I nearly missed the turn. My friend, although incredibly confident in her critique of my driving could not drive herself and was not that much more skilled with a map. I was negotiating a borrowed, beaten up car through the unfamiliar landscape. Just before the turn, she had told me not to miss it. That was the extent of her navigation; a warning not to make a mistake. This should have been a sign for me to interpret all of her warnings (and there were many) as directives that were often as dangerous as what they were warning against, and hid as much as they made plain.

So I nearly missed the turn, and swung out dangerously, going far too fast, to make it in time. She swore.

“I can’t believe you did that,” she said.

I couldn’t either. I wasn’t really myself. I nearly missed the turn, and what if I had? I suppose we would have turned around, made our way back. But in the end, I made it. And I was on my way to you.