One Week - By Nikki Van De Car Page 0,19
I left the house with my purse and nothing else. I wasn't even thinking at all. I know now that I probably could have screamed for help…”
“Where was your father?” Jess asks tightly.
I sigh. “He was only upstairs. He would have heard me. And I know that he couldn't have thought something like that would happen. But…I was—am—so fucking pissed at him for having put me in that position that I couldn't call him. And now I won't.” I give Jess a challenging look, to see if he'll push me to go home, but he doesn't.
“What about your mom?” Jess asks.
I look away and start picking at the straps of my bag again. “She took off when I was two. My dad has custody, and she's never tried to see me. For years, he would give me Christmas and birthday presents and say they were from her, but I finally figured out that she never sent anything. Not even a card.” I twitch my shoulders uncomfortably. “I don't know where she is or anything about her. Whatever.”
We sit quietly for a moment, and then Jess gives me a glance and lets of my hand. He stretches, trying to relax the mood a little bit. “I get it. I mean, I didn't realize it at first, but I've seen pictures of you online and in People magazine. Where they pick apart the clothes you wear to go shopping, and stuff like that. Even apart from this whole Thom Derrek thing, which, rest assured, is just about the most fucked up thing I've ever heard—if that's not really you, not something you're actually into and are comfortable with, I can see why you'd want to get away from it.”
“Except I completely suck at getting away from it!” I moan. “If I weren't following you around, I'd probably have gotten on some random bus or train and I'd end up in Hicksville, Florida, or something. And then I'd just end up in some blog about the worst places fake celebrities go on vacation.” Ugh, when you lay it out there like that, it's pretty pathetic. I mean, how hard can it be to get from one place to another when you have a ticket that lets you go wherever you want? And somehow I can't even manage to get out of California!
The train starts moving, and I look out the window to watch. Three hours to Sacramento; next stop, Chicago. I take a deep breath, and tell myself to give it a rest. I made it this far—through no great merit of my own, I know, but still—and I'm going to prove to my dad, and to myself, that I'm not just a doll to be paraded around, useful for nothing but posing for photographs.
“Well, you weren't exactly operating under the best of circumstances. I promise, I'll get you to New York,” Jess says. “It's pretty easy from this point. No more buses. And after that,” he shrugs. “You'll figure it out.”
* * *
By the time the train pulls into Sacramento, I'm about ready to lose my mind. I did the math, and the amount of time I have spent over the last two days staring straight ahead, waiting for the minutes to pass, is the amount of time it would have taken me to watch the extended versions of Lord of the Rings and all their special features. Not that I'd know that firsthand, mind you.
And the train from Sacramento to Chicago makes the travel time I've clocked so far seem like a blink. A really fast blink. A flinch. Do you know how long it takes to get from Sacramento to Chicago? Forty-nine hours and forty-one minutes. That's over two days spent sitting on a train. I'm claustrophobic just thinking about it.
Jess has done it before, and he says it's not that big a deal. That there are dining cars and the seats recline (because of course we're going coach, because I'm an idiot and don't have enough cash to upgrade) and the views of the Rocky Mountains are impressive. I told him where to stick the Rocky Mountains. Just because he's in no hurry to get home to get yelled at doesn't mean I have nothing I'd rather be doing than sitting in a chair, reclined or not, for two freaking days.
We step off the train, and I've never been so glad to breathe fresh air in my life.
“How long until the train for Chicago leaves?”
Jess sighs and steers me