“Oh Verna, Verna, Verna,” she babbled, pacing back and forth on her driveway, “Come out of that car, and come inside. I have cookies. You’re father’s been unpacking his books for the past hour, come join us.”

“That bastard didn’t even wake me up…” I grumbled.

“Come now, Verna, I have cookies!”

“Betty, I’m not five. Besides, cookies are immoral…or something. I’m just going to lie in your lawn and meditate, if you don’t mind,” I said as I struggled to untangle myself from the seatbelt deathtrap.

I rolled myself onto the fresh gas in her prizewinning yard, and breathed in the strange smells of chicken manure, hybrid toxic flowers and rusty sprinkler water. So, this is what suburbia smells like. I could probably kill for the rancid smells of overflowing dumpsters and vodka sodden hobos right about now.

“Verna?” Betty said hovering over me, “We’ll be inside, whenever you’re ready, I had the movers put your stuff in the attic. I know how much you love it up there.”