The O Cops won’t take the FTL jump. There are jurisdictional issues if they cross the hyper-spice event horizon. There's cops even the O Cops don't want to deal with.

"Wow u ride wa smoooooth! Much smooth von {untranslatable} Oldsmobile Antares!" @Nix Ixtb burbles.

"Cool," I say. "Just keep your window rolled up, ok?"

I figure I'll take us on a joyride around the Helix Nebula and be back for third meal.

The best place to achieve FTL speed is out by the airport. There's a long stretch between the landing strips and the river that provides enough distance to hit the hyper-spice event horizon.

"BLLLBLBBBLRRRRR!" @Nix Ixtb's lips shudder uncontrollably as he/they/it hangs their head out the window.

BWEEEP! Woooooooooooooo!

Damn, it's the cops. And no not the usual cops. The OTHER cops.

Psyhigh's Underage Driver's club doesn't worry about cops.

We're driving on a whole other frequency.

It's the OTHER cops we worry about.

The Underage Drivers' Club went cruising after the Halloween dance and found @Nix Ixtb lurking in his {untranslatable} Oldsmobile Antares behind the gym. He was in a funk, feeling bad about eating the Giant Intelligent Slugs on the dance floor.

"Is circle of life!" he kept saying. "Earth not understand. *sob*"

I may not understand the finer points of interplanetary etiquette, but I do know there's one thing that can always cheer me up when I'm down.

"Wanna go for a drive?" I asked.

We all left together in a squeal of tires and a cloud of burning rubber.

The Psyhigh Underage Drivers' Club has been making good friends with our extraterrestrial cousins -- taking them for drives down along the river and out by the airport, showing them what our cars can do. Doesn't seem like any of them have personal motorized transportation at home, so they like to hang their heads out the windows, tongues slathering, eye stalks waving in the wind. A Snarb was hanging by the tentacles from the roof of Harry Manzanita's Supra sliding in the Amazon warehouse lot.

Snarbs make a really weird noise when they're excited, like a sobbing donkey. And the juice it squirted out ruined the paint on the Supra. But Harry doesn't care. He thinks it adds character. Now the Snarb won't quit asking to do it again!

Halloween Pageant rehearsal went better tonight. I guess the Ixtbs find the Giant Intelligent Slugs irresistibly delicious, so the Psyhigh Underage Drivers' Club got placed right between them for the parade. In preparation we've modified the weapons on each of our cars specifically for alien crowd control -- magnetic nets, anesthesic foam, sonic screamers. All absolutely non-lethal. We wouldn't want to start an interplanetary incident!

A friend took me to get my driver's license, even though I'm not old enough. I'd taken Haunted Driver's Ed at Psyhigh and studied hard for the written test, but before my actual driving test the instructor took me into her office and said:

"You know this isn't about driving. It's about identity. Ensuring your identity. Are you sure you know who you are?"

"Well, yeah," I said. "That's really never been in question for me."

"Hmm," she said. I could tell she was unconvinced. "Take a look at this."

She opened up an old wooden box on her desk. Light poured out.

"LOOK AT IT!" she commanded. "LOOK DEEP INTO THE LIGHT!"

The next thing I remember I was running through town, clothes torn and hair on fire.