there's a ford taurus parked in our parking lot that is the exact same year and color of my own old ford taurus. every time i see it, i'm reminded of how my very first car came to be found on road, dead.

it was the fall of some year. i was driving down to u of i to visit a friend. "could you pick up another friend of mine?" this particular friend asked. i agreed, only to find out that this guy i was bringing down- let's call him bobby- happened to have lived in my house. we had bought the house from his family, and bobby had once slept in the same bedroom i now slept in now. on the way down, he regaled me with stories of all the dead cats that he had buried in my yard and the kinds of icky boy things he had once stored in the closet that now held all of my shoes and turtlenecks. he was a wierd guy; i think he tried to convince me that his parents had sold the house because they were certain that it was haunted by escaped slaves using the underground railroad. or something.

we smoked a lot of cheap cigarettes on that car ride, and bobby was giving me the creeps in a real bad way. i pressed my foot to the accelerator in order to get to u of i faster, and my car shook with speed. finally, we pulled off onto the exit. it was then that my car started to smoke, and, suddenly, although it was running, it refused to move at all. i freaked out. bobby had to get out of the car and push it all the way to his friend's house, and it was there that i had to phone my father. we had just gotten into a fight a few days earlier about me going to champaign; my parents had been convinced that the taurus wouldn't make it. my dad answered on the second ring, "it made it," i stated, near tears, "but now i can't get it to move at all." the transmission had blown.

my dad drove down. bobby was there when he arrived to check out the damage, and he quickly introduced himself to my father. "do you know who i am?" he asked meaningfully, glancing at me. my dad shrugged, probably wondering why the hell he would know this semi-retarded boy smoking from a generic pack of cigarettes. "i used to live in your house," bobby continued. "i slept where your daughter sleeps now. i buried cats in your yard. and, oh yeah, the house is haunted. with slaves."

i wanted to just go home with my dad that night, but instead i stayed the rest of the weekend, suffering through bobby's stories and finally, when my friend was to drive me home on sunday, i gave him eight dollars so that he could take the train instead. i was done with him- i didn't want to hear anymore about why his parents had had giraffe printed wallpaper in the kitchen, or how his dad had often run into the spirit of harriet tubman. or whatever.

later that week, i bought my cavalier. and then i scrubbed the walls and floor of my closet.