Along the Way

Chapter 2

I sat quietly at mine and Alex’s booth as I wait for her to arrive. I arrived a bit early so that I could order food before we started talking. We had to buy something anyway or they would give our seats away to people who were actually going to pay for food.
Shortly after I finished eating, Alex arrived and sat down with me. We both ordered shakes so we could keep our seats.

We sat in silence for a long time. Our shakes had just arrived when Alex spoke up.

“So, how are we going to get to Los Angeles and get tickets?”

“That’s why we’re here, to come up with possible answers to that,” I responded.

“Right,” She sighed and layed her back against the booth.
We both sat in silence again, pondering possible answers.

Occasionally, there’d be a ‘hmm’ or gasp, only to fade in silence as one of us would realize it wouldn't work.

“Let’s try sharing our thoughts, ridiculous or not, it might get us somewhere,” I proposed.

“Sure,” She answered, “What if we bought a wagon and a horse?”

“How much would the cheapest wagon and horse cost? We kind of have a budget since we don’t have a job,” I answered, truly concerned in her idea.

“Not sure, but we would need to make money someway or another anyway.

We’ll have to stop for food at some point,” She pointed out.

“Hmm,” I pondered. It was hard for a 15 year old to make money in the 60’s. I guess people thought we weren’t capable of doing any sort of work.

“Let’s worry about money later, we need any possible way to get there first,” I finally answered.
She nodded and slumped back into her seat.

“What if we traveled by boat?” She asked, making me think of my impossible thoughts from last night.

“We would’ve had to leave months ago,” I responded without thought, “It takes way too long to travel all the way around, even using the canal.” I finish, using my hands while I talk to show ‘going around’ the continent.
“Hm,” I add, tapping the table with the tips of my fingers.

“What if we walked?” I asked, curious of her answer.

“Yeah right,” She scoffed. She looked over towards the door where a group of foreigner walked in.

“I’m serious,” I add, “Lots of travelers without wagons walk.”

“I guess,” She concludes after glancing towards the group once more.

“Think about it, we’d see so much of the country we’ve never seen! It’ll be like one of those crazy movie adventures!” I exclaim, bouncing in my seat with excitement.

She gives me a look that clearly says ‘are you insane?’

I look at her with pleading eyes.

“Ok, say we do walk,” She starts. My eyes light up with excitement. “How are we going to afford food, water, and a place to stay? Plus, how are we supposed to know how to get there?”

“Well, we can follow Route 66 for starters,” I pause and think for a moment. “We could sell anything we don’t need to make money, then buy only bare minimums. Obviously we’d need more eventually, but it’s a starting idea,” I proposed.

She gave out a little ‘hmm’ before nodding her head slowly, “That actually could work,” She agreed. “A few small things that still needed to be worked out but I could work,”

“Ok, what else do we need to work out?” I ask.

“Well, first, the packing situation. It’ll take us like, what, 2 months maybe?

We can only bring one bag each probably. How are we going to do that? Then we need to figure out how to earn more money that’ll last us 2 months worth of food at least and money for tickets when we find someone who’ll sell them to us.

Speaking of which, we need the tickets to get in anyway!” She answered. She seemed genuine at first, but now she seems a bit overwhelmed and frustrated by how much we still have to figure out.

She slumps back into the booth, hands covering her face in frustration. She lets out a grunt and speaks again, “Plus, we need an exact location to the theatre they’re playing at. Los Angeles isn’t as small and communal as Pacific sadly.”

I nod and take another sip of my shake.

We finish our shakes shortly after our conversation died down.

“Let’s go to the park or something, these people are probably getting mad at us,” She chuckles. I smile and let out a small laugh too. We paid and tipped the nice waiter before heading out the doors.

We headed out and started walking alongside the road. We walked in a peaceful silence, occasionally smiling or waving to a wagon that would pass by. We crossed the road and walked down a smaller road the rest of the way to the park. When we arrived, we both took our places on the swings.

We were the only ones here, like always.

Since we are the only ones who come here, we both jumped when we heard a strange noise. We both jumped off the swings and turned around, almost in unison. When we didn’t find find the origin of the noise, we gave each other worried looks.

“What could that’ve been?” She whispered.

“Not sure,” I responded, “Let’s go look.”

She shoots me an even more worried look, but I decided not to acknowledge it and I walked toward where the sound had come from. I could hear Alex closely behind me as we walked closer and closer.

I really didn’t know what to expect, but it wasn’t another noise. There was a loud bang to the left.

We both froze in place, holding our head on both side. The ringing in my ears was so bad, I couldn’t hear anything else. I dropped to my knees, still holding my head. There was bang after bang after bang. They sounded like gunshots, but who would be shooting at the park? And why?

I don’t know how long I had been on the ground, but whatever the booming was, it stopped. I jumped up and grabbed Alex’s arm, practically dragging her as I ran with her out of the park. I didn’t stop running until we were inside her bedroom.
“Leave tomorrow?” I asked,
frantically trying to catch my breath.

“Y-yeah.”