peregrination

[ drei. ]

A loud, girly scream followed by a loud shout of, "MY WAGON! SOMEONE DESTROYED MY BABY!" interrupted Journey's thoughts of being abandoned at Ashton's friend's house. No one really cared to do much except look out the window and chuckle, so Journey figured, 'Well, I might as well go find my idiot.'

Journey walked upstairs and easily found the front door in Luke's house; she then glanced out of it, some idiot *cough* Ashton *cough* had left it ajar, and saw Ashton laying on the walkway, crying over his, now broken, red wooden wagon. The only reason why Journey was even remotely sad was because that would mean she'd actually have to walk all the way home--unless she could convince Michael or Calum or Luke to give her a ride, and she wasn't sure if she'd rather have Ashton ride with her or not, seeing as how he'd most likely be wailing about his wagon for the rest of his life.

Journey had an internal argument with herself before sighing in defeat and walking over to the teenager, awkwardly putting a hand on his shoulder and saying, "It'll be okay, Ashton. Everything's made to be broken, including that wagon. How about we go to the store and buy you a brand new one? Will that be okay with you?"

The boy looked up at her in shock, as if questioning internally if there was some secret venom behind her words, but instead shook his head, "No, I don't have any money. Remember yesterday?"

"Remember that my parents are scuba diver turned billionaires? This can be like a late birthday present because I have no idea when your birthday is," Journey said, giving the boy a genuine smile.

He chuckled to himself for a second, "There's no way your parents are scuba divers. That's, like, not even possible to make money off of."

Journey scoffs and said, "Hey, anything's possible. If my parents can become billionaires by simply scuba diving, then maybe your band can become famous. I mean, it's highly unlikely, but, hey, like I said before, anything's possible."

She then proceeded to announce, "To the wagon store!" and began to march towards the left, but heard a quiet, "It's the other way," and quickly changed directions, suddenly really happy that she had brought along her credit card.

"Why are you being so nice today, Steve Perry?" Ashton asked Journey, quickly catching up to her and matching her fast pace.

"Because you got me out of going scuba diving," she responded stiffly, not mentioning the fact that she was too terrified of the water to even get into a pool, and that she would do literally anything to get out of going scuba diving.

"What's so bad about scuba diving? It sounds fun to look at all the colorful fish and aquatic plant life. Though, I guess it'd be pretty bad if someone were to drown or get eaten by a shark..." Ashton said, trailing of at the end, as he shoved his hands in his pockets and whistled an unfamiliar tune, completely unaware of Journey's discomfort.

"It's just- it's not my thing, okay?" she said it sharply, hoping that he'd sense she wanted this particular conversation to be over, but it seemed, by the way he had shrugged and was about to speak again, that he did not get the concept of Ashton-I-hate-this-so-please-stop-talking-about-it-thanks.

"There's a really good pizza place not far from here-- you want to grab a bite? There's a guy who works there who just so happens to owe me a meal. I'd be more than happy to cash that in right now," Ashton says, catching Journey off guard.

"Um, yeah, sure," she answers, suddenly realizing she hadn't had breakfast and was on the brink of starvation; not literally, of course, but still. "I could go for pizza, I guess."

Ten minutes later, Journey found herself sipping unsweetened iced tea with stirred in sugar, not liking the taste of the wannabe sweet tea. Of course, it wasn't near as good as what her mother had always made, because the tea was already cold and the sugar didn't stir in well, but it was okay because she had gotten a free meal.