Chasing the Coast in an Old Green Volvo

Chasing the Coast in an Old Green Volvo

I was on a road trip with my college roommate, Dave, but we were driving my dad's old green Volvo through the town where I went to middle school. We had this urgent mission to reach the coast before sunset, but every highway exit just looped back to the gravel parking lot behind my former high school gym. Dave was totally calm, navigating with an old paper map that had current subway lines drawn over it in red pen. I kept checking my watch, feeling this heavy rush of adrenaline because we were running out of daylight, but the gas gauge was dropping fast. We pulled into a strange mix of a diner and a hardware store to ask for directions, and the cashier was an old neighbor I haven't seen in ten years. She just smiled, handed me a box of matches, and said the beach was right through the emergency exit. When I pushed the heavy metal door open, cold salt air hit my face, and there was this endless wooden boardwalk stretching into the fog.