Sweet 16. Lauren Gega and her mom treat Lauren and her 5 best friends to a trip to Rosarito, Mexico. Her mom looked the other way when our server brought us daiquiris with rum in them and encouraged us to nail our single dollar bill signed ‘Sweet 16’ to the wall behind the bar next to the other patrons' cash. The night before my sweet 16 my dad placed a small jewelry box in my hand. I opened it to find a car key and a gold Mercedes parked on the street in front of our house. He promised we’d drive it in the morning. The next morning I went outside and the car was gone. I asked my dad where it was and he said coldly ‘It didn’t work out.’ Did that key even belong to that car? Was it someone else’s car on the street or a deal gone bad? I’ll never know. I started driving our Isuzu Trooper without a license when my mom stopped taking us to school.
