Aleatory

Chapter 1 | Reagan

Dedicated to nirubeekay because you loyal.

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"Brooke. No."

Brooke sucked in a deep breath, which is how I knew this was gonna be bad. "Okay, but listen - "

"No, this is insane - "

"That's my point. It'll be fun!"

"Fun - fun? Do you know how many people die doing stuff like this?"

"It's a road trip, Reagan, god. I'm not asking you to ride down the Niagara in a barrel."

"A road trip with strangers. Strangers who could be drug dealers. Or gangsters. Or serial killers or rapists or - "

"Or carriers of the plague, I know." I could feel her rolling her eyes at me. "Hitchhiking is a thing. A real, established thing. People do it every year. Hundreds of people, and only a fraction die. A fraction of people probably die doing homework, too."

"But - "

"Look, I'm not trying to push you into this if you don't want to," sighed Brooke. "Really. You don't have to come with. It's just, we've been sitting around on this street for the last eighteen years, you know? Don't you want to be somewhere other than Woodbridge? I want to start college being interesting."

Only cops and creepers find a corpse all that interesting, pointed out the part of my mind that hadn't quite collapsed just yet, but it didn't seem like a very smart thing to say right now. "You're already interesting," I offered feebly instead, as if anything was going to stop this girl now.

"Reagan, I literally have to compete for your attention with a book."

A book. That reminded me, my reading challenge - how was I supposed to finish every book on the list if I wasn't going to be in the same place for more than a day? I sighed as loudly as I could and got to my feet. "Hey, B."

"Yeah."

"How far do you think Amazon ships?"

What I'm trying to say is this: This whole summer, this was all Brooke's fault, right from the beginning.

Because that conversation is why, two weeks, one huge fight, and absolutely no planning later, I ended up standing on the side of the highway at the crack of dawn, with nothing but a rucksack and my thumb in the air. And why I ended up falling into every stupid thing that happened afterwards. And why I met the rest of them and why, at one point, we did almost get killed.

Well, okay. Maybe that last one was on me.