, why believe it?
Everybody wants to rule the world
Cars were honking, tires were smoking, and the station wagon was spinning like a broken carousel. Suddenly, Marcus’s eyes snapped open. He took one look at the spinning scenery and the dashboard flying past his face and let out an absolute blood-curdling screech.
"AHHHH!!!!! WHAT IS HAPPENING?!"
"Yo, he’s alive, guys!" Brad cheered, pumping his fist from the back row.
Through all the screaming, crying, and mechanical failure, Mal was sitting perfectly upright in the far back, a deeply creepy, serene smile plastered across her face. She folded her hands over her chest and whispered,
"Lord, take our souls. The underworld is ready."
I spin my head around, my white-knuckled hands still gripping the wheel for dear life as I steered through a 360-degree rotation.
"HEY, YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP!"
Mal just let out a dark, delighted cackle.
"Oh, hell nah, man!" Marcus yelled, finally realizing his hands weren't on the controls. He violently swatted my arms away from the wheel, grabbed it himself, smashed his foot onto the gas, and aggressively whipped the station wagon back into a straight line, pulling a wild, smoking maneuver right onto the nearest freeway exit ramp.
"Oh god!! We are gonna get caught by the cops, I bet!" Artie wailed, clutching his binder so hard the cardboard was snapping. "The highway patrol has helicopters! They track stolen, speeding, smoking vehicles from the sky!"
"No we aren't, man!" Brad shouted back, trying to restore the alpha-male confidence in the vehicle. "Marcus got this. Right, Marcus? Tell 'em you got this!"
Marcus glanced at the smoking dashboard, the completely shattered rear-view mirror, and the flashing hazard lights of three cars behind us.
"Fuck no, I don't!" Marcus shouted back, his voice cracking.
"Great! Wonderful! Flawless execution!" I yelled, completely irritated, violently kicking the dashboard. "We've been driving for four minutes, we almost died twice, the car smells like burnt hair, and our driver is actively giving up! Best skip day ever!"
The entire car descended into a chaotic, screaming match, everyone yelling over each other at the absolute top of their lungs while the radio played on, completely unbothered by our impending doom.
"Are you kidding me, Marcus?!" Tiffany screamed, throwing her wet wipes directly at his head. "You're the criminal mastermind who forged thirty-year-old IDs for a bunch of teenagers, and you can't even handle a simple exit ramp?! HURRY UP! EXIT! EXIT!"
"I was temporarily blind, Tiffany!" Marcus yelled back, ducking as a wet wipe hit his ear. "Artie’s weaponized eyewear literally gave me a concussion! I’m driving with half a brain cell right now!"
"That’s half a brain cell more than you usually have!" I shouted, bracing my hands against the ceiling as Marcus violently jerked the wheel to avoid a pothole that could have swallowed a horse. "We are driving a smoking kitchen appliance on a major interstate! If the cops don't pull us over, the Environmental Protection Agency will!"
"My chest cavity is collapsing!" Artie wailed, frantically shaking his inhaler like it was a defective spray paint can. "The stress is causing a histamine cascade! If a state trooper pulls us over, I’m telling them Marcus kidnapped me! I’m an innocent hostage of a delinquent forklift operator!"
"Shut up, ‘Brock’!" Brad roared,still trying to keep the massive fiberglass pirate head from crushing his legs. "We don't snitch! It’s in the code of the road! Marcus, hit the nitro! Burn the rubber! Let's get to the safe house!"
"This is a 1982 station wagon, Brad, not a rocket ship!" Marcus screamed, slamming his foot down on the gas pedal. The engine let out a sound like a wet fart inside a metal bucket, and the car aggressively accelerated from forty to a blistering forty-three miles per hour. "We don't have nitro! We barely have brakes!"
From the dark corner of the trunk, Mal let out a sharp, joyful hiss.
"The spirits are laughing at us. They say the local news coverage of our fiery demise will be highly rated. Tiffany, they’re going to use your freshman yearbook photo for the memorial broadcast."
"NO! NOT THE ONE WITH THE RETAINER!" Tiffany shrieked, genuinely horrified for the first time all morning. She lunged forward, grabbing the back of Marcus’s seat and shaking it. "Marcus, I swear to god, if I die and they use that photo, I will haunt your entire lineage! Drive faster! I’m not dying!"
"I can't!" Marcus yelled, the steering wheel violently shaking in his hands as the wagon rumbled down the off-ramp. "The transmission is melting! It’s either we pull into this gas station right now or we explode in front of a family-sized minivan!"
"Pull over! Pull over!" I yelled, hiding my face in my hands as the car screeched off the highway exit.
The smoke from the engine bay was slowly seeping through the dashboard vents, filling the cabin with the gourmet aroma of burnt transmission fluid and ancient, fried rodent nests.
Artie let out one final, dainty cough, adjusted his crooked glasses, and immediately pulled up a digital calculator on his watch.
"According to the thermal degradation of the radiator hose and the current atmospheric pressure, we have exactly four minutes before the latent heat causes a catastrophic failure of the cylinder head, resulting in a localized shrapnel event. Mathematically speaking, our survival coefficient is dropping exponentially."
Brad slowly turned his head from the back row, staring at Artie with a level of pure, unadulterated exhaustion that only a varsity athlete could muster. He reached into his pocket, pulled out another cigarette, and jammed it between his lips.
"Oh, my fucking gosh," Brad groaned, rolling his eyes back so far he practically looked into his own skull. "Nerd alert.”
"Everyone shut the fuck up!" Marcus snapped, slamming both hands against the steering wheel so hard the horn gave one last, pathetic little squeak. He wiped a streak of black grease and sweat from his forehead, staring out at the sketchy gas station pumps like a general contemplating a failed invasion. "I need to focus. My brain is literally vibrating from the concussion Artie’s face-missiles gave me, and I am trying to figure out how we get to the freeway without a transmission or a police escort."
The car fell into a tense, volatile silence.
Brad flicked his Zippo, lighting his cigarette with a practiced, cinematic flourish. He slid his pitch-black aviator sunglasses back over his eyes, exhaled a thick plume of gray smoke directly into the back of Tiffany’s head, and crossed his massive arms casually over his chest.
"Whatever you say, man," Brad said, his voice dropping back into that low, ridiculously tough, unbothered monotone. He gave a slow, nonchalant nod. "You're the boss."
"Stop blowing your white trash exhaust into my hair, Brock!" Tiffany hissed, frantically swatting the air while checking her roots in the rearview mirror.
"Bro, you’re white too!" Brad exclaimed, waving his glowing cigarette in her general direction. "We literally live in the same gated zip code!"
"OH MY GOSH! We are all fucking white!" I yelled, throwing my hands in the air and breaking the fourth wall so hard the glass shattered. "Every single high school main cast is aggressively Caucasian in these 80s comedies! Except for Marcus, though. Honestly, from a narrative standpoint, I don't even know why."
Marcus finally yanked the emergency brake, which let out a sound like a dying pterodactyl. He took off his dark sunglasses, turned completely around in his seat, and looked back at everyone, then turned to me with a brilliant, completely unbothered grin.
"Hey, every story needs a bit of flavor, Sam," Marcus said smoothly, tapping his chest. "We can't have everyone in the demographic pool be European, right? Diversity makes the truancy punchier."
Tiffany shrugged, processing this for a millisecond before nodding in shallow agreement.
"Honestly, true. It balances out the sheer amount of hairspray in this vehicle."
"Exactly," Marcus said, flashing a quick grin as he rested his wrists on the steering wheel. "Gotta keep the demographic interesting, or the studio executives will never approve the sequel."
"Valid point," Tiffany murmured, putting her compact mirror away and smoothing down her jacket. "Though if we're talking aesthetic balance, we really could have used someone with a better fashion sense to offset whatever it is Brad is wearing."
"Hey!" Brad protested, looking down at his sleeveless letterman jacket. "This is classic varsity style, babe. It screams peak performance."
Artie peeked over the front seat, his glasses sitting perfectly straight again.
"Now that the cultural critique of our ensemble cast is complete, can we focus on the literal reality that we are in a stationary vehicle with zero forward momentum? If the local authorities happen to pass by this specific coordinate, our fake credentials will be subjected to professional scrutiny."
Marcus sighed, leaning back against his headrest.
"He's right. The engine is totally kaput for at least the next twenty minutes. We need a tactical diversion."
"The convenience store," Mal whispered suddenly, pointing a long, pale finger toward the glowing neon signs of the gas station oasis. "They have processed snacks and sugary beverages. The spirits say our true destiny lies within the aisles of the corn syrup."
"For once, the goth makes sense," I said, unbuckling my seatbelt and opening the passenger door. "Let's go inside, act natural, and figure out how the hell we're getting out of this county. Anything but my freshman picture being used for a memorial.”
"Alright, let's go, guys," Marcus announced, slapping the dashboard as the last notes of Tears for Fears finally faded into static. "The engine is currently melting, the police are probably reviewing traffic cam footage, and we are officially fugitives. Let's go get snacks."