The night was a typical one. It was dark, late, and ours. The street lights and the headlights from my mom’s blue Goe illuminated the road, making the elementary school look dark and spooky as we remained parked in front. I look over at my friend in the passenger seat and asked him if he was ready. “Yeah, dude! Let’s do it!”, he responded with an excited tone and look. We looked around for cops, but we didn’t even see a single car. i was ready.

I stepped on the accelerator. The car started out pretty slow, but it got faster in just seconds. It reached twenty miles per hour, and my heart started to race in my chest. At twenty-five miles per hour my mouth slowly formed into a grin, and my eyes widened slightly. We had now reached thirty…, thirty-five…, and fourty miles per hour. My friend yelled, “Oh my God!”, all of a sudden, with a psyched tone this time.

Suddenly, the idea that we were outlaws came to my mind. We were outlaws undiscovered, and that made me wonder if we might get caught. Then when reality hit me, it was time to make my turn.

I jolted the steering wheel to the right, and in those same split seconds I pulled the emergency brake. I could feel my body drift with the car. I could feel my blood move from one side of my body to the other and our car swiftly and smoothly gliding over the road. The inertia made the perfect delivery of my weight, feeling as if someone would have walked right through me. Then before I realized it, reality hit me again as the car quaked into a stop. But I had done it. I made my first one-eighty turn in a car, and it was perfect.

Then the stillness made me feel weightless, and I could hear my heart thump so loud that I could hear it in my head. And with a quick shake of my head and a smile to my friend’s laughter, we drove back the way we came to go finish the night off.

Cole’s Memoir