Joyriding in a Dream

By Leona Marie Schweninger

It was Connie’s dad’s yellow Thunderbird. I knew it immediately, even though it had no business being in Terry and Scott’s garage.

Connie wasn’t allowed to drive it after she did donuts in the Methodist church parking lot while blasting Prince. Her dad said the car had too much horsepower for someone with that much lip gloss and defiance.

Now, somehow, it had ended up tucked behind a treadmill and some plastic flamingos in Terry and Scott’s garage.

They didn’t know it was there.
I didn’t know how they didn’t know.
It was bright yellow. It practically glowed.

Reese had broken into their house while they were asleep—not to steal, but to help. I stood in the driveway watching him wedge off the garage panel with a paint scraper and a screwdriver.

“I’ll put it back when you’re out,” he whispered, like he was breaking me out of a fairy-tale prison.

I didn’t ask questions.
This was apparently my car now.
Dream rules.

It still smelled like coconut air freshener and whatever Connie used to hide the scent of cigarettes. The engine moaned but caught. I had to get somewhere. Somewhere fast.

I had something to give to Terry and Scott before they woke up. Something important. Possibly sacred. It might’ve been wrapped in aluminum foil, or maybe just glowed on its own. I didn’t look at it too closely. That felt like it would’ve broken the spell.

The road curved wrong. It should’ve taken me toward a grocery store or a gas station, but instead, it opened into a construction yard filled with oil rigs and folding chairs. Scott was there, in boots and a ragged baseball cap, leaning on a post like he’d been waiting his whole life for this.

Jason stood nearby, grown and broad-shouldered, holding a wrench in one hand and a funnel cake in the other.

I pulled up—jerky and crooked—and got out.

Scott nodded at me. “You brought it?”

I handed him the mystery item. It was warm. Possibly vibrating.

“You could’ve just knocked,” he said.

“I did,” I told him. “Nobody woke up.”

Jason offered me part of his funnel cake. I declined. Powdered sugar in dreams is stickier than in real life.

Then the Thunderbird sputtered and died. Just gave up on the whole idea of forward momentum.

I turned the key. Nothing.

Out of pure instinct, I said:

“I introduced you two in high school because I knew Terry would fix you.”

The wipers twitched.

“I once told Connie I hated her purse, but I actually stole it later and loved it.”

The dashboard flickered.

“I don’t know how to be a grown-up without feeling like I’m faking it.”

The engine coughed.

Scott laughed. “Car runs on truth. That’s a design flaw.”

Then, like a sitcom joke with its own laugh track, a police cruiser rolled up.

It was driven by identical twin officers—both in uniform, both chewing something, but not the same thing. One had gum. The other? I think it was a grape.

“Ma’am,” one twin said, “are you alright?”

“I have no idea,” I replied, and then promptly burst into tears.

The sobbing came from some well inside me I didn’t know I still carried. I folded in half. The officer caught me, held me at arm’s length like I might be radioactive.

“I was held at gunpoint,” I cried. “And now the car won’t go unless I say embarrassing things out loud.”

They nodded. Both of them.
Not shocked. Not even mildly confused.

That’s when Terry appeared.

Tiny. Composed. Barefoot.
Carrying a mug that said Bite Me, I’m Retired.

She looked at me like I was a memory she couldn’t place but knew she missed.

“We were dreaming too,” she said.

And I thought:
Of course we were.
Where else could I tell the truth and get a funnel cake?

Scott and Jason didn’t say anything else. They just nodded like this was exactly what was supposed to happen next.

The twin cops waved me on like they were clearing traffic in an invisible parade.

I climbed back into the Thunderbird. The seat molded to me like it had been waiting. I took a deep breath, let my hand rest on the wheel. The car vibrated softly beneath me—alive now, fueled by every awkward truth I’d ever swallowed.

I glanced at the rearview mirror. Terry gave me a slow, two-fingered salute and mouthed, Drive it like it’s borrowed.

And then—
There was Nana.

She was suddenly in the passenger seat, exactly as I remembered her—but younger somehow, with cat-eye glasses and a scarf tied over her hair like she was late for a date with Sinatra. She looked over at me and said:

“What the hell are you waiting for?”

So I drove.

I didn’t ask where we were going. The car knew.

We passed an oil field that blinked like a disco. We rolled through a grocery store where all the carts danced. We skimmed the ocean like a skipping stone and bounced into a sky full of streetlamps instead of stars.

The Thunderbird didn't obey roads anymore. It followed memory, instinct, longing. I drove past my old house, Connie’s house, the skating rink, a dream I once had in 1997, and a diner where every version of myself sat at a booth—child, teen, mother, wreck, warrior—waving as I passed.

Nana rolled down her window. Her hair streamed behind her like smoke.

“You always were a stubborn little thing,” she said, grinning.

“You always said I’d get lost,” I replied.

“You did,” she said. “But look—you found the good car.”

We laughed.

And then, like all dreams that know when to end, the car slowed on its own. The road turned to sky. The sky folded into itself. Everything softened.

Nana leaned over, kissed my temple, and said:

“You can wake up now. But don’t forget how this felt.”

So I nodded.

Let go of the wheel.
Let the car glide.

And woke up smiling.