This isn't weird.

Pipe Dreams

It had barely been sunset when Millie drifted off, but by the time she woke, it was already late in the morning. Amber offered her a paper cup of stale gas station coffee, and Kathleen offered her a bongrip. She accepted both. And then she was one of them.

She didn't feel like one of them, per se, but they all seemed to accept her as if she was. And she was comfortable. Far more comfortable than made sense. It felt as if she had been living in this absurd little caravan for a lifetime. She'd forgotten the rapidity with which transients could bond.

Especially when they were sharing drugs.

Days passed. It was hard to judge how many. Two? Three? A week? A month? Time had sort of lost its meaning. It certainly didn't seem to correlate with their rate of travel. They were never in a hurry. They didn't eat or sleep on any particular schedule. But Millie was eating, and she was sleeping. When she looked down at her hands, her wrists didn't seem quite so frail.

It was a ridiculous situation, one she knew she was too old for, but it was fun—something she'd half-believed she was never going to have again. And they thought she was so cool, older and more experienced, but mysterious and free, a leaf on the wind. By now, she was being a bit sardonic when she used the phrase, but they ate it up. It did make her wince a little, though, when they used slang she didn't understand, or referred to a song that had come out in the nineties as classic rock. They were keenly interested in her taste in music. Evidently, the hipsters of her own generation had successfully passed down the conviction that there was an inherent authenticity to all things vintage.

Vintage.

Yikes.

For the sake of preserving her own self-image, she largely stuck to exposing them to music she'd considered oldies when she was a teenager. Millie laughed herself to tears when she suggested a song by Grateful Dead and Kathleen replied with absolute earnesty, "Oh, I don't much care for heavy metal."

Their route to California was a meandering one, full of impulsive turns and unscheduled stops. Once, they pulled over on a deserted stretch of highway simply because the woods lining the road were so pretty, Kathleen just had to go for a walk. They'd trekked for about thirty minutes when they came upon another group of hikers wading through a creek—three bearded young men wearing suspenders, but not shirts or shoes, their eyes wide and dilated. One of them wore a severely muddied bowler hat and carried a banjo, and the other two were wielding pan flutes (at which they were surprisingly adept). They were bizarre, but benign, and only vaguely aware of the newcomers in their presence. Kathleen wanted to follow them, but fortunately, Amber and Paul-Come-Lately both lost interest when it became apparent that the strangers were all out of whatever hallucinogen had resulted in the unlikely scene. It made them much easier to shepherd back to the minibus.

Where exactly all of that took place, Millie couldn't say. She didn't really keep track of their location any more than she kept track of the time. She was too busy keeping track of them. Had she been this flighty when she was their age? It was a constant effort to wrangle them out of all manner of poor decisions. Amber in particular was alarmingly willing to get into cars with strangers, or accept unidentified pipes, pills, and drinks without question. Paul-Come-Lately wasn't much better. Kathleen was sensible by comparison, but her laissez-faire attitude had left Real Paul as the sole voice of reason for quite some time. He was extremely relieved to have another grown-up on board to babysit the unruly trio. They all seemed far more receptive to Millie's—well, Kathy's advice than they ever had been to his.

True, Millie was a little high sometimes, too, but usually only in the morning. Though she'd become oddly at peace in her waking hours, her dreams remained unsettling at best, tormented at worst. A quick hit upon waking ensured that they would be forgotten quickly. By the afternoon, she was generally sober. That was when she would sit up front with Real Paul, to share Real Conversation. She liked him especially. His complete lack of optimism was refreshing, and he reminded her of her friends—a perfect amalgamation of Indigo's stoicism, Isaac's sensibility, and Miguel's cattiness. The other three were a bunch of Dustins, impulsive and immature, but loveable in moderate doses. Well, Kathleen did remind her just the smallest bit of Ben—open, warm, and patient. Accepting to a fault.