Pet Sounds

by Deidrene Crisanto

We sit in your car and listen to surf rock for hours on end, exchanging nothing but thoughtful glances with each other, afraid that any other form of communication would ruin the still perfectness of it all. I'm smiling because everything is so cheesy, because neither of us know how to surf, because there's a tear in your sweater from when I caught it with my ring in your last attempt to hug me, because we're fogging up the windows doing absolutely nothing, and because you're absentmindedly mouthing every word to every song. Your car smells like the coffee that you spilled a few hours earlier, and the back seat is full of odds and ends we found in the local antique, record, and book shops. You're three years older than I am and, by comparison, vastly more cool - how I ever found myself sitting shotgun in your rusty little car sends my head spinning. Your eyelashes are abnormally long, your hair is messy in just the perfect way, and your silly Sonic Youth t-shirt is faded by years of loving wear and tear. I'm beaming, but my heart is heavy under the weight of a hopeless romance I think I'm pursuing.

6S

Deidrene Crisanto does nothing but daydream and doodle. She's a closet hopeless romantic and has a crush on a boy who always wears cardigans, but the above story (probably) isn't about him.