cvii

“Remember what Bilbo used to say: ‘It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.’”

-John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, from the mouth of F. Baggins

            I am driving around in the leather backseat of a new friend’s pick-up truck, driving on the midnight road in a slow circle of repetition, of a constant search for just something better than what we are doing right now. We do this for hours, stopping only for short pit stops at parties or dancehalls or houses that we think will be better than what we are doing right now.

            It is only later that night, lying in my bed as the sun comes up, unable to close my eyes on the truck and the costumes and the adrenaline, that I realize that we could have just pulled over on the side of the quiet highway, carefully piled out onto the light-glistened street, and had the best night of our lives.