Chipless

Chapter 18- Escaping Aspen

Tessa looks the most surprised of all of us. Quinn is her mother? I didn't see that coming. "My mother's alive?" Tessa murmurs to herself. Everyone stares at her, like we're waiting for something to happen. Nothing does.
Ana lays a hand on her shoulder, "That must be a lot to process," she says, "I think we should all go to bed and tomorrow we leave Aspen."
"The guest room is in pretty decent condition," Jared shrugs, "you can use it if you want, it's upstairs, to the right at the end of the hall."
"No thanks," Lily yawns, "They can have it, I'll sleep on the couch." With that, she stretches out on the couch and instantly falls asleep.
"Ok then," Jared looks upstairs as if he heard or saw something then looks back at us, "Come on." He signals for us to follow and we do. The room has two full size beds and a nightstand in the middle. It's not anything special but it'll work. "I'm guessing that Anthony and Ze will share and so will Tessa and Gavin." Jared takes a deep breath before continuing, "And Ana, mom and Dad never got rid of your room, in case you ever came back. So you can sleep there."
"Ok." Ana smiles and follows Jared to her old room.
"Goodnight guys," Tessa walks over to the bed and closes her eyes, "We'll all most likely be dead in the morning." Gavin goes and lays down next to her. She doesn't seem to mind.
"What do you think she meant," Ze glares at me, "by we'll all be dead by morning?"
I search my mind for an answer but can't seem to find one. "I don't know, but I think Quinn's gonna try to kill us all."
Ze hugs me and bury my head in his shoulder. "I'm not gonna let that happen," he says, "Quinn almost killed you once and I'll never be able to forgive myself if she succeeds." His lips find mine, I wish this was reality. If having a perfect relationship was the biggest issue in my life I'd be on cloud nine. But that's been moved to the back of my mind, and it's unlikely that it will ever be seen again.

Time skip

I awake to someone shaking my shoulder. "Anthony, we gotta go." I can't see who it is but I still know it's Ze. I throw the blanket off of me and get out of bed. I'm still half asleep so I walk to the bathroom and splash some cold water in my face. I look nothing like I did before I left. Same hair, skin tone, and stuff like that. Other than that, I'm a completely different guy.
I look, and feel, destroyed. My eyes make me look soulless and empty. I take off my shirt to look at my wounds. I have a hard time recognizing myself. I'm no longer just a regular tenth grade boy who's biggest problem is fitting in or accepting himself. I'm a runaway, I've put my friends, loved ones, and my own life in danger. It's my job to fix that.
Someone knocks on the door of the bathroom. "Who is it?" I ask.
"It's Ze, and we gotta go, it's quarter 'till five." I open the door. Ze looks twice as tired as I do. I kiss him softly, everything about it is passionate. He means something to me, he's the main reason I shouldn't just give up and die. We pull away from each other, "I hope you know how much I love you." He whispers in my ear, "you ready to go?"
I nod, "Yeah." Everyone is waiting by the door. We all look at each other for a minute, then without a word, leave.
Aspen mornings in the summer are the worst. They're hot and humid, which sucks for people with asthma. It's also foggy and hard to see anything within five feet of me. We're planning on taking a bus and asking the driver to take us and far away from Aspen as possible. But at four forty-five in the morning we're not having much luck.
Finally, we find a bus with no one else on it. "Where Ya goin'?" The bus driver asks. He appears to be in his mid fifties or early sixties. He's nearly bald and has messy tangled beard.
"As far away from Aspen as you can take us." Gavin tells him.
"The Lockwood Motel then." The driver says, "Not the most pleasant place in the world but perfect if you wanna hide something or get away. Get comfortable, it's about a two hour drive."
"What if you need to hide yourself?" Ze raises one eyebrow.
The driver sighs, "Listen kid, if you're looking for Anthony Baxter, just give up. He's dead, gone, buzzard food, only a fool would think he's still alive."
Ze rolls his eyes, "Where you watching TV when that message came on last night?"
"Yeah." The driver responds.
"My name is Steven, or 'Ze' Andrews, and I'm here with Anastasia Massey, Gavin McCoy, and Tessa Alexander. We're running from Quinn, and if we don't leave Aspen soon we'll all be dead." The driver looks back at Ze, his eyes wide.
He turns back around and starts the bus, "Well we better get goin' then."
The bus drive was long like the driver had mentioned, but longer than expected. I sleep for most of the ride as well as everyone else. My head rests on Ze's shoulder and his arm wraps around me. Two hours later the bus comes to an abrupt stop, I jerk forward and hit my head on the seat in front of me. Ze tries not to laugh but it just comes out, "Are you ok?"
"Yeah," I tell him, running my index finger over the bump on my forehead, "nothing broken, nothing bruised." I look out the window, we're here, the Lockwood Motel. It isn't much, it just looks like a bunch of old abandoned cabins.
"Alrighty then, time to get off." The driver opens the door with a switch and signals for us to leave. We all get off and watch the bus drive off until we can't see it anymore.
"Ok everyone, let's go check into this dump." Tessa walks towards the nicest of the cabins, which I'm guessing is the front desk.
The lobby is pretty nice. I lay my hands on the cool surface of the front desk. Someone rings the bell, causing us to jump. An Indian women walks behind the desk and smiles at us, "Welcome to the Lockwood Motel! How many of you are there? Seven? Ok, four boys, three girls right? Good." She put's her hands on her hips. She speaks so fast I can barely understand her, especially with the accent.
She looks at me and her smile fades, "Come on, it's not raining inside or anything! What's with the hood?" I know what she's implying. I should take off my hood so she can see my face. I roll my eyes and take off my hood. She gets a grin that seems almost to big for her face, "Anthony Baxter it's been to long!"
My eyes widen, "Mrs. Vaskarla?" She nods. Mrs. Vaskarla was the counselor at my middle school and left the year I went into high school. I went to talk to her at least twice a week. I practically lived in her office.
"How are you doing?" She asks.
"Meh," I tell her, "I've been running for my life the last few weeks and got whipped but I'm fine."
"That's horrible," She folds her arms, "I'm surprised you're taking it so well." An awkward silence falls upon the room and Mrs. Vaskarla changes the topic, "Don't just stand there, introduce me to your friends!"
"Uh," I start, "You already know Lily and Jared, the blond is Ana, the taller of the two boys is Gavin, the short haired girl is Tessa, and the boy with the interesting eyes is Ze, my boyfriend." Everyone was off doing their own thing at this point so I just have to point them out.
"You've done well," Mrs. Vaskarla takes a sip of her coffee that was on the desk, "see, I told you that there's someone for you." I smile, I do remember her telling me this. At the time I didn't believe her. Then again I was an ignorant eighth grader who didn't listen to anything anyone said. "Anyways, a room for the boys and a room for the girls I suppose?" I nod and she hands me to sets of keys.
"Enjoy your stay."