The Super Jerk Trilogy (Now 3-in-1)

13. Put a Little Love On Me

{Cameron}

We're out of there by noon that day. Besides, I've itching to move on, like the only way I'll feel like we're accomplishing anything is by traveling. Having managed to draw each other out last night — after she'd told me about that guy who exposed her, I'd told her about my experiences with Kaelie — we both feel a lot more comfortable together. I guess when you've been as unlucky with love as the two of us, you sort of feel drawn to one another.

   "I have a question about this Kaelie," she says as we walk towards the nearby town. Traveling in the normal human way will throw Green off our trail, at least long enough to find a place to stay for longer than a few days.

   "What about her?" I run my hand over my hair, noticing how much it's grown since I was captured. It's shaggy and covers my ears completely.

   "She was a super too?"

   "Yeah," I say through a sigh. "She calls herself Pink Wildfire."

   She nods. "I never realized how hard it would be to be a girl in a man's world. You said she was angry about your breakup, but I don't think that's it."

   I don't say anything for a second. Kaelie had said as much too, and I had a feeling that when she was my enemy instead of my ally, part of her wrath had been because she felt outnumbered by guys. Even the number of villains that were girls was disproportionately small to male villains. "She just felt like a minority, I guess."

   "But I suppose," she continues, choosing not to respond to that. "When you find a guy who also happens to be a super that's willing to risk anything to save your life, it doesn't really matter that much anymore."

   That remark surprises me, enough that I look over at her. I notice just how blue her eyes are, touched with gold from the sun. And then I notice how bruised her face still is, reminding me of why we're on the run right now.

   "Cameron?" Her voice brings me back. "You're staring."

   I shake my head and blink. "Right. Sorry."

   It takes about a half hour more of walking before we come to the nearest town. I'm unsure of how to get a set of wheels short of hiding ourselves in a car, or an RV, or even a truck bed and waiting to see where it takes us. But before we do that, we need a plan of what to do next.

   "You know...I've been thinking," I say as we walk down the main street. "I feel really out of the loop way out here, and I have a feeling everybody's wondering where I am."

   "Right," Jocelyn says. "And your point?"

   "We need to get somewhere that I know people, or you do. Preferably back to St. Louis, where there's help." And Ellis and Kaelie, I add in my head, but she doesn't need to know that. "We're not helping to stop Green by running and hiding."

   "How do you suggest we do that? We can't just fly there." She squints up at the sky, and then back to me.

   "That's the problem. Green'll track us down quicker if we use superpowers, which is the quicker way. But he'll still be searching for a while if we don't, and hitchhike, or something, all the way there."

   "I still hear no semblance of a plan," Jocelyn says, but she seems in more of a teasing mood than actually being irritated.

   "Well, if you're ready for a road trip," I say, my eyes fastening onto an RV parked at the curb. "Then that's the first step."

≈≈

The difficult part about not having any money is compensating whoever owns the RV. The other difficult part is not to start a criminal record by stealing it. Not to mention we look like two ragged homeless people, barefoot and a little smelly. So we have to resort to becoming stowaways, climbing into the tiny back window when no one's looking. I check the license plate. Missouri. So if we don't get to St. Louis, we'll at least be in the right state, and can find our way back from there much easier.