The night was still young when Sandeep called me, "It's Saturday night," he whines, and I feel the frustration in his voice. He hasn’t had a sip of alcohol in over four hours.

"It's between you and TiVoed Colbert tonight," I say, "Duke it out."

He ignores me, "See you in fifteen. Bring Rachel."

Rachel. Rachel is our mutual friend from eighth grade science class who is back in town from her Close-but-not-quite-Ivy-League university for the week. “Stop calling it that,” she tells me. “So many famous people went there, you don’t even know.”

“No, I don’t even care,” I correct her.

It takes some persuasion to get her to agree to join us, “It’s late,” she argues, “But I guess I’ll go.”

The three of us meet up at a coffee house only to find its been closed. Sandeep looks pained. “Now what?” he wants to know. And so do I.

“Let’s go to Look Out Point!” Rachel offers, an extreme suggestion coming from her, but Sandeep and I agree since we were in the mood to go to a romantic area and not make out, which, coincidentally, is also the story of my life. Once we got there however, we spent more time looking at the stars than the view. That’s when Rachel got her idea to go extreme, well, for her anyway. "You guys..." she said, "Let's go find a dark place and look at the stars." I know. Almost a little too extreme. Sandeep and I agreed, because we too are extreme people who do extreme things on Saturday nights in Arizona.

It took some driving, but we found a dark road that would be the perfect place to be raped and then strangled without a single soul knowing for months. No Trespassing the sign read in both English and Spanish at the beginning of the dirt road. "I dunno guys..." Rachel hesitated, stopping the car momentarily. She had grounds to be scared. The area did look like the setting to a bad horror film starring Paris Hilton, but we egged her on.

"No," I say from the back of the car, "It's OK, because if the cops ask, we'll say we're French and couldn’t read the sign." That was enough for her. We went a little ways and then parked the car and the three of us climbed on the hood to observe the sky. It was all fun and games until…

"What was that?" Rachel sat up.

"What?" Sandeep almost doesn’t care. I'm jumpy at the best of times, and suddenly, I hear it too. A low rumble. I sit up, alarmed.

"It's nothing-" Sandeep says, and he tries to pull us back down.

"No, no! Shhhhhhhhh," Rachel and I shush him. The rumbling now sounds like a growl.

"OK, I heard it that time, too!" Sandeep sits up.

“Time to leave,” I jump off of the hood. “Let's pack it up, Jimmy." I say as I try to practically dive back into the car. We get ourselves buckled in just in time to realize it was a plane flying overhead.

"I really thought we were gonna die," I explain. The others say nothing, embarrassed, but I know they thought it, too.

Rachel then suggests just driving around Fountain Hills, her homeland, aimlessly, like a VW commercial. We feel safer inside the car, so we agree. At one point, we come to a road that warns us of dips. The posted speed is 35 mph, but we’re feeling extreme and no one is on this long, dark road, so Sandeep and I suggest to Rachel that she drive somewhere in the 70 MPH area. Rachel, resident badass, goes forty-five. As we pass a sign warning of animal crossings I laugh, “What if there’s a cow crossing and we can’t stop?” My two friends giggle, amused at the thought of running into a cow. Realizing that forty-five isn’t half as much fun as seventy-five, she kicks her car into gear and we go over a few dips when out of nowhere, a family of javelina appear.

“Oh, shit!” I shout.

“Fuck!” Rachel screams, and manages to “lightly tap” –her words- the javelina as she tries to swerve out of the way. Unfortunately, she over corrected her wheel and we went into a 360 spin. The tires screeched and the smell of burnt rubber wafted into our noses as the three of us screamed like little girls. We ended half in the dirt, half on the road, completely bewildered.

We’re silent for a moment as we collect ourselves, but I speak first.

“That was awesome!” I say, and mean it, excited by the adventure and the fact that we didn’t die. Sandeep finally releases his hands from the door handle and laughs.

Rachel is shaking, “Oh my God! Oh my God you guys!” I cannot tell if she is laughing or crying. The three of us embrace.

“No, seriously,” I say, “That was cool, but we should probably get on the right side of the road now.”

“Did you see the expression on that javelina’s face as you hit it?” Sandeep grinned, “That shit was hilarious!”

Ah, nothing like the smell of death to make you feel so alive.

Stephanie's bottling the Smell of Death and it should be in stores this fall.

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