My eyes strain to reach the end of that big open sky and as they start to hurt from all the looking I just rub my eyes and continue staring, watching it as it just keeps going and going and going. There is so much of it out above me that I can’t bear to look away, not for a minute, because its size and its power and its color just kind of overtake me and swallow my heart so I can think of nothing else. It’s a deep, deep, never-ending blue, littered with pieces of clouds and the trails of birds going south. Do I want to put the hood up? he asks me again because the air is cold and the wind is smarting against our faces just a little, but I shake my head no and throw it back and continue to watch the blue. It covers the world like a blanket or a sheet of paper, but I know that it’s just air, and to escape into it, all I have to do is reach.

So I reach, the wind coursing through my fingers as they cruise through the little bits of sky and I hold back a laugh because I am so happy. The joy jumps at me in my chest, like some bad case of the hiccups, but I don’t let it escape because it’s early and he doesn’t even want the roof open in the first place.

He asks me again to put the hood up, so I just drop my outstretched arms because I suppose that it’s a pretty good compromise for us. I know that I don’t really need to agree, not to him, but this is the seventh time at least and the whiskey on his breath is starting to smell a little dangerous. I glance behind me, looking for other cars on the road, but there are none. Nothing but barren streets stretch out behind and ahead, but he and I both know that it’s a good thing and that it’s only because it’s so early. One, two – it’ll be four, five hours at least before my parents wake up. Sit down he says to me and I do, turning around and dropping into the seat with a soft plunk and wondering what they’ll think when they finally do awake. Maybe they won’t even notice I’m gone. And maybe Mom will cry and Daddy will call the police and maybe he’ll be scared. Maybe they’ll both be scared.

Pulling the ribbon out of my hair, he glares at me, forsaking the road as he unties the bow that holds back my ponytail by grabbing just one end of it. I can feel it as it loosens and pulls away, weaving through the strands, and it gets pulled into the slipstream and just falls away, getting caught under the wheel a second before it drops onto the road. Put the hood up, he tells me for time number eight, and even though I want to argue I nod my head yes and close the top of the convertible.

I peer through the windshield.

I can hardly see the sky.