The Chevrons stopped appearing on the highway as I rolled out of Illinois. This panicked me for a bit, until I saw in the fine print that I could use the card at “participating” retailers. It would be cokes and Doritos to the horizon, after all.

Somewhere on the Ohio turnpike, I got pulled over for doing 80. (80? The car worked!) Seeing that I was out of state, the officer asked for the money to cover the fine right there on the shoulder. I didn’t quite know what to say, but I told him I didn’t have it, and he, oddly, confiscated my Auto Club card, which seemed like an even trade since it did rob me of some peace of mind. (A month later, they would send me a bill for the ticket. I have never canceled my AAA membership since, and never will.)

Rain started coming down hard as I made my way across Pennsylvania. I was on my way to Lancaster to crash at a friend’s dorm at Franklin and Marshall College, but it was a challenging drive. At times, the rain came down so thick and fast that no speed on my windshield wipers would do the trick. 18 wheelers would blow past me with such force that a hurricane of wind and water would blast off the front of each passing truck, creating an awful vortex, or some kind of trucker’s slipstream that would cause my steering wheel to shudder, the windshield to go white, and a force that would suck my car into its heady wake. This happened repeatedly, and I would cross myself and grip the steering wheels every time I saw a high set of headlights roaring up from behind.

In Lancaster, I met up with Tammy who I had seen a few weeks earlier at Susie’s service. Tammy and Susie were good friends, and it was clear that she was still grieving some, which was understandable. We talked about it for a while and came to no conclusions about death or life or the meaning of it all, and the only thing realized was the profound sadness we both felt over Susie being gone, and being gone forever. She went off to college just like we all did, but she would never return.

As we were sitting on the floor of her dorm, one after another college kid would enter and it soon became a party, as these things do. Just another day of traveling 700 miles and then staying up until 3AM with a crowd of strangers. I went to bed that night in a stranger’s bed, someone named “Tim” who I would never meet. But I know Tim to be a fun guy because later that morning several of his buddies came in to mess with him, screaming “TIM! TIM!” and I rolled over in Tim’s bed to reveal myself, at which point they exclaimed, “MY GOD, TIM! WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU?” It was pretty funny, but they showed me to the shower, and all was forgiven.

When Tammy returned from class, she took me out for a sandwich and showed me around Lancaster, driving past old President Buchanan’s home, and looking for Amish folk. In 24 hours, I had met another round of fun, friendly people at another beautiful college, and experienced a camaraderie that I had never found at USC. Everyone I met seemed excited about my story and interested in my cross-country trip. They

congratulated me and encouraged me, and it made me feel simultaneously cheered, hopeful, and yet depressed, because here I found myself envying them. Where did I go wrong at USC? Was it bad luck? Was it the school? Was I so obsessed with my passions that I had alienated myself entirely? I was disappointed that I had missed out on the stereotypical college episode for myself, but hopeful that perhaps I could still get it, somehow.

I drove off that evening, with the sun setting in my rear view mirror, nearly certain that a return to college was in my future. USC film school was out, undoubtedly, but I wasn’t finished being an impetuous, imprudent, and possibly corruptible, young man, and I wasn’t going to waste it at corporate Disney, or corporate anything. I had several years to make more mistakes before I would be beset by adulthood, and yet I drove onward, eastward, to Manhattan, with a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I might be making the biggest mistake of all right now, just doing that.