288 Hours

Chapter 2

"Hey kids!" Jay greeted us from the other side of the counter. She had waitressed at the diner longer than both of us had been alive and she pretty much watched us grow up. I don't remember a time when her hair wasn't shorter than my dad's and lighter than the sand along the lake. 

"Is that a new tattoo?" I asked as we walked to the corner booth. Her sleeves grew as we did, but this time I caught something closer to her left wrist. On her right arm, there was a map of every place she had been to, which was really just our town and the one south of us. Her left consisted of several landscapes, places I think she had always wanted to go to but never had the money for. Over her shoulder, you could follow the Cliffs of Moher all the way down to her elbow where they ran into the Statue of Liberty. If you travelled through the city you would hit Sydney's Opera House and the Eiffel Tower. Only this arm had any color in it.

"Sure is," She answered while bringing us each a cup of water with lemon.

"Well c'mon let me see it," Quinn pestered.  She was always a bit more excited than I was to see Janet's new additions and thankfully I didn't mind waiting. As she turned her wrist I saw each planet in our solar system wrapped around like a bracelet. Earth was placed like a watch would've been and the others planets fell into order around it.

"You wanna go into space?" I didn't realize I had said it out loud.

"Don't you?" She wondered.

I shrugged. I never really gave much thought about whether or not I ever wanted to actually go into space. It's all so overwhelming to contemplate. They say it's getting bigger but it's already too big to wrap my head around.

"Hell no," Quinn answered even though it was more directed towards me, "I'd lose it out there."

"But not in an abandoned insane asylum's morgue?" I shot back.

"If anything was in there, it'd be dead. There's no possible way there aren't aliens in space."

"So what if there are?" I questioned

"I don't know about you, but I don't want to be probed," She replied.

I laughed and shook my head, "fair enough, fair enough."

"The usual for you two?" Jay interjected.

"Yes please," Quinn and I said simultaneously.

She chuckled and walked back into the kitchen.

"Still mad at me?"

"Not really"

She grinned at me and I gave her an easy smirk back.

A quick glance through the window made it clear it was going to rain. The gray in the clouds matched Quinn's sweater perfectly. You could see the main road from the diner along with the only cafe in town. It was falling apart as quickly as the road was. Shitty potholes and even shittier coffee. There was one pothole that was notorious for buckling the suspension of every newcomer so often that a sign was going to be put up. Too bad the town didn't have the money.

"Have you heard more about that thing that's been going around?" Quinn was talking about this new disease that sparked up across the country.

"The one that's been turning people into little psychos?" I only saw a few stories on the news in the past few weeks, but I couldn't forget them. A mom strangled her toddlers with her purse straps. A teenager burned his own house down one night with the rest of his family in there. Seven cases of crazy drivers running down crowds and multiple shootings. Each person said what they did was, "the right thing." The only connection between the cases has been a strain of some disease present in each of them. They say it switches things in your brain, and confuses what you think is right and wrong, but no one knows why or how.

"Yeah, isn't it crazy? It's making people kill people," She shook her head and sat back. A few seconds after, Janet appeared with our food. We always ordered the same thing. A full stack of french toast, two perfectly scrambled eggs, a side of hash browns, and bacon cooked just right. It was the best post-adventure brunch we could ask for. After we cleared our plates, we stacked them up by size and slid them to the edge of the table. Jay found her way back to us to collect them along with a generous tip. Quinn and I left in silence, but this time I broke it.

"Can we take the trail?" I wasn't begging, but I was close.

"Of course," Quinn replied.

Her room was much bigger than mine. The majority of it was to the right of the door. A king sized bed in the far right corner, next to the windows which you could see through to the front yard when you walked in. The gray curtains reached the wooden floor. A white dresser was stuck in the corner to the right of that. Her new record player sat on top along with some cologne and school papers. A closet hid to the left of the entry door. She had a nearly full bookcase against its very own wall across from his bed, an immediate right when you walk in. The work desk she built himself fit easily next to the dresser. There were so many papers on it that I couldn't see the top of it. Her walls were bare, but I didn't mind the dark blue shade. It was comforting.

Quinn laid down on her bed, the light gray comforter was still ruffled from sleeping in it last night. I admired her bookcase mostly because I was too nervous to break the silence again. A majority of the books I had recommended, the others were in different languages. Somehow we ended up on the roof outside without saying a word to each other.

"What do you think the aliens are doing right now?" She asked, which sent me into an overtired bout of laughter

"I don't know," I managed through giggles, "watching us and trying to figure out why we waste so much time doing pointless shit. Why? What do you think?"

"Probably making fun of us," She grinned, "definitely wondering what the hell is wrong with us, too."

We went on for a few hours talking about what aliens might think of us or what they might look like. It was so easy up until the subject changed again.

Quinn sat up and looked at me as if something compelled her to do so, "Tell me something."

I raised an eyebrow, "Whaddya mean?"

"Tell me something about yourself that you wouldn't normally share," She replied.

It took me a few minutes to decide on what exactly I wanted to reveal to her, but she was patient.