eight.
Jade and Jasper are both silent for the next fifteen minutes of the ride, until after, finally, Jade decides to crack the awkward silence by clearing her throat, which Jasper is pretty sure isn’t dry or choked. Jasper raises a cocky eyebrow at her, his neck tenses.
“So,” she starts, “you know starving someone to death is actually a crime punishable by law, right? Or do you not have any law basics in the entire almost two decades of life?”
Jasper, raged and wants nothing to do than shutting her mouth up, swivels to the next lane like a drunktard (which in result of Jade shrieking in horror). Then, not long after, he takes a sharp turn again into the main road, where a taco truck was parked, Christmas lights hangs around it so bright they could spot the vehicle from a dozen foot away. He hits the brake pedal like he’s calling for death and Jade lunches forward, luckily, her palms fanned the dashboard first, holding her body from jerking forward with the help of the seat belt. Her fingernails tries to dig into the hard material of the dashboard as if it’s soft soil she can easily digs into and throws at Jasper’s snarling face. She looks at him fury-eyed.
“I’m really starting to think that you’re paid by one of those jerks at my school to kill me alive.”
It has been a long day for Jasper, the longest of the week, and after what he had to face since the moment he woke up today to the fake tears to now, in a car with some random girl for a taco break, he doesn’t care to come up with a witty comeback for the sake of pissing her off much more than he already has. “I thought you’re hungry.” All he wants to do now is to talk to the moon.
Jasper gets off the car to the catastrophically-bright truck, Jade follows suit behind him with a grunt on her face. Jade is mad at him for reasons he both understand and do not understand at the same time.
“Look at you two young lovebirds!” the lady inside the truck is Chinese, wearing a Santa hat and clean white T-shirt with stained apron and a smile so wide. Jade takes a step back to browse the menu under the opened counter of the truck, then takes a step ahead again and orders her food. The lady screams something (in Mexican, though) to her workers inside of the truck and then turns to Jasper, her smile still plastered on her face.
“Uh… I think I’ll pass,” Jasper says, tugging his lips into a smile to the middle-aged lady. She nods, accepts Jade’s purchase and slips inside the kitchen truck.
Jade, arms fold on her stomach to bite away the chillness, turns to Jasper. “Don’t tell me that you don’t like taco because that will be the most ridiculous thing in the world.”
Jasper just shakes his head, snowfalls fall off his ruffled hair onto the tarred parchment. “I’m not hungry.”
She opens her mouth to protest but decides against it by the anguished look on Jasper’s face. She turns to the lady, sighing. “That’s all, I guess.”
She pays for her supper (a beef taco and a bottle of mineral water – cheapest combo available) and they both settle at the edge of the roadside, near the truck. They sit parallel to each other – Jasper on the grass, his feet planted on the parchment where Jade sits crossed-leg on. He senses an uneasiness wave crashes her as she unwrap her food and takes little bites and drink small sips from the bottle. Jasper awkwardly shifts his vision away from her to their surroundings.
There’s surprisingly quite a lot of people that stops by (well, most-crowded people they’ve encountered during this trip so far, anyway), probably for the tacos or the Walmart or the toilets in the Walmart itself. But again, why would anyone even use this road in the blinded night?
