We went flying over the hill at an over-the-top 100 miles per hour speed. Hanging onto my seatbelt for dear life, I hesitantly looked out my window. Our not so friendly Police friends were still on our tail. “We got company!” I yelled at Darrius, who seemed to be having the time of his life living like they do in the Fast & Furious movies.
“Hang on!” he shouted. If I had to describe Darrius, I would describe him as a darker Paul Walker type. Yeah, he was reckless, but he’s also charming…to an extent. When he’s not being a complete arrogant ass. His hair was black as night without moon or stars, yet he had a white strip that was pure white. And yes, it is natural. His eyes are deep brown, that when he looked at you in a certain way, you’d swoon…sometimes. His lazy-I’m-gonna-do-bad smile sometimes made my heart flutter. Will I ever tell him this? Not no, but Hell no.
“To what?” I yelped as he made a more than suicidal left in a right lane during a red light. Amazing enough, we survived, but not without hearing the consequences of our actions.
“Now that’s what I’m talking about!” Darrius hooped and hollered while looking back in the rearview mirror. “Owned you! Owned you!”
I looked out the rear window to see what Darrius had just ‘owned’ and my jaw dropped. We had caused a massive accident. “Darrius!” I screamed at him. “Stop acting like your man-crush, Bryon, and get off the main road! We got to stop and switch gears or something.”
“Oh, I’m switching gears alright!” he hit the gear shift, and we sped up even faster as we barreled down the already frantic street. “Xam! Hit the sirens or something; we need to clear the roads!”
“And cause even more attention to ourselves? I don’t think so! You can slow this bad boy down before you kill somebody. Like, I don’t know, us!” I tried to make him see reason, but my guess is the blood went to his head. Like usual.
He then proceeded to pull a hard right, which sent me out of my seat into his lap as we managed to miraculously get off the main road.
“Don’t you need to buy me a drink first, doll?” he joked as I struggled to get back into the sanctuary of my passenger seat.
“Keep dreaming, pretty boy.” I grumbled as I sat back in position away from him. “Slow down, will you? We lost the cops already. Now we need to gather our bearings and find a good place to stash the car.”
“Do you ever do anything spontaneous?” he asked over the roar of the engine.
“I became your friend, didn’t I?” I shot back, hoping to wound his ego.
His response, as usual, was a breath-taking smile aimed at me as he kept driving.
It wasn’t so long after the chaos and hustle bustle of our actions that we managed to find a nicely deserted back road. “Check the car. Our 'friends' might have been nice enough to leave us some weapons and ammunition.” Darrius ordered as he got out of the car and slung one of our backpacks on his shoulder.
Being thorough, I check the glove box, under the seats, in the doors, and between the seats. “I got nothing,” I raised my voice as I leaned over to pop the trunk for him. I then got out and retrieved my backpack from the floor and the groceries that we had to steal from the backseat.
“Damn, nothing back here either.” He slammed the trunk with irritation. “I am so sick of using a knife when those fuckers got tazer guns, tranq guns, regular guns, and those shitty shot guns.” After a moment our two to relax, he looked at me again. “What do you think is enough breathing room?”
“I’m sorry Darrius, but I don’t think there will ever be enough breathing room.” I took a breath to prepare one of my full blown analyses. “Yes, we’ve managed to evade them for two months. In that time, we’ve moved from our small quiet home of Simi Valley to the frantic crazed city of San Francisco. Yes, here is more populated with tourists and locals, but it is also very populated with SFPD. We were just caught in an open market, which usually has little to no cameras unless you count the ones on the street. And it would be very improbable and time consuming that they would waste the man hour watching the feeds. We’ve jumped the list from regular runaways dramatically in the last twenty minutes than we have in our entire escape. Theft for stealing from the market. Grand theft auto for stealing the Police car. And possible involuntary man-slaughter for the accidents caused in that chase. Not to mention resisting arrest. Darrius, we’re screwed no matter how we look at this.”
“So, what you’re saying Dorothy is that we’re not out of the wicked witch’s dark forest just yet.” He smirked.
“No Mr. Scarecrow, we’re not. Too bad you don’t got any brains, they might have told you that acting like Paul Walker wasn’t the best idea.”
“Oh, that was cold.” He spoke as though offended, but his tone said he thought it was funny. “Here, let me take those. Don’t want your episodes to come back, have you eaten today?” He took the backpack off my shoulder.
“I had a protein bar at dawn,” I told him. I hated it when he got like this. Yeah, it was considerate, but it was also very time consuming.
He reached in one of the grocery bags and pulled out a Starbucks Double Shot. “Here, it has sugar and caffeine. It should hold you off until we get real food.”
Annoyed, I took the can and popped the top. “Which way?” I asked as I sipped the drink.
“Back the way we came, of course. They’d be expecting us to keep going getting far away. Besides, I thought I saw an exit to Chinatown.” Nodding, I followed him.
“Ooh, you know my weakness,” I joked. “Should we put the groceries in one of our backpacks?” I asked as I looked inside to see what all we accidentally stole. Shocking enough, it was all non-perishables. “Well, lucky us this time. Seriously, I don’t think I could’ve handled another week of fruit cups for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.” Looking at him, I was reminded of our first few weeks on the road when we ran out of MREs and actually had to re-enter civilization.
“Hey, in Nutrition they always said fruit was good for you.” Darrius knelt down so he could put the groceries in his pack.
“Yeah, they also said ‘Candy is dandy, but fruit helps you poop’. Fruit cleans people out Darrius, it’s meant to be eaten as a from time to time snack, not a full meal. If you don’t believe me, remember a few weeks ago when we had to stay at that bus station for two days? Both of us probably ruined their pluming.”
Darrius looked up at me, “And here I thought I liked girls who talked dirty.”
I rolled my eyes and turned away sipping my coffee. No matter what the conversation, even if the most serious, he always manages to put in some sort of pun. It’s been like that for 7 years. My conclusion about Darrius is that his humor is his outlet; his escape from what is truly going on around him.
Being trained as a Personnel Profiler, I am exceptional at reading people. The time I’ve spent with Darrius, I’ve learned many things about him. Sometimes, I see it as a long term case study.
After a while, Darrius stood beside me. “Don’t go all profiler on me. Remember; we’re leaving that life behind us.” I looked up at him. He was serious, which was good sometimes, but he was only serious when either of us acted like them. “Let’s get on that Yellow Brick Road, D.” He placed his hand on my shoulder encouragingly and we were off again.
YOU ARE READING
Utopia: Misfit Fury
ActionEveryone has issues with their parents. At one point in their lives, the children even wish for their parents to be different people. That is no exception here. My friend and I are, in fact, runaways from two military trained families. My friend...
