The Conversion

Chapter 16

  I push my overnight bag into the storage space beneath the bus and ascend the steps. I claim two seats near the back and impatiently wait for Peter. Standing up to look at the bus door for 4th time that minute, I pull my phone out of my pocket and connect it to the bus wifi. Hoping it won't lag badly, I get Supernatural set up. I had watched 27 episodes in the past four days to catch up to Peter. Finally, I see him step onto the bus and I wave at him. He smiles and comes over.

"We're still on for that Supernatural marathon, right?" he asks.

"Yass of course," I squealed. "You have no idea how obsessed I've become with it."

Peter chuckles lowly. "Not as much as me. I watched five seasons in a month. And..." he says and pulls out a necklace from underneath his shirt. It's an anti-possession charm. I laugh. "No, that's not it," he said and showed me a keychain of their 1967 Chevy Impala he had on his backpack.

"Umm ok you win," I say and hold up my hands in surrender. "Okay can we start watching? You're on this episode, right?"

He nods. I hand him an earbud and press play. I curl up my legs next to me and am about to lean my head against him when I pause. "Do you mind?" He shakes his head no and returns his focus to the screen. I settle my head on his shoulder and continue watching...

I wake up with a start. "Ungh" I say and sit up, wiping at my eyes.

"Um, we're here," Peter says awkwardly and hands me my phone. I nod.

"Oh, um, I'm sorry. I stayed up late last night watching Supernatural and I guess I was just... tired," I say with a laugh.

"Oh yeah, don't worry about it," he says.

Our head coach speaks up from the front of the bus. "I just called Lewis, he says the trailer will be here in 45 minutes. We're going to go ahead and get settled at the hotel for tonight and then we'll come back to get the boats rigged for the races today. So I'm going to read off the room assignments on the way there." She began to call off names and room numbers. 

I'm assigned to a room with Grace, Skyler, and Cleo - a girl I don't know that well. I smile at them all from across the bus. We get to the place we're staying at and file off the bus. Coach gives us our room keys and we grab our things from underneath the bus before heading up to our room. We set our stuff down on beds and chill for a few minutes before heading back down so we can head to the race course.

"Ugh, it's time to rig the boats," Grace says and scowls. I smile in sympathy.

"Let's hope the novices will actually be useful this time," I say, rolling my eyes.

"As if," Cleo says with a laugh. "We weren't that bad as novices, were we?"

I grimace. "We might have been. We got snowcones after doing like two riggers in groups of three."

"Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. Damn, we were awful," Cleo says and we all laugh, reminiscing.

I pull out my phone on the bus and check Instagram, scrolling through. I raise my eyebrows when I see I'd gotten a bunch of likes and comments on a photo. I haven't posted anything in several days.

I click on the picture and gasp. Someone had posted a picture of me sleeping on Peter's shoulder, smiling slightly. It was posted three hours ago. I shove the phone in Peter's hands, who was sitting next to me.

I clench my teeth. "Who the hell put this on my Instagram?!" His eyes widen.

"Oh my God, I didn't realize they were going to post this. They took your phone before you woke up and said they were going to take a picture, so I went along with it. I didn't realize -" Peter holds his face in his hands. "I knew Max was kinda upset with us being friends, I wouldn't have posted this. Shit, he's gonna kill me," Peter says, completely freaking out. He quickly deletes the photo.