by Jeff Strand
In gym I’m not paying attention, and I take a volleyball to the head. It’s not as bad as a baseball or a bowling ball, but it’s enough to knock me off my feet. Enough to make me kind of woozy. I refuse an offer to go to the nurse because I’ve been the subject of too much discussion already. I don’t want kids laughing about how I had to go to the nurse because I got bonked on the head by a volleyball.
In biology I’m so intent on ignoring Audrey that I spill a full dissection tray on my pants. (Despite the misery of my life right now, I want to be fair and make it clear that we do more in this class than just slice up dead organisms. The timing is purely coincidental.)
As I step out into the hallway after the final bell, Blake is standing nearby with a group of friends. They’re all smiling and laughing as if they don’t have a care in the world. Oh, look. One of them just high-fived Blake. It’s really super that he has such close friends, isn’t it?
I stand at my locker. I finally decide that I’m never going to get my combination right, so I give up.
“You’re at the wrong locker,” says Audrey, walking up to me.
I move one locker to the left. I’m not going to thank her.
“Sorry about your band,” she says.
“No, you’re not.”
“Of course I am.”
I really don’t want her sympathy right now. What I want is for her to say is, Will you take me back? so that I can say, No! Ha! but that’s unlikely. First, because she’s not going to take me back, and second, because if she did, I’d definitely say yes.
“I honestly don’t care if you’re sorry about my band or not,” I say. “If you want to clear your conscience, clear it someplace else.”
Okay, this combination lock isn’t opening either. But hey, if my fingers can’t play guitar anymore, why should they be able to spin a tiny dial to the correct numbers?
I want Audrey to leave before she says something like, Oh, by the way, I’ve met another guy. He’s the most amazing human being ever. He’s in a ska band, and he can dissect a squid while wearing a blindfold. Or before she tells me that she’s dating Blake.
No…
She wouldn’t dare…
My mouth blurts out the question before my brain has fully processed the implications. “Are you going out with Blake?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“My cousin Blake.”
“I knew which Blake you meant.”
“Is he your new boyfriend?”
“Did you really just ask me that?”
“Is that a no?”
“Do you seriously think I’d go out with Blake?”
“No, but I’d feel better if you denied it.”
“I’m not going out with Blake. I can’t believe you even asked me that. You’re losing your mind, Rod.” Audrey storms off.
Yes, I feel stupid for having asked, but at least she isn’t going out with Blake. I try the lock a few more times, decide that I’m not likely to get any homework done anyway, and give up.
I stumble a bit as I walk down the hallway toward the school exit. If I see anybody holding a grapefruit, I know I’ll totally lose it, but nobody has one, at least not that they show me. It’s possible that any citrus product could’ve set me off, so I’m glad we didn’t have to find out for sure.
I walk out to the parking lot, where Blake is waiting by my car. I’m done being surprised by his sheer nerve.
Mom was asleep when we got home, and I didn’t wake her up before I left for school, so she doesn’t know that Fanged Grapefruit is history. She’d texted me to ask how it went, and I texted back that it went Great! with a promise of I’ll tell you all about it tonight! Now I text her again:
Lots of practice to do. Can I stay over at Mel’s?
She texts back a moment later. On a school night?
We’ll study. I promise.
I wanted to hear about your show.
You will.
Blake will give spoilers!
He’ll be at Mel’s too. We’ve got a ton of stuff to work out. Please?
*sigh* Yes, but remember that school has to come before music.
Thanks, Mom!!!
I stick my cell phone back into my pocket as I reach the car. Blake gets into the passenger seat as if nothing’s wrong. “How was your day?” he asks.
“Unspeakably horrific, thanks for asking.”
He waits until I’ve driven away from school before speaking again. “You know I did you a favor, right?”
“Pretty sure you didn’t.”
“Mel and Clarissa were holding you back.”
“Yes, that’s why you planted seeds of doubt in my mind to freak me out. You wanted me to reach my full musical potential.”
“Is that so hard to believe?”
“Yep.”
He sighs. “If you don’t want to recognize when people are doing you favors, that’s your right.”
“It sure is.”
“You missed the turn,” Blake points out.
“Hmm.”
Blake frowns. “You’re looking a little crazy-eyed, Rod. I’m no fan of driving, but maybe I should take over.”
“Request denied.”
“Where are we going?”
“It’s a magical surprise.”
“I’ve got homework.”
“Me too.”
“Are you going to kill me and dump my body somewhere?” Blake asks. He gives a nervous chuckle that indicates he was ninety-eight percent kidding, but he’s focused on the remaining two percent of doubt.
“Nope.”
“You sure?”
“Yep. Not gonna kill you.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“I’m driving you back to California.”
26.
“No, you're not," says Blake.
“I sure as heck am.”
“Do you know how far it is from Florida to California?”
“I sure as heck do.”
“Twenty-five hundred miles.”
I nod. “Your calculation is correct.”
“That’s two thousand, five hundred miles.”
“Yep.”
“You really think you’re going to drive me back to California and then get back in time for school tomorrow?”
“No, Blake,” I say. “I do not believe that my car is capable of defying the laws of time and space.”
“So…”
“So?”
“So…what? We’re going on a three-day truancy road trip?”
“Now you’ve got it!”
“Aunt Connie will freak.”
“I told her we’re spending the night at Mel’s.”
“What are you going to do when school calls her tomorrow and says that we have unexcused absences?”
“I’ll figure it out then.”
“I don’t think you planned this very well,” says Blake.
“Maybe not.”
Blake reaches into his pocket. I push the switch to make the automatic window go down. When he pulls out his cell phone, I grab it out of his hand and fling it out of the car.
“Hey!” he shouts. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I can’t have you calling the police.”
“I wasn’t going to call the police! I was going to call your mom!”
“Can’t have that either.”
“You probably cracked the screen!”
“Then you shouldn’t have taken it out of your pocket when I was rolling down the window. What did you think I was going to do? Use your brain, Blake!”
“I didn’t think you’d destroy valuable property!”
“Then you miscalculated how angry I am. You said I had crazy eyes. Maybe in the future you’ll know not to take out your cell ph
one when a crazy-eyed driver is rolling down the window.”
“You’ve proven your point. Let’s go back and get it.”
“Nope.”
“I’m not riding all the way to California without any games.”
“We’ll play ‘I Spy with My Little Eyes’ if we get bored.”
“You’re paying for that phone.”
“Have your people send an invoice to my people.”
“C’mon, Rod, this is ridiculous. Are you seriously kidnapping me?”
“Depends on how you define kidnapping.”
“Driving me across the country against my will.”
“Oh, then yeah, I’m definitely kidnapping you. Totally.”
“What do you think is going to happen?”
“I’ll drop you off at your house, and you’ll stay there.”
“There are a million logic errors with that.”
“I agree,” I say. “Your problem is that you’re treating this like it was a carefully thought out scheme rather than me being spontaneous.”
“Very well. If I’m being kidnapped, I guess there’s nothing I can do.” He reclines the seat. “I’m taking a nap. Let me know when we get there.”
Blake closes his eyes.
A few minutes later I pull onto the highway.
A few minutes after that, Blake opens his eyes.
“Can’t sleep?” I ask.
“This joke has gone far enough,” he says.
“If it were a joke, I’d agree with you.”
“You could end up in jail.”
“You’ll visit me, right?”
“You’re going too fast.”
“I think I’m going the perfect speed.”
“Rod, I mean it. You’re going too fast.”
“How fast would you like me to go?”
“The speed limit.”
“Speed limits are for boring people,” I say.
I should clarify something about my mental state right now. I’m nowhere near as sane as I was at the beginning of this book, but I’m not quite as insane as I want Blake to believe. I’m crazy enough to kidnap my cousin, but not crazy enough to rev my car to one hundred and ten miles per hour and ram it into the concrete median. (Not that my car could go that fast without falling apart anyway.) So to summarize, yes, I’m faking. But, yes, Blake is right to be worried. But I’m only going five miles an hour over the state speed limit, and I’m using my turn signal and looking before I change lanes.
“All right, it’s obvious that you’re very, very tired,” says Blake. “It’s understandable. You drove all night. Maybe you should get some rest, and then we can revisit this whole road trip idea when you’re refreshed.”
I do a sudden swerve that makes Blake yelp.
“Sorry,” I said. “Thought I saw a goat in the road.”
“There are no goats on the highway!”
“A yak then.”
“You’re gonna get us killed!”
“Nahhhhhh. That doesn’t sound like me.”
“I apologize, okay?” says Blake. “I apologize for everything! It was wrong, and I admit it.”
“What are you apologizing for exactly?”
“I said! Everything!”
“I’d like some specifics.”
“Pull off at the next exit and I’ll give you all the specifics you want!”
“I don’t think so, Mr. Blakey-Poo,” I say. “You’ll tell me what I want to hear, and then I’ll still be stuck with you for two more months. Much better to take you back to California.”
“But that’s ludicrous!”
“That’s why it’ll be so much fun!”
I guess I didn’t tell you if I’m legitimately planning to drive Blake all two thousand five hundred miles back to his home or if this is a prank. The answer is that I’m serious.
I know, I know, I know. That’s not the kind of behavior you expect from the heroes of books you read. But Blake left me no choice! What else am I supposed to do? If I don’t get rid of my cousin soon, I’ll be so far gone that this whole book will be another six hundred pages of me thinking, Blah blah rrraar blah snorkle giggle blah blah woooo.
Blake lets out a deep sigh. “I know why you’re doing this. You want to hear me beg.”
“Nope,” I say, although I’m not going to lie. Hearing him beg would be pleasant.
“Well, I’m not going to give you the satisfaction. I’m not going to say another word for the rest of the trip.”
“I love that idea. Challenge accepted.”
And so we drive in silence.
After about twenty minutes, I start to consider that I’ve had better ideas in my life than abducting my cousin. What am I doing? I can’t miss school tomorrow because of this! I have to turn back! I need to ask my history teacher for an extra credit assignment to make up for the quiz I bombed today!
And yet…if I give up, Blake will have the upper hand pretty much forever.
He could do even worse stuff. He could make me get straight Fs in school and ruin my college potential. He could burn down my house. He could make my life so miserable that I’ll want to devote my entire existence to trying to unlock the secret of time travel in order to go back to prevent my own birth.
Really, I doubt he’d actually burn down my house. He’s more subtle than that. But I absolutely cannot let him win this round. And if I have to drive him all the way across the United States of America to add a point to my (currently empty) score column, I’ll do it.
I keep driving.
We hit the hour mark. Blake remains silent. He’s staring out the window like a droid in hibernation mode.
Two hours.
Two hours and eleven minutes.
Two hours and nineteen minutes.
Two hours and twenty-six minutes.
“You’re low on gas,” says Blake.
“Ha!” I shout. “You spoke! I won the battle of wills! Loser! Loser! Loser!”
“That’s fine, but we’re still running out of gas.”
“Admit that I won! I want to hear you say it! ‘Rod, you won.’ Say it! Why won’t you say it? Speak the words, Blake! Speak ’em!”
You know what? Maybe I’m even less grounded than I thought. I didn’t expect to have quite that big of an outburst when Blake finally spoke. And the hysterical giggling doesn’t help. I’ll be honest. Blake isn’t safe in this car with me.
He looks scared.
“Yeah, we’ll stop for gas,” I say.
“Thank you.”
That fool. If he’d let us run out of gasoline, we would’ve been stuck by the side of the highway, and he would’ve been saved! I guess Blake Montgomery isn’t so perfect, now is he?
I pull off at the next exit.
“Are you going to make a run for it when I stop at the pump?” I ask.
Blake shakes his head. “No.”
“Are you sure?”
“You’d shoot me in the back.”
“Oh, I don’t have a weapon,” I tell him. I want him to be intimidated by me, but there have to be boundaries.
“Still, I’m not going to try to escape.”
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“Because you’ll stop at the pump and I won’t leave.”
“That sounds suspicious.”
“Did you bring handcuffs?”
“No, sorry.”
“Do you want to lock me in the trunk?”
“Yeah, but I don’t want somebody to see me doing it.”
“Then maybe you should have worked out a plan for refueling the car before you dragged me along.”
“I said this was spur of the moment.”
“Still, you knew that your car didn’t get twenty-five hundred miles to the gallon, right?”
“Yes.”
“I’m surprised it gets four miles to the gallon.”
“Now is not the time to criticize my car.”
I pull into the gas station and stop in front of a pump. If Blake unfastens his seat belt, I’ll instruct him in a very firm tone to immediately refasten it. If he unfastens his seat belt and opens the door, I’ll try to kick it closed before he gets out. If he unfastens his seat belt, opens the door, and gets out…well, I don’t know if I’ll actually tackle him to the ground or not. That would probably draw undue attention. I might just let him go.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” says Blake.
“Hold it.”
“Is that truly the risk you want to take? Do I look like somebody with flawless bladder control?”
“I have to go too. We’ll go together.”
“Oh, yay.”
I get out of the car, keeping a close eye on Blake’s seat belt and the possibility that it might pop loose at any moment.
By the way, if you’re one of those people who buys a book and then skips around in it, it’s possible that this is the first page you’re reading. Let me assure you that I’m not the bad guy. Blake is horrible. I’m not going to go so far as to say that my behavior is justified, but at least skim the first twenty-five chapters, okay? Then you’ll understand.
I swipe my debit card.
The electronic display on the gas pump informs me that the transaction has been declined.
I swipe it again.
Declined.
I almost swipe it a third time but decide I can’t handle that much rejection. Was it insufficient funds? I thought I had enough money in my bank account to get me to California, but I also have to concede that planning is not my strongest personality trait right now.
“Do you have a credit card?” I ask Blake.
“For what?”
“Gas.”
“You didn’t bring gas money?”
“It won’t take my card.”
Blake stares at me for a while. “You’re a very poor kidnapper.”
“I know.”
“Am I gonna get reimbursed?”
“How about we split the costs? You owe me that at least.”
Blake rolls down the window and hands me a credit card.
“Thank you.”
“You realize they can trace it, right?”