For the last stream, it was Valentine’s Day here in Japan, so we decided to have a love-filled stream.
For the exercise section, that meant dredging up memories from my past and writing about one of my worst dates ever. We’d done this before a few months ago, and it was a lot of fun; plus I still had plenty more bad dates to write about.
The chat voted between three choices, settling on “drug dealer surprise” as the story I’d write. It was a bit hard remembering all the details from high school, but I think I did a fairly good job:
It had been the perfect high school date. I’d taken Laura out to The Olive Garden and we’d gone to the mall next door to watch The Day After Tomorrow on the big screen. We’d even gotten seats toward the back of the theater, where there were fewer people, and we really got a chance to get deep into the development of the plot.
Afterward, there was only one thing left to do. We slowly made our way to my car in the parking garage, hands wrapped around each others’ waists, and checked the time. It was only 8:00, we still had an hour before Laura had to be home.
“Do you want to go hang out somewhere more… private?” she asked me. I looked around. The parking garage wasn’t exactly the most romantic of places, with its damp concrete walls, and there were loud, annoying groups of tweens constantly walking around.
“Sure,” I said. “Do you have anywhere in mind?”
She smiled, let go of my hand, and walked to the passenger seat of the car. “Maybe,” she said with a wink.
I got in and we drove away from the mall, back to town. It was dark out, and there were almost no other cars on the road. Laura directed me to drive in the direction back to her house. I was confused at first, thinking she just wanted to call it quits early, but then we passed by the all-boys’ Catholic high school nearby her home, and she told me to pull in.
I slowly drove through the pitch-black parking lot, around the main building, into the shadow of the road leading past the school. There was no one else there, not even so much as a street light. When I parked the car and shut off the engine, the headlights went off and we immediately blended into the blackness.
Giggling, Laura and I fumbled our way into the backseat and started kissing. It was the perfect location. Dark and hidden away enough that no one would ever notice us, and close enough to her home that we could spend as much time as we wanted together and still get her back before her parents hated me. Too much, anyway.
But then, after about five minutes of bliss, a light appeared in the parking lot. It was the headlights of two other cars, pulling into our secluded darkness. Laura and I froze, but they didn’t appear to notice us. The cars pulled into empty spots a hundred feet behind us and parked. For a second, I thought maybe they were cars filled with other couples, looking to do what we were doing. Until the people inside got out. There were three older men, at least college age, who stepped out and bumped fists with each other. They popped open the trunk of one of the cars and started talking.
There was only one other reason besides making out that anyone would come to a school parking lot in a car at night, and Laura and I immediately knew we didn’t want to be anywhere around it.
“We need to leave, now,” she said in a stern whisper.
“I know,” I whispered back. “But maybe we should wait it out?”
“Hell no!” Laura said. “If they get caught by the police and we’re here… oh my god, I don’t even want to think about what my parents will do.”
“Okay, okay,” I said, full of adrenaline and stupidity. “Let’s get back in front and get out of here.”
We both climbed back into the front seat, adjusted ourselves, and I checked the rearview mirror. Behind us was still the three men and their two cars, chatting it up and not looking like they were in any hurry to leave. I looked over at Laura, and she thrust out her head expectantly with wide eyes, pointing to the ignition. I turned the key.
Immediately the lights flashed back on, and all three of the men’s heads turned toward me, suddenly noticing our presence. Laura screeched at me to shut them off, so I did, returning us to blackness all around except for the lights of the other two cars. I did my best to reverse the car in the darkness and start driving away.
But behind me, in the sideview mirror, I saw the men get back in their cars and pull out, following right behind us.
I was way too scared to turn on the headlights, or basically do anything besides just drive straight out of the school parking lot and back onto the main road. As I merged with the meager traffic, cars beeped at me for not having my lights on, and the two cars pulled out right behind us, nearly getting in accidents, causing even more frantic beeping. The two cars were right on our tail.
Laura was freaking out in the seat beside me, but I couldn’t hear her over the pounding in my brain as I tried to stay focused on the road. I just drove straight, hoping and hoping with every mile or so that I’d look back and our chasers would be gone. But they weren’t. They followed our every turn, all the way back to Laura’s house.
I pulled into her driveway, and for a second thought I’d made a huge mistake. If they pulled in behind me, not only would they block us in and surround us, but Laura’s parents could peek out and see them and then we’d never be allowed to go out again. Fearfully, I looked in my rearview mirror.
The two cars slowly drove past the driveway, the passengers in each glaring at me as they did so. It felt like an eternity for them to just drive the ten foot length of the driveway, but once they did, they kept going, and going, eventually turning down another road and disappearing.
Laura and I waited for a minute. Then another minute. The only sound was Laura failing at holding back tears and sniveling.
“I t-think I’m g-going to go inside now,” she said, sucking up a bunch of snot.
“Yeah, that’s a probably a good idea,” I said. Before I could say anything else or offer to walk her, she threw open the car door and stepped out, then jogged to the safety of her house. I rolled down the window and leaned out. “Hey! So we’re still on for next weekend, right?”
She looked back, tears still spilling from her bloodshot eyes, and smiled. “Of course!”
Oh high school love. Is there anything more pure and naive?
After that we moved on to today’s prompt, and chat voted for this one submitted by oppositewerewolf: “My German Shepard had to be put down today. We never knew where he came from. Please write about his adventures.”
Usually we don’t do prompts that are submitted by users in chat, since I don’t want to play favorites, but for something as touching as this, we made an exception. Plus, since it was Valentine’s Day, we were able to weave in a little bit of Valentine’s surprise to it as well.
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you. We stream on Twitch every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday at 7:30pm-10:30pm (U.S. Eastern Standard Time).
And you missed the stream, you can still watch Rubbish to Published or the writing prompts on YouTube, or watch the full stream reruns until Twitch deletes them.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Scott Wilson is the author of the novel Metl: The ANGEL Weapon, forthcoming November 2018.
Featured image: Pakutaso