Cole

Hideaway

After I left my home by a distance of only a couple of blocks I pulled the car over to the side of the road to pull myself together, and I took some deep breaths. At that point I was in panic mode, which was foolish. I needed to calm down and carefully plan how I was going to approach the site where Gold and possibly Manda were. It was amazingly not that far away from where I was, but I wasn't  that familiar with the streets and needed directions. My dad kept a GPS in the glove compartment but usually used his phone GPS to navigate. I didn't use or have a smart phone so I would have to use the old GPS.

I fumbled around in the glove compartment, found nothing, and then started looking under the seats and getting frustrated. I needed to see if Manda was at that address and here I was tearing the car apart.

Redoubling my efforts looking, I finally, with great relief, discovered a drawer under the center console that held the GPS!  I did not know about that drawer.

I next had to plug it into the cigarette lighter with the car running and try to enter the address. I had never used the thing before and it was not that obvious to me how to get it going - more time wasted!

Once I got the GPS started and a screen finally came up showing the destination address I had to wait more time for it to find satellites. The darn old thing was slower than dad's cell phone!  I was getting frustrated and angry, and was beginning to think I should just rip it out and drive over it when it finally locked on and saved itself from imminent destruction. A boring voice came out of its speaker announcing its presence at the same time it showed a map. I had a 50/50 chance of having the car pointed in the right direction on the starting street and got that wrong too as I pulled away from the curb, necessitating a U-turn which was awkward on the narrow street. The GPS then reported that the address was 18 miles away, which was not too bad.

Eventually both the GPS running smoothly and the car cruising swiftly allowed me to close the gap to my destination.

When I got to a distance of two miles I parked the car on the side of the road, took note of where the destination was on the map and shut the car off. I sat there for a minute thinking of what to do next. I wasn't really that well prepared. I needed gloves. Fortunately, I noticed a pair of gloves in the glove compartment earlier. 'Who ever actually puts gloves in a glove compartment?', I wondered. This was one area where I lucked out, however they were a bit small on me. I knew they would have to do.

I next realized that I should have brought a hoodie so that people would not recognize me as I walked to the location. The only thing I could really do was cover my face with my shirt. In Hawaii some people do that to protect their face from the sun, but I would still look weird because I would be bare chested with all my muscles showing. I decided to do it anyway.

I got out of the car and started trudging towards the address. I was not sure what was at the address. I then thought that I was real stupid not to have driven by the address first to take a peek. I could tell I was not thinking all that clearly. I just wanted Manda back.

As I continued walking down the road towards the destination I became aware of people driving by and checking me out. I tried not to look at them. There fortunately were not many cars but every one that passed had people looking and doing a double take. A few girls drove by and smiled and made faces. A thought occurred to me that maybe Amy or some other girl from school that had the hots for me might roll down their window and try to start a conversation. I did not want that. As it turned out, in the end the only kids that yelled out to me were a bunch of eight or ten year old girls that giggled as their mom drove by.

As I neared the address it appeared to be a grey colored residence fairly overgrown with tropical plants. It looked like the lawn was neglected and was quite long. The place was not that large, somewhat boxy in shape but had a second floor, which was not that common. There was a gravel driveway that passed by the house on its right side and went to a detached garage behind the house.