has a chrome section. I looked around at all the accessories that could be bought and plastered onto those enormous freight trucks. It was crazy. There were those ubiquitous chromed mudflap girls, a totally skanky silhouette of a woman. I had to move on; I was so out of place; it creeped me out.
I walked outside and watched the traffic coming and going on the freeway; the eighteen-wheelers pulling in to gas up. That’s a life lived on the run. I wonder if that’s all I have left. After a few moments to myself and some fresh air, I had begun to feel a little worse.
What am I doing? This is not the best plan…letting myself fall even more in love with Michael. If anything, I should be pulling away, watching, thinking it through, waiting to see if we ever could make it. I should be smart about all this…but I can’t help myself. It was like the undertow at the Oregon coast on those summer vacations when I was just a girl, a dangerous sweeping pull that I couldn’t help or control.
Kim found me. “Hey girl.”
“Hey. You feeling any better?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m not homicidal anymore. Sorry about all that.”
“Oh, no worries,” I said, rolling my eyes. “As long as we have cinnamon mini doughnuts.”
She didn’t get it. Joke fail. D’oh. D’oh-nut. Wow, Airel, get a grip.
“Let’s find Michael,” we said simultaneously, and then giggled like the best friends we used to be. That’s how it feels. Like it used to be. I was going to be overwhelmed again soon if things didn’t start looking up. I shivered and was getting mad at myself for getting so worked up over a dream. My mood was in the tank now, when only an hour ago I was just enjoying being and talking with Michael.
We walked back to the kidnapmobile and found Michael horking down a huge egg and bacon breakfast sandwich. “Look at this,” he said with his mouth full.
“Ew,” Kim said.
“Holy Captain Chipmunk Cheeks,” I said. “Hungry?”
He swallowed, washing it all down with an enormous swig of soda. “Seriously, look at this,” he pointed to his superduperphone.
“Holy Bucket, Batman! How many ounces is that thing?” I asked, pointing at his drink. Kim spat and snorted, a burst of mean-spirited laughter. I leaned over to see the screen of his phone. It was an article about a mass murder in Oregon.
My mood got serious. “You think it’s him.”
“Yeah,” he said.
Kim regained her composure too, and looked on.
“It was a group publicly called The Brotherhood of the Chameleon, a secret society. It looks like they had their own campus and everything. The only reason anyone knows anything about them now is because they’re all dead. I guess the investigators were looking for some way to connect all of them. Look at that,” he said, pointing to a picture of the blackened remains of a big building.
“What’s that?” Kim asked.
“Looks like it might have been an old school or something,” I said.
“Yep. The whole school was burned to the ground. This says over a hundred people died in the fire.”
“Dang; he’s not messing around,” I said under my breath.
“How do they know it was murder and not just a fire?” Kim asked.
Michael handed out the rest of the contents of the bag of fast food to Kim and me. I unwrapped my own massive breakfast sandwich and scanned the rest of the article as I took a bite. “The burned bodies were in pieces—all over.” I smacked my jaws together; I was hungrier than I thought I was.
Kim whistled. “So that’s Kreios? Angel gone bad. Man, remind me never to piss him off.”
“Well, it could be,” Michael said.
“So we’re heading to Oregon. When do we leave?” I asked. I wanted to find my grandfather as fast as we could. I needed to know what I was supposed to do now, where I was supposed to go; I was lost without Kreios.
“As soon as we gas up. We need to get a few things and buy a couple of Tracphones so you guys can try to call home.”
“Where is all this money coming from?” I asked.
“Are you kidding? Kreios has been alive for thousands of years…and I know where to look. I found a stash of cash at the house.”
“Now you tell us,” Kim broke in. “If I would have known that I would have made you take me to the mall!”
“Hello?”
When I heard my mom’s voice I wanted to feel her arms