A blue plastic clock hung over my closet, ticking as the hour became later and later and then eventually earlier and earlier as the time merged into the early morning hours. I didn't mind though, I've always liked the sound of the ticking. I stretched my arms out in front of me, pushing my laptop off my lap and sitting up. I glanced about the room, as if expecting some sort of exiting change; but there wasn't any – and there wasn't much to see anyways considering the fact my only source of light is my laptop screen. Everything I do see is tinted with blue. There's a slight odor, and fearing it might be me I stop stretching and let my arms fall to my sides.

I momentarily consider tiptoeing into my kitchen for a bowl of something good, but then something distracts me: my phone is buzzing. Not just once but plural – buzzing. The thing it does when someone is actually calling me. I figure it’s a telemarketer, a 1-800 call, I almost blow it off – but I don't. Instead, I answer it.

“Hello?” I ask – prepared for anything.

“Hey what's up?” Speaks the voice on the other end. Recognizing it I drop my worries and smile.
“Not much.” I say with a false laugh. “How about you? What have you been up to lately?” I let the hint of concern touch my voice – but try not to let it become too powerful. I don't want to make it an emotional moment; I just want to honestly know how he's doing. The last time I talked to him...things were rough. But then again, life is always rough on him.

“I'm alright.” He says, but his voice tells me differently. He's not alright – he's upset. Before I even have a chance to respond he speaks again “You wanna hang out?”

Now you need to understand something about me to see where I am coming from. I love people. I love talking to them and seeing them and meeting and understanding each individual personality. I also hate the hardships, the pains – both emotional and physical – that so many people have to face every single day. I've always told people that if they were upset, and they needed help, I would be there for them: night or day, busy or not, I've always told people that if they called me I would be there.

So what would make this any different?

I check the clock – 2AM. Now a year ago if someone had asked me this question, I would've thought them crazy! But it wasn't a year ago, it was now – and in this time of now I've snuck out of my house a multitude of times. The vast majority of these adventures were executed with my notorious friend. Back when we were dating we used to go hang out all of the time – but since we'd broken up I hadn't seen much of him as he didn't attend our school. The last time I'd snuck out it had been late January, and it had been freezing, so the fact that it was June prompted me to believe that this would be quite an enjoyable outing in comparison.

So I said yes.

I say yes.

He tells me he has a car now, and his permit to. I congratulate him – making sure he knows how jealous I am. He tells me that instead of walking all the way to his house, he can simply come pick me up now: I tell him that sounds wonderful as long as he remembers to not drive past my house, instead to drive up on the street that branches off. He complies, tells me he'll see me in twenty, and hangs up.

I use my twenty minutes to pull my hair into a ratty pony-tail and clothe myself in some yoga pants and a hoodie. I snatch my iPod off my charger, grab my cell and put the volume on full, and write out a short note to my parents – just in case they were to ever come down into my room and find me missing. It says simply this:
 
I couldn't sleep and I went out on a short walk.
I'll be back soon.
Love you.
Cassidy
 
I figure that way, even if they're pissed and get me in a lot of trouble at least maybe they won’t jump straight to calling the cops. I sit down on my bed, glancing up at the ticking clock. Doing the math, I figure he should be here in about five minutes so I figure I should get headed. I pull on my flip-flops, shut down my lap top, and close the door to my room. I walk a simple five feet to the garage door and another ten through the garage before penetrating the night air.

I pause, letting myself breathe it in: it’s cool but in a way that doesn’t make me cold and instead is more refreshing. I smile to myself, and it’s both a smile of accomplishment and of adrenaline. I let my eyes close as I step forward and there is barely a hint of difference in what I can see. I walk down my driveway with a smile on my face that reads freedom and lightness. My eyes flicker to the night sky as I veer off my driveway, and it is a thing of overwhelming beauty. The pure black would be gorgeous enough alone but it only gets better as the outlines of the tall evergreen tree tips bring in an element of closeness to the sky. The stars are small in size but large in number – and it’s stupid to say but I swear that they make me feel less alone.

I take the bend in the road where I told him to meet me and simply sit down in the middle as I wait; not because I'm tired, but because the street is barren and I can. I sit and I think random thoughts. I think of the beautiful sky, I avoid thinking about the last time I went out. I look at my neighbors houses and wonder about the people that live there. I wonder if Berit is awake in her house, or if she's long gone to sleep.

The light as the car turn the corner towards me is enough to shake me from my thoughts and I stand as he pulls up closer. He stops the car rolls down his window.

“Hey,” he says simply, but he seems energetic considering its 2am.

“Hey!” I say. I step around the car and jump in the passenger seat. The car is small but longer as well. It seems older fashioned instead of just crappy and I like it. The floors of the car are clean and tidy and it’s nice for a change, considering most high school guys aren’t the tidiest.

“So where do you want to go?” He says, making a U-turn so that we don’t have to drive past my house.

“I don’t know.” I say honestly. I have no where I wish to be in that moment, I'm just enjoying being out of my house.

“How about diamond point?” He says.

“Isn't that closed at like ten or something?”

“Yeah, but they don’t really care. If they see you they send you out with a warning – That’s what they did a few days ago when I was swimming with some friends in Cameron.”

“Ah.” I say, taking his account for true since I'd heard the same from a variety of different people who had experience in these matters.

The car ride was short, our conversation slow going and unimportant, it's when he parks the car at diamond point that the emotion I heard through the phone starts to come back.

We pace for some time and he tells me about his life. He tells me where he's been these past few months, what he's been up to. He tells me that his parents kicked him out. He tells me he's been living with a friend for the past few months, the same friend he's lived with when this has happened in the past. He says he's got a job, and he finally took that time to get a permit and he'd have his license in less than 3 months. He tells me he accidentally walked on the wrong side of the road and was too close to an x-girlfriend of his’s house, violating a restraining order her dad had placed after the two had run away together. He tells me he's now on probation because of that. He talks about his girlfriend – who seems semi-psychotic and has the nasty habit of smoking, one he managed to pick while by her side. He tells me that it's his girlfriend's car that he's borrowing. He tells me that since his mom pulled him out of school, he will reenter next year now that he's out of that house. Or that he'll at least get his GED – preferably in carpentry. We talk for what feels like hours.

Eventually we sit down on a rock near the edge of the water and I take my shoes off so I can let the water nip at my toes. He pulls the pony-tail out of my hair and I yell at him but we both laugh because it's become such a cliché joke between us overtime. Instead of trying to pull it back up I simply slip in onto my wrist and let the breeze run through my hair.
Sitting here, on the side of this lake, with the night sky shinning above our heads and the talk of how things are – with the stupid jokes and the laughter that's nothing but relief because your still here, you haven’t stopped quite yet...I will never forget it. I will never forget the moment that I was able to see the beauty and the pain at the same time. To truly understand what someone meant when they said that one cannot be without the other. The moment that the world seemed to make sense simply because it didn't – and I was okay with that. Sitting alongside the lake with that heartbroken boy that everyone seemed to hate without cause, I finally understood what Stephen Chbosky meant when he wrote the lines “We are Infinite.”

It was a feeling you can never describe, only experience – and it was the one moment in my life that I ever truly felt it. Completely free. Not a worry, not because there is nothing to worry about but because you simply don’t need to anymore. A sight of hope over the ever-hidden horizon telling you that it will all work out. I wish I could live in that moment forever.
But, obviously, I can't. As those minutes continued to tick by I kept watch on the time and as four am rolled around I was sad when I had to speak the word “I need to go home.” My mother has the capability of waking up at the crack of dawn and I like to be well in before there's a chance of anyone being awake. I allow the yawn to pass from my lips - the insomnia that plagued me now subdued.

We walked towards the car and it was quiet. We were out of words, at least for the moment, still lost in the thoughts of the night.

Because the beautiful, it was calm, it was to be forever remembered as one of the best moments in my life: but I should never have forgotten, the beauty cannot be without the pain.
We both saw the cop car at about the same time. We were a mere fifteen feet from the car that sat parked against the curb, a miniscule 5 from exiting the forbidden park. I didn't look at him then; my eyes were simply glued to the car as it pulled to a stop in front of us. Out waddled a larger man who looked like he was in an incredibly bad mood. He pulled out a flashlight from his belt and clicked it on, shining it directly in my face so that I had to scrunch my face up in an attempt to keep my eyes from closing.

“Do you realize what time it is?” He spoke – his first words filled with vile accusation.
“Yes.” we both responded, because we did – that's why we were on our way home.

“It is four am! What are you doing?”

“We were going for a walk – we're on our way home now.” Truth, pure truth that the man took and spat back in my face as if I was some piece of trash he'd found on the side of the road.
“Uh-huh.” He pulled a radio from his belt, still shinning the light in our faces and not glancing away – as if we were to dart at any second.

Many times I wish we would have.

“Requesting backup, Diamond point.” he spoke into the thing. Backup!? For what!? “What is your name?” He said, looking at me – that damn flashlight still shining in my face, giving away my absolute terror, I assure you.

“Cassidy.” I said calmly, not letting my voice tremor. After all – I hadn’t done anything wrong!

“Spell that.” he ordered and he scribbled away on his little note pad.

I complied and as I did another car pulled around and another, less angry looking cop stepped out. In fact, he looked sort of confused at the entire situation.

“What’s the situation?” he asked his eyes flashing from be to my friend.

“Couple of kids out for a walk.” he said, but he didn't just say 'walk'. He said it the way you say things that need quotation marks.

The second cop didn’t have anything to say in response, he just nodded his head and continued to look confused.

The cop asked me a few more questions, my age, whether my parents knew where I was, my official birthday – and still I continued to give him nothing but the truth. And still he continued to look at me as if I'd just been doing it in the woods.

The cop than repeated the questions with my friend, and I was so out of it that I failure to notice the fact that he lies about his age. He tells them he is 18, but his birthday is a mere day before mine and I know that he is only 17, at least for 10 more days – just as I'd been waiting for that fateful 15 to roll around.

There cop radios in again, having them verify our information. Or maybe just mine. There's a moment as we wait for a response and my friend, thinking he can make the situation less tense, pipes up “Long night?”

The cop finally takes his eyes off my purely to give the glare of a mad-man. “I could have you arrested for kidnapping a minor! This is a serious situation!”

Immediately realizing his mistake my friend simply says “I do. Yes sir. I'm sorry sir.” as the man continues to ramble off possible charges. The butterflies inside of my stomach are going crazy. They're no longer just butterflies – no they're something else now. Now they choke me as they flurry to escape.

The fear I felt in that moment, as we waited for a verdict, was absolute. All I could think of were my parents – what would they say? I wondered how this would affect my future, would colleges no longer want the girl who had charges at age fourteen? All I could do was wonder; there was nothing else to do. Nothing besides wait.

Finally the man here's a response and looks up at us. “I'm going to give you a ride home. You can go home.” He says to my friend. The butterflies that were recently wild are now catatonic. Inside I hold a hurricane of emotions, ones that seem desperate to swallow me whole, but on the outside I keep my face calm and blank. It's only when he opens the door to the back of the cop car that my demeanor starts to break.

The second cop who had been called for backup shoots me a pitying glance as he gets into his vehicle and departs. My friend simply walks away, because he can, because he lied. For a second I feel a flash of anger, of this wild touch of hatred, but then it fades. I can't blame him for tonight; yes he may have called me but I'm the one that said yes. No: whatever happened tonight was not his fault.

I slide into the back of the police car, my hands in fists but no longer because of rage, instead its pure fear. Adrenaline. So much of it that it's becoming hard not to explode. I feel as if I could simply shatter, simply break, into a million pieces at any second and forever more cease to exist.

The car walks around front and sits down. He starts up the engine. “Address?” He says.
I tell him, keeping my voice steady. Putting everything I have into 'keeping my cool'.

He pulls out of the parking lot and brings us out onto the main drag, full of places that I pass on a daily basis. It's such a strange feeling: being somewhere you've been before, somewhere you recognize from daily life, and then suddenly seeing the entire place through different eyes in a different situation. “I'm going to need directions.” he says gruffly.
“I can do that.” I say, more to myself than to him. And I do, we pull up to the stoplight near Keith's Pizza and I tell him to take a left: the correct way to my house. My mind flits quickly through escape plans, there has to be away around this. My best idea at this point it to direct him to the wrong house – but I picture if he finds that out and I don’t go through with it. Instead I sit in the car, somehow still holding out a piece of hope that he'll drop me off without waking up my parents. 'Let this be a close call.' I wished 'If they let me go I will never ever EVER do this EVER again!' And I wasn't lying.

I figure maybe I can dig myself a little ways out of this whole. When he asks me for the next turn I tell him, and then the words just keep on coming. “Listen, I'm a straight A student – This is my first time doing anything like this. I'm sorry. I didn't know.” And the words just keep coming: my so tightly gripped facade is falling away as the car gets closer and closer to my house.

When I finally finish he states simply “Well, there has to be consequences for our actions.”

For some reason those words break the last withstanding piece within me. Maybe it’s the fact that I have no hope now, he is driving me towards my deathbed where he will awaken my parents. Maybe it’s the fact that I just don’t have the will power to hold back the tide anymore. Whatever it is, I break, and the waterfall of tears that follow are nothing less than that: a waterfall. I sob my heart out in ways that I've never done, crying harder than I did when my grandpa died; no matter how terrible that is it's the truth.

The next few turns the cop asks me for are garbled, my words as broken as me. He has to have me repeat them so that he can understand through my hiccuping heaving sobs. At least he's nicer about it now. Maybe he feels guilty for being so mean before but I doubt it.

The car pulls up slowly into my driveway and it’s like some sort of nightmare creature is pulling off its mask for the first time; unveiling the hidden monster to the outside world.
When we come to a halt in my driveway I am ready. The sobbing continues, but I’m able to subdue it now. The cop steps out of the car and I wait for him to step around and open the door for me. When he doesn’t, I figure the door is unlocked: I assume incorrectly. I watch as he leaves me locked in the car while he walks up the front steps of my house to go tell my parents what I have done.

The sobbing is no longer in any way subdued.

Instead it morphs into a screaming wail.

I was a child, an idiot, a moron. I was trapped within my own mistakes and there was nothing left to do to change my fate. I was stuck in this stupid cop car unable to be there when the cop told them. Unable to hear what he said, how he said it, and what my parents initial reaction was. I was unable to see when my mother shed her first tear and instead only saw her after she was well into sobbing. I was barricaded and angry and hopelessly lost all in that one moment, that one millisecond, and it was a feeling of absolute desolation. Of destruction. Of hopelessness. Of fury. And there was no escape. There never was.

I cried the hardest I’ve ever cried in my life.

I look up and I see my father, dressed in an old shirt and some ratty sweatpants – his hair sticking up in random spurs just as my brothers hair does. His is face solemn; dead. As if he has just been stabbed in the back by someone he utterly trusted: which isn’t really an analogy. One look at his face and the crying stops. The racking pain and the shaking and everything cease.

Hastily, I wipe my eyes and sit up. When I face this moment, I will face it with dignity. I can’t hide the fact that I’ve been crying, but I don’t have to cry anymore. No one will have to know how weak I am, how broken. No one will ever know how sorry I am, how much I truly wish it hadn’t gone down that way. No one will ever know because I won’t let them.

The cop slowly opens the door and I step out and close it behind me.

My dad says nothing.

I say nothing.

The cop begins to speak “We found your daughter hanging with a young man tonight. I’m not sure how she got out, whether she has a window or.”

“She has a window.” my father juts in, meeting my eyes for the first time and letting me know how ashamed he is.

“I used the garage door.” I mumble, angry that no one seems to see: yes, I did sneak out. No, I didn’t ask for permission. But what else did I do? Walk out of my garage door and go for a walk? Talk with a friend? Maybe I did it in the wrong way but I did it for all of the right reasons and in the best possible way.

The cop briefly glances at me before continuing. “There’s no ‘evidence’.” He says, again using the quotation mark voice. “That she did anything besides walking.” He says this but every word he speaks points to the fact that he thinks we were lying. He thinks we’re two idiot punk kids and that there’s no such thing as just walking. I can see in his eyes and hear in his voice exactly what he thinks: and he thinks that we smoking pot and doing it in the bushes; because obviously that’s every teenage girls dream.

I walk behind my Dad up the stairs as the car pulls away, again, he doesn’t not speak. He avoids eye contact: the amount of shame I feel is surreal.

I step through the front do where my mother hugs me, sobbing. Crying about how I could’ve been killed and how could I and why. I can’t answer her questions. No matter what I say it will never put things right, it will never change what happened in her eyes.

I feel like crap. I feel like crying all over again. But I can’t, I never can; not in front of my parents. My mom makes me spend the night on her bedroom floor so I won’t leave again; as if I would leave again. I lay there, silent. Awake for hours with memories of the infinite feeling and the guilt that I feel now. Thoughts of the beauty and the pain. But I don’t cry. To this day I still haven’t had the chance to shed those tears.