One Week - By Nikki Van De Car Page 0,40

funny if I got you some Kool-Aid,” I say, gesturing at one of the Kool-Aid Days banners. “Unless, of course, you hate Kool-Aid too.”

“Everybody over the age of nine hates Kool-Aid,” Jess says.

I pull him by the arm and turn him to look at me. “I swear to God, you forget to snack ever again, and I'm leaving you to die by the side of the road.”

“Fair enough,” Jess nods. “Hey, um, speaking of that…what time is it?”

I stop cold. “I don't know.” I fish my cell phone out of my pocket, and suddenly I feel as sick as Jess. “It's late.”

“Like how late?” Jess grabs my phone, and peers at it. “The train left fifteen minutes ago!” he yells.

“Yeah. It's late.”

“We left Mandy's in plenty of time! How did it take forty minutes to walk seven blocks?”

“I don't know, Jess!” I yell back. “Maybe because some dumbass collapsed on the side of the road, unable to help himself, and doing nothing but mumble ‘Crackers!’”

Jess reaches out and grabs me by the shoulders. “Bee, you don't get it! My bag was on that train! And you idiot, you left your bag—the one with all your cash, and your precious credit cards—everything is on that train! It's gone!”

I shake him off. “I know that!”

“We should never have gotten off that train! You are the most spoiled—”

“I'm spoiled? You went into hypoglycemic shock because the snack made available to you wasn't your very favorite, and I had to save your stupid ass again and you're fucking ungrateful again, so as far as I'm concerned this is all your fault and your problem, so you solve it!” I throw the boxes of crackers, which I have, ridiculously, been carrying all this time, at Jess's head. He ducks and avoids most of them, but the corner of the Wheat Thins hits him across the temple.

“Ow! Fuck, Bee!” Jess rubs his head and hands me my cell phone. “Ow. Fine. We'll just, I don't know. We'll find a way to catch up with the train at the next stop.” Jess fumbles around and finally reaches into his front pocket and pulls out his wallet.

“You have your wallet?” I ask incredulously. “You had money and I broke into somebody's house for no reason? And why the hell wasn't it in your back pocket like it's supposed to be?”

“Like it's supposed to be?” Jess asks. “It gives me sciatica when I sit on it for too long, so I put it in my front pocket,” he explains. He pulls out a train schedule and flips through it. “All right, we've got to get to Lincoln. Which is, I think, a hundred miles away. And we need to get there by 5:00.”

“It's almost 4:30 now!” I shout, panicked. “That's not possible.”

“No. It's not.” Jess covers his face with his hands and laughs disbelievingly. “You are the worst traveler in the world, Bee. Ever. Disaster just seems to follow you. It's amazing.”

“This one was your fault,” I snap. “What are we going to do?”

Jess shakes his head, still laughing. “I have no idea, babe. I have—let's see—thirty bucks to my name, and that's not enough to get us a Batmobile to get us there in time. I'm all tapped out.”

I throw up my hands and turn away. But the truth is, I have no idea either. That is, there's a really obvious solution, but I don't want to take it. Okay, there are two really obvious solutions, and neither of them are good.

One, we go back to Mandy's house and beg asylum for the night, while we rally and figure out the next step. And duct tape Mandy's mother's mouth shut for the duration of our stay.

Two, I call my father. You could make the argument that it's time, and that Hastings, Nebraska, is far enough away from LA to make a statement about my independence and self-reliance.

Yeah, right. Option One it is.

Day Five

I roll over and see Jess sleeping on the floor next to the bed. Well, he did get the top bunk last night.

In the end, the only way we were able to really convince Sally that I wasn't the vanished heiress Bette Gold was by continuing the idiotic love vacation story Jess told Tessa. Other than that, we pretty much stuck to the truth, although Jess said he was allergic to corn nuts, not that he hated them. Herbert didn't seem to quite buy it, but Mandy and Sally and Martha were all delighted to have