“I’ll race you!” I yell as I sprint out of the bar into the crisp night air, half-empty beer bottle in hand.

“Oh, we’ll see about that,” Myra calls back, taking one last swig from her vodka soda, slapping a ten on the counter, and following me. “You forget, darling, that I’m on the track team!”

“Well, we’ll see how fast you can go while tipsy.” 

Myra launches herself in an elaborate spin over the hood of my aunt’s old sky-blue Corolla. “I drive.”

After shakily pulling out of the parking lot, Myra enters Highway 1 and, pushing seventy-five, nearly bowls the car over with the sharp turns. Around five minutes later, she exits forcefully, flipping off a truck that cuts her off at the intersection. For some reason, we can’t stop giggling.

“What time is it?” She has to raise her voice over the low, throaty growl of the standing engine.

I squint at the digital numbers on the dashboard, which begin to blur and rearrange themselves before I blink again, and I see that it’s two sixteen in the morning.

“Let’s just say past midnight.” I let out a small laugh again.

“Holy shit! Mom’s gonna kill us!”

“But...but we’re already...dead,” I say slowly, letting the words roll around in my mouth. “From all those times before!” It’s all so irresistibly funny for some strange reason.

We pull into her driveway. The light in the living room is on. Myra presses the gas, then brakes really hard and we’re nearly flipped out of our seats. She shuts off the engine, yanks the key out, and we scramble out of the car right before the front door opens.

“Hi, Mom,” Myra says timidly, and her mother walks towards us, her arms crossed. Her thick gray-streaked black hair is tied up on top of her head and she looks expectantly at us with stern brown eyes as if to say, I’d like an explanation, please.

“Um…we just came out to, uh…get something from the car,” I say to break the uneasy silence, even though I know she won’t believe us since the car is making that funny ticking noise it always makes when you’ve been driving it and we both smell like alcohol.

“Well,” she says suddenly after a few moments of silence. Her Filipino accent is invading her words, lilting their pronunciation a little.