by Elia Winters
Fuck. Scarlett shook herself out of that train of thought right that minute. Whatever feelings she’d had for Megan in the past, they were an adolescent crush, and Megan never returned her affection. Whether it was because Megan was straight (likely) or not interested in Scarlett (also likely), nothing had come of it, and then they’d stopped talking after Scarlett didn’t follow Megan to college.
She winced at that memory. Way to throw a bucket of cold water on any latent arousal. Remembering that time of her life brought up so many feelings she had decided to bottle them away, so she didn’t have to deal with them. When Megan hadn’t addressed the elephant in the room at the start of this trip, Scarlett had decided to ignore it as well. Megan didn’t need to know she hadn’t gone to a fancy private college the way Scarlett had told her, back when the lie seemed like the only way to save face. Megan didn’t need to know Scarlett had done a few semesters at community college before dropping out, that she’d never finished any degree at all. She didn’t need Megan’s pity, and she didn’t need Megan’s forgiveness.
Well. Maybe just her forgiveness would be nice.
Scarlett looked over at the sleeping figure in the other bed. If she had an easy way to talk to Megan, they probably could have cleared all this up years ago. At first, it had been self-preservation; she was embarrassed, and Megan was smart and competent and thought all her friends were the same. It was far easier to make up an acceptance at a fancy private college across the state rather than admit that she’d flunked all her placement tests and deal with Megan’s pity...or worse, Megan’s insistence that she persevere on a hopeless path. By the time Scarlett decided to come clean, after almost a full year of avoiding Megan on school breaks and letting her believe the lie, Megan wouldn’t return her calls, and this wasn’t the sort of confession you left on a voicemail. So Scarlett had given up. Told herself that Megan had always been a bit holier-than-thou, that some friendships weren’t worth saving. And when Megan had reached out, over two years later, Scarlett had been too proud to return the texts. She was leaving Florida, anyway, getting the hell out for New York, and she didn’t need anyone’s pity.
Scarlett sighed. These weren’t good memories.
But they were on this road trip together, with a thousand miles left to go. Maybe it was time to make amends. Megan had stepped out of her comfort zone for this trip, and she had a whole scrapbook of dreams she wanted to fulfill. Maybe Scarlett could help.
Jeremy wasn’t in the lobby when Scarlett showed up there, and only a “We’ll Be Right Back” sign gave a vague hint of his someday return. She poked through the wooden display of brochures for places to add to their trip. About ten minutes later, and after a stop at the car, she returned to the motel room with their road maps and all the brochures that seemed relevant. Megan still slept on, and Scarlett began hatching a plan.
By the time Megan woke up, Scarlett had given up on the motel brochures and moved onto internet searches. She knew what detour she wanted to add, but was having trouble pinning down the specifics.
Megan blinked sleepy eyes over at Scarlett. “What are you doing?” she asked, voice a bit slurred.
“I’m checking our route.” Scarlett leaned back in her chair. “Making some shifts where we need them.”
Rubbing her eye with the heel of one hand, Megan looked even younger than usual. “Why do we need shifts?” Megan asked.
“Just a few amendments.” Scarlett waved Megan away. “I already showered. You can have the bathroom.”
After her shower, Megan walked down to the beach to get some more photographs, leaving Scarlett alone in the motel room. She’d thought about joining her, but she’d had enough of a beach in the cold with Tybee Island the previous day—had that really just been yesterday?—and was happy to make a few calls and put the finishing touches on the next leg of their trip. By the time Megan returned, she was much more cheerful, her cheeks windblown from the cold. She’d also brought breakfast sandwiches back with her, which made Scarlett just as cheerful. After they ate, Megan took time to place two photos into the “Myrtle Beach” page of her scrapbook, pure satisfaction on her face. “Okay,” she announced at last, closing the scrapbook. “I’m ready to go.”
That enthusiasm waned once Megan got into the driver’s seat and saw the GPS Scarlett had already programmed. “What is this stop that’s six hours away? Where are we going?”
“Our first surprise stop.” Scarlett couldn’t hold back the beaming smile she gave Megan. “Let’s go!”
Megan was still frowning as she followed the GPS out onto the highway. “I don’t like surprises.”
“Of course you do.” Scarlett could remember plenty of surprises she’d thrown for Megan. “When we were younger, I surprised you all the time.”
Megan sighed. “I didn’t like them then, either.”
“What?” Scarlett shifted in her seat. “Not even when I bought you tickets for things? All those concerts and movies?”
Megan squirmed in her seat, both hands wrapped around the steering wheel. “I liked going to all those shows. I loved that. But I hated not knowing where we were going or what we were doing. I didn’t have any chance to get excited ahead of time. I would rather you just have told me.”
Embarrassment burned Scarlett’s face, followed immediately by defensiveness. “Well, I’d rather you had just told me that you didn’t like it. I always tried to surprise you because I thought you liked surprises.”
“I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.” Megan glanced over, just a quick moment of taking her eyes off the road, but her expression looked set and irritated. “I thought you might have figured it out when I never surprised you back.”
Scarlett had always just assumed Megan didn’t know how to plan a good surprise. “You should have told me.”
Megan snorted. “And you should have told me you didn’t want to go to college with me.”
There it was. The silence fell hard between them, like a heavy weight settling into the car, the unsaid thing finally said. The longer Scarlett let this go on, the more painful it was going to be to reveal it. Megan already was mad at her, but Scarlett didn’t want her pity as well.
But she’d been lying for a long time, and they had a lot of miles ahead of them in this car.
“It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go to college with you.” Scarlett forced the words out.
Megan didn’t respond, but she’d gone back to driving with both hands on the wheel, her eyes set straight ahead.
“I flunked my placement tests, okay?” Scarlett stared out her side window at the trees flashing past, anything to keep from having to look at Megan. “My whole first year would have been remedial everything.”
Silence again. This time, Scarlett had to look. She turned slowly, just enough that she could see Megan out of her peripheral vision. Megan was still staring straight ahead, but her frown looked more confused than angry. Scarlett seized onto that. She’d started this, so she might as well go all the way.
“I wasn’t gonna pass, Megan. So I said no and went to PHCC.” Pasco-Hernando Community College had seemed like a better option than failing at the University of Southern Florida. “I figured if I failed, at least it was cheaper.”
Silence. She’d hoped Megan would start looking less angry, but Megan still looked irritated and confused and...hurt? The hurt was unexpected.
“I don’t see why you didn’t just tell me,” Megan said quietly into the empty space. “I thought I was your best friend.”
“And have you know how dumb I was? No thank you.” Scarlett snorted.
“You lied to me. You told me you were going off to a fancy private school and made me think I wasn’t good enough for you.”
“I didn’t want you knowing I was a fuck-up.”
“You get test anxiety. You’ve always gotten test anxiety. Did you even tell them?” Me
gan looked over. If possible, she seemed even more angry. “Did you tell them at USF? Or at PHCC? Did you even tell them about your 504 plan?”
Scarlett had had a 504 plan in high school, where they’d run a bunch of tests on her and identified her test anxiety as a medical issue that warranted some special accommodations. But she wasn’t going to take that sort of thing to college with her. “Colleges don’t care about that stuff.” She folded her hands in her lap. “And anyway, none of it matters.”
“None of it matters?” Megan practically exploded. She was looking over at Scarlett more than at the road, now, glancing back and forth like a windshield wiper. “Of course it matters! I thought you left me. I thought you didn’t care about me anymore, and you let me think that about you! How could you let me think that? How could you go all that time and never tell me?”
“I was embarrassed, okay? I didn’t want you to pity me.” Scarlett folded her arms. She’d thought Megan would pity her now, and somehow Megan was even more angry. “And then I tried to reach out to you and you wouldn’t return my messages.”
“Because I was mad! And then when I got over it and tried to make amends, you ignored me.” Megan glared at her. “I left messages.”
Scarlett fiddled with the direction of the air vent, wiggling it back and forth, not wanting to look at Megan again. “I was mad you’d ignored me.”
Megan let out a long, exasperated sigh. “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you let our friendship end because of your stupid pride.” Megan grabbed a half-eaten granola bar out of the center console and shoved it in her mouth. Something about that struck Scarlett as so funny, she had to struggle to repress a laugh. Maybe it was some kind of hysterical giggle, something from the tension of holding these secrets in for so long and then letting them go. Megan talked through a mouthful of food, the first few words indecipherable, and then swallowed so Scarlett could hear the rest. “—no reason to be ashamed of going to a community college. Lots of kids do that. I would have understood. We could have been friends.”
“I dropped out of that, too.” That part was important, even if she didn’t want to say it. “I didn’t even make it through the last semester.”
“I would have been your friend, Scarlett.” Megan crumpled up the wrapper of the granola bar and tossed it back over her shoulder into the backseat, a complete departure from the way she normally treated the trash in her car, which had its own portable trash can. “I would have stayed your friend. Fuck you.”
There wasn’t much to respond to that. Scarlett laced her fingers together, relieved and upset at the same time, and weirdly overcome by humor. “We’re going to the Blue Ridge Mountains,” Scarlett said. “I wanted you to see snow.”
That made Megan go silent, her mouth falling open in a small O. Taking the advantage, Scarlett pressed on. “I know you’ve never seen snow before. And one of those scrapbook pages had snow on it. So I thought, maybe you could see some.”
“It seems really far out of our way,” Megan said, frowning. “Are you sure we have enough time? I could always see snow once we get up north.”
“The Blue Ridge Mountains are gorgeous, even in the winter, and you should get to see them.” Scarlett folded her arms. “Just let me show you something pretty, okay? I thought it would be nice.”
Megan stared at the GPS, then at the road, silent for an endless few moments. “It...does sound nice. You’re sure we have enough time?”
“We have enough time. I promise.”
Megan nodded, relaxing a bit. Maybe some fences were mending.
Not that Scarlett was going to ask about those fences, though. If her confession about flunking out of college didn’t earn Megan’s sympathy, she didn’t have a plan B except to be nice and hope they had a pleasant or at least tolerable trip.
She’d have thought, though, that Megan would have more comments or questions about their next stop. It took almost an hour of driving, with Megan quietly humming along to the CDs she had made, before the topic came up again.
“Where are we staying?” Megan asked.
“It’s nothing special, just a motel near one of the mountains. I haven’t stayed there, but the reviews online were good.
“But you’ve been to the area?”
“Once, when I was a kid. It was a time-share freebie, where you have to listen to their pitch, but I just remember how pretty it was.” Scarlett smiled at the memory of snow falling outside the windows. “It was the first place I ever saw snow, myself.”
Megan was doing that weird thing where she stared at Scarlett again, like she wanted to say something but didn’t know how. At least when she was talking, Scarlett could respond. Eventually, she couldn’t take it. “What? You keep looking at me like a creeper. Look at the road.”
“I’m confused as to why you’d do this for me.”
Scarlett rolled her eyes. “I saw snow in your scrapbook and I wanted to take you some place that you might like, and this is an area I know at least a little about. So I figured out the logistics, did some googling, fit this into the schedule.”
“We’re not going to get there until late.” Megan frowned at the clock.
“Not until dusk, no. But it’ll still be pretty.”
Megan considered. “Are you sure we have enough time to get to Canada? We’re still in North Carolina.”
“We have plenty of time, you know. We’re not going to miss the wedding.” Scarlett had done the math. “Would you just trust me for once?”
Megan didn’t say what Scarlett feared she’d say, about the broken trust in her past. Instead, she just nodded. “All right. It sounds pretty.”
Scarlett smiled.
“Hand me a new CD, will you?” Megan waved vaguely at Scarlett. “Something kick-ass.”
Scarlett leafed through the pages of the CD case. “Leather Jacket Life?” She laughed. “Do you even own a leather jacket?”
“Just put the CD in.”
As soon as she did, Pat Benatar came through the speakers. Within only a few measures, Megan’s loud, clear voice rang out through the car, joining in. Scarlett stared.
Megan caught her eye and stopped singing. “What?”
Scarlett hadn’t heard Megan sing...what, since high school chorus? Maybe a solo or two, but nothing noteworthy. “When did you learn to sing like that?”
Megan’s freckled face flushed. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You’re a good singer! You could be on the radio.”
“Shut up. Stop making fun of me.” Megan was already curling back into herself like an under-watered plant, scrunching down to end up nearly level with the steering wheel.
“Come on.” False modesty wasn’t Megan’s style, and Scarlett knew it. “You know you’re a good singer.”
Megan sighed. “Yeah. I know I’m a good singer. I just don’t do it around other people a lot.”
Interesting. “Forget I said anything. I didn’t compliment you. Whatever. You’re a mediocre singer.” Scarlett tried to stifle her grin as she lied, badly and with terrible acting.
Megan laughed. It was just one quick bark of laughter, but she relaxed as well. And when the chorus came on again, she started to sing. Scarlett joined in so she wouldn’t feel weird, even though staying on key was not her strong suit.
They sang through the next song as well, a Cyndi Lauper hit, and by the time it ended, Megan had fully relaxed. She let her head loll back against the headrest, a lazy smile on her face. She looked like...
She looked like she’d just been fucked. The thought flashed into Scarlett’s mind before she could help it, a sudden image of Megan giving that same lazy, self-satisfied expression when stretched out on a bed, and she nearly choked. She covered the surprise and embarrassment by coughing and then drinking some water. If Megan noticed anything, she didn’t comment.
Best to change the subject. “Did
you ever think about becoming a singer?”
Megan shook her head right away. “Nah.”
“Because you don’t think you’re good enough?”
Megan hesitated, a flicker of tongue brushing over her lips. “I don’t know. Success isn’t always about how good you are. Even if I was good enough, and I don’t know if I am, it’s way too stressful to do it for a living.”
The fact that Megan had a thoughtful answer, and didn’t just dismiss the idea outright, surprised Scarlett. “What part’s stressful? Being up onstage?”
“No. That part’s kind of nice.” Megan smiled, a tiny sliver of embarrassed pleasure on her face. “I don’t usually do anything where people clap afterward.” She twisted her fingers on the steering wheel. “But the music industry is a lot of luck. At least the performing part. I wouldn’t want to get involved with that end of things.”
Scarlett glanced across the center console. “So what end of things would you want to get involved in?”
The song ended, and Megan turned the music off. “It’s not important.”
“I asked because I want to know.” Scarlett didn’t mean to sound irritated, but it came out that way, and she softened her tone. “I’m not gonna make fun of you.”
Megan hesitated. “I’ve always wanted—” She paused, then seemed to steel herself to continue. “I’ve always wanted to have a radio station. Or a podcast or something. Or work as a DJ. I want to be on the radio sharing everything I love about music, curating playlists, living in the music.” She got more animated as she spoke, moving her hands before she pulled them back, as if realizing she was getting too excited. “I—love music.”
Megan visibly waited for her reply, hands quiet on the steering wheel once more. Maybe she still cared about what Scarlett thought, no matter what she said. “You could do it.” Scarlett gestured lightly, a quick hand wave to sweep the impossibilities away. “It wouldn’t be that hard to get a podcast started. And if you wanted to be a DJ, there’s always the local radio station, or maybe you could go somewhere closer to Tampa or Orlando if you wanted more options—”