It had been a few days since I took the car. No one had noticed so I was feeling pretty confident. I had neither a license nor permit, but I felt like I was as good as a driver can get, in the mind of a fifteen year-old. The day that I took the car, my friend Nicole brought up the idea to go driving around Coronado. The idea sounded great but I hesitated for a moment.
“What if my parents found out,” I thought.
Nah. We would only drive around for a few minutes, so we would be fine. So, we hoped in my father new Volkswagen. The car had a strong scent of that ‘new car’ aroma. We started up the car with the little knowledge we had on how cars work, and sped off. It was really simple. All you had to do was turn the wheel and press the gas and brake. The leather seat molded into my body, giving a smooth, comfortable feeling. The grip of the steering wheel gave me a sense of confidence and matureness. I felt like an adult, even though my actions showed the complete opposite.
Nicole and I followed through with what we said, and only drove around for 15 minutes. We tiptoed back into the house quietly giggling and hung the keys on the wall with no noise; as if we were cats among a crowd of sleeping dogs. We were sure there was not a soul who knew about the car. However, we were wrong.
Days had passed since the drive when all of the sudden my dad walked down the stairs with heavy thumps.
“Hey Chrissy.” he said with an odd voice, “How was hanging out with Nicole last Saturday?”
“It was fine” I said nervously.
“What did you guys do?” His tone had risen a little.
“Nothing much…” I swallowed a huge lump of anxiety in my throat.
“Oh okay. So you want to explain to me why Mr. Frank saw you and a friend DRIVING THE CAR LAST WEEKEND? HMM?”
I was terrified. When my dad gets mad, his face turns red and his stare is lethal. It reminded me of the times he would spank me as a child. I didn’t want to go through that awful memory again. After a moment of silence and extreme tension I blurted out…
“NICOLE FORCED ME TO.”
He did not believe that and gave me the longest lecture of how irresponsible I was and how I could have killed someone, or hit another car, or ran into a police officer, or hit a biker, or a million other reasons. Following his lecture came an even longer lecture from my mom. I absolutely hate lectures from parents. They made me feel terrible and I didn’t even look at them for a week! I learned my lesson after that experience and haven’t taken the car since.  My original thought before taking the car was “what your parents don’t know doesn’t kill you,” but after that experience, my new thought is “there is never anyway to completely hide.”