Janine runs her fingers along the railing. The rusted green paint chips under the pressure of her fingertips,  and she watches it flake onto the highway below. 
 

“Don’t get too close to the edge.” Alvin warns, eyeing her thin frame against the side of the bridge, the wisps of her long brown hair fluttering with the wind. Beside them, Scotty hangs his head against the railing, watching as the cars pass by below. 

“Where do you think they’re all going?” Misty asks, crouched down on the tar, her face pressed against the bars. 
She is weary from a long night spent talking, making breakfast at 1 am, watching movies with the volume on low so her parents wouldn’t know that they have been up all night.
 

“They must be driving to work.” Alvin says, yawning. “Or taking their kids to school.”
 

“We all will be working soon enough.” Scotty groans, turning to lean his back  against the bars. He takes a seat beside Misty. Misty breathes a heavy sigh. She is already working part time on her uncle’s farm, gathering eggs from the chicken coop, feeding the pigs, and pulling vegetables from the garden. She plays despondently with her fingertips, always
feeling the dirt below her nails despite the constant scrubbing. Watching the cars below, she takes solace in her space against the railing, in the still, idyllic painting of innocence in the moments before being thrown into the world.
 

“I’m looking forward to getting a job.” Alvin says, squinting his eyes toward the blooming sun, cupping one hand against his forehead, to see far beyond the highway and trees that line this backwoods town.

 

“I have plans for my future. My dad says he can get me a job in HVAC. And you can really do HVAC anywhere, so I should be able to get myself an apartment in the city. Then I can settle down, maybe get married, and have a simple life.”

He glances toward Janine, who is reaching to stroke the grass which grows and coils around the railing. She
hums quietly to herself, unaware of his tender gaze.
 

“I don’t like the thought of having my whole life planned out.” Janine says, pulling back from the bars. “The last thing I want is to know everything before it happens. That’s no way to live. I want my life to have mystery, that way I don’t ever have to feel like I’m just waiting around to die.”

 

The corner of Alvin’s mouth twitches, and he leans forward to feel the cool rust of the bars against his face.
 

“I want to go to college, but my Mom’s MS is progressing, and I don’t know what will happen if I’m not around to take care of her.” Scotty says. He leans his head against his knees, running his fingers through his spiky red hair.
 

Below, a truck blares its horn, and the friends cheer half-heartedly. The exhaustion of staying up all night is beginning to weigh on them. They sit along the cracked pavement, fermenting in the impending future; their high school graduations, the expectation of college, the desire to build a life for themselves, and the way life has a way of forming around them, without their knowledge. Soon enough these late nights of parties and walks and dreaming will pass, and they will give themselves sacrificially to actuality.
 

“I’m going to miss these days.” Scotty sighs. The melancholy seeps through the ebb of his voice, though he tries to mask it with a yawn.
 

“There will be other days.” Alvin says, optimistic. “When I get a car, we can all go driving around.”
 

“We can take that trip to New York, like we talked about.” Misty chimes in. She smiles, chewing on her uneven fingernails.

 

“If our schedules line up.” Janine clarifies.
 

“Yeah, and when we’re older, we’ll have better things to do anyway than meet up at our parents’ houses and hang around this old bridge.” Alvin kicks a pebble of tar through the bars and it clunks to the highway below.
 

“Someday we’ll be driving by and we won’t even have time to stop and think about the kids lying around up here, wishing on a future that we already have.” Misty says.
 

“I don’t know about you,” Scotty says, turning around to press his face against the bars once more. “But I’d honk at them, for old times sake.”

 

He tries to make out the faces in the cars below, but they are obscured under windshield, by the beating of the freshly dawned sun. They travel by unknown, ghosts of adolescence, their metal boxes looming with the secrets only learned in this great, forthcoming future.
 

A truck makes its way along the road toward the bridge, and the friends scatter so it can pass, heading in the direction of their respective houses. They turn back to wave, calling out to one another over the bustle of the cars below. They promise to meet up like this again before graduation. They leave the bridge behind, and their dreams drift like pebbles to the highway below. The sun reaches its peak and begins to settle behind the trees.