“Okay, okay,” I mumbled reluctantly. I climbed out of the car, turned toward them, and raised my arms in surrender. But by the time I was halfway up the sidewalk, Mary came through the door. I stopped in my tracks. She was a vision.

“Hey, Mary,” I said, my voice running away from me.

“Hey, Paul,” she said with her customary bashful look, eyes flitting here and there.

“You’re real pretty today,” I managed to choke out.

“Paul!” she exclaimed, red rushing up her neck. She pushed her hair out of her eyes, smiled, and shoved me away playfully, then trotted to the rear passenger-side door and climbed in. I followed her and got back into the passenger seat.

“Where are we going?” Mary asked, rolling down her window.

I wished I was sitting in the back seat with her. I noticed she was glancing nervously at her house. “Let’s go, Tom,” I said.

“Okay, okay, old boy. Relax,” he said, putting the car in gear.

“It’s a surprise.” Shirley rolled her eyes, saying “surprise” like it was the most fake word in the world.

For some reason, Tom didn’t pull away. He was lost in his thoughts, or something else, but as we sat there for an extra moment, I could see Mary getting more and more uncomfortable.

“What’s up, Tom?” I asked. “Let’s go.”

“Tom,” Shirley insisted from the back seat. “C’mon.”

Out of nowhere, Mary shouted, “Go!” and there was panic in her voice.

Tom jumped out of his reverie and looked at Mary like she had lost her mind. Shirley and I were stunned, not knowing what to do. I turned toward Mary to see what would cause her to cry out like that, and she was staring out of her window with fear in her eyes.

“Go, Tom. Please go,” she whispered.

“For goodness’ sake, Tom,” Shirley said, her voice quiet and flighty and trembling. “Mary said go.”

I turned to Tom to tell him to put his foot down, but as I did, he took off, and my head flew back against the seat. The sound of gravel pinging the underside of the car blended with the sound of the air rushing in the windows.

Tom drove at breakneck speed for at least two miles, winding precariously along the back roads between the edge of town and the lake. But before we had gone too far, he hooted a loud cry of freedom.

“How about that, old boy!” he said, laughing.

I grinned. “What were you waiting for?” I asked, but his laugh was contagious, and soon I was laughing too. I heard Shirley giggle.

How easily we forget things when we are young. How quickly we move from one moment to the next. Our laughter rang out, and we basked in the sunshine, the warm air, the empty, open roads. We weren’t thinking about Mary’s unfounded fear anymore, or the silver-haired woman she had seen in the shadows the previous Halloween. We weren’t worried about the future or the past or anything outside of that moment in the car, racing through summer. We were young and in love and had made our way out into the world, out where no one could stop us.