you are in the middle of the car's backseat. You'd accidentally stayed the night at a friend's, you wake up in a dusty dawn, on a corduroy couch, next to a little dog and nested in stuff. you text your girlfriend, then gather yourself and your things. there's a moment in the garage that's funny and cute and then you pull the door shut from the outside and see it's little feet splay onto the ground. you mount your bike and grimace against the wind. there's a storm in the forecast. you text that you're on your way. strange rendezvous in a parking lot, the three of you in the middle backseat. your dad wakes up scared and anxious, and you calm him down. you feel your partner think shame, that you do the same thing for her when she wakes up scared. the car is the kind that drives itself, your dad moves to the passenger seat but you all leave the wheel empty. the car picks up two of the town's older women, and for some of the drive home it's nice to have them chattering behind you. they are a comfort. the pass is already in the thick of the storm, unimaginably so. from the cliffs you all see a city you don't remember seeing so clearly before- sprawling over the penninsula with it's glimmering bridges. looming behind it is a great cascade of cloud rushing through a dip in the mountain range. the road dips up and down, the clouds obscure the path, and suddenly one of the women says "where's the I-95?" just before you can peer over the hood of the car and see it is covered in a gushing sheet of water that sweeps the car up and then back down, still on the road, and for a moment: relief. then the water rises. there is a long stretch of driving where you are all in denial, or too scared to do anything, or too in the thrall of the car's will. when it gets up to the windows your dad says something about rolling them up, something about living in california, something cocksure and laughable, then there is a turn and a wave and the car is completely full of water. no more current or chaos, just drift. you muscle your arms out a window and grab at the things above you, pulling the car along with your body, sideways. they are like upturned bows of ships, like gnarled driftwood, like the carapaces of giant isopods. for a moment through the washed out cerulean you think you'll save them. it sounds like ears underwater with the bathtub still filling; chaos, quiet. then the light clicks darker. and you take a big breath. and its over.