sage (1) My name is Ben. (2) In the summer of 1985 I was fifteen years old. (3) My brother, Reggie, was fourteen. (4) As for when we got out, we got out that morning, hour and a half flat, having beat the traffic. (5) Over the course of a summer, you heard a lot of different strategies of how to beat the traffic. (6) There were those who ditched the office early on Friday afternoon, casually letting their co-workers know the reason for their departure in order to enjoy a little low-pressure envy. (7) Others headed back to the city late Sunday evening, choking every last pulse of joy from the weekend with cocoa-buttered hands. (8) They stopped to grab a bite and watched the slow red surge outside the restaurant window while dragging clam strips through tartar sauce-soon, soon, not yet-until the coast was clear. (9) My father's method was easy and brutal-hit the road at five in the morning so that we were the only living souls on the Long Island Expressway, making a break for it in the haunted dark. (10) Every so often my mother said, "There's no traffic," as if it were a miracle. (11) Well, it wasn't really dark, June sunrises ar up and at 'em, but I always remember those drives that way-memory has a palette and broad brush. (12) Perhaps I remember it that way because my eyes were closed most of the time. (13) The trick of those early-morning jaunts was to wake up just enough to haul a bag of clothes down into the car, nestle in, and then retreat back into sleep. (14) Any unnecessary movement might exile you from the realm of half sleep and into the bleary half awake, so my brother and I did a zombie march slow and mute until we hit the backseat, where we turned into our separate nooks, sniffing upholstery, butt to butt, more or less looking like a Rorschach test. (15) What do you see in this picture? (16) Two brothers going off in different directions. What choice summarizes the passage