Life's Little Teardrops

35. Twinkie Stores

I walk up to my room where it is extremely quiet.

Erin has left me a note.

Time will tell if all is well.

I pack up all the stuff I need including all of the weapons and Cheeto bag. I slip on my galaxy AirWalks and step out the door.

Terra and the others meet me in the Lobby and we all walk silently to the parking lot where the Volvo is parked crookedly. After loading all of our bags into the trunk I climb into the Drivers seat and Terra sets in the passenger.

As soon As I start up the car some Kesha pop song comes on and instantly is tuned off by Terra to the Jone Jett song 'I Love Rock'n Roll'.

We all sing along including Jona the only guy of the trip. Luna is singing in an extremely off-key voice that makes me crack up.

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SIDE NOTE:

Terra's hair is in a fishtail braid, she's wearing a purple low-cut tank top, black jeans and knee-high converse. She has a very edge style.

Luna on the other hand is wearing a champagne sequin top with short jean shorts that have black iron on hearts on the back pockets.

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After about 45 minutes Terra turns the music down, Jona starts texting on his iPhone 4S, and Luna started reading that medical book from when I first found the Volvo.

We're about 69 miles from Durango Valley and have already been through a huge wave of Camp-like villages made of trashy traitors occupied to capacity by white-trash hillbillies. I used to have an aunt and uncle who had an auto repair shop here. They were probably dead but that's fine, I didn't know them well.

We pass a gas station and some other run-down farm houses that give us a warning that we're now officially in the Valley. The air in the car is extremely stale and my hair is beginning to stick to my neck, I'd do anything to be in the pool at JuV.

"We're almost there." Luna says looking up from the book she's been reading for the last 10 or so minutes. It's 10:39AM according to the clock on the dashboard and for some reason my reply sounds extremely tired.

"Ya. This map isn't very detailed, it's from before the infection so it's out of date too." I say glancing from the road to the google Map sitting spread out on the console.

Luna leans between Me and Terra with an also tired and unintrigued expression. "Well. I know the area pretty well I could probably outline a direct route." Terra has her whole body slumped against the passenger side door and is sleeping quite quietly.

"Did you live here?" I ask looking back at the road which is increasing in condition as we drive through the lush grasslands.

"Off and on. Foster care." She says marking certain landmarks surrounding the outlined trail on the map. Luna is extremely intelligent and sort of well behaved, something most of the foster kids I've known weren't.

"I don't want to talk about it." She says after a few awkward moments. I nod uselessly.

After driving a few moments the road begins to go downhill and I accelerate the gas slightly. Suddenly groups of rundown homes, grocery stores and a clump of gas stations come into view. All of the buildings assemble the town referred to as Durango Valley.

"We're here." Terra exclaims obviously awake as I pull the car over next to a Shell Gas station. Jona opens the car door and steps out as his white earbuds are flingged onto the seat.

Luna glances up at the large shell logo and marks it on the map. After tracing her fingers in zigzag motions over the map she hands it to me and out of the corner of my eye I see Jona go into the gas station.

"Does he even have a gun?" I ask glancing at Luna who is ruffling through her bag. She shakes her head and I give her my snake pistol from the console with a simple eye-roll she runs to meet him.

I glance over the map which is now labeled in multiple locations including a cartoonized shell marking our current location.

"Well, if we're here," Terra says pointing over my shoulder at the map. "Than we should go here and along this road until we hit the water tower." She says drawing a line around the map with her finger. The route she's suggesting we take contradicts Ridley's route but Luna did label an area, that Ridley's route went through, with an array of squiggly lines.

I laugh slightly, I have a knack for picking the humor out of everything.

"I'm not so fond of hitting water towers." She smiles and glances out the window at the road and buildings.

"This place is so rundown." The only town in Durango Valley is relatively small but was full of shabby, white trash, hillbilly, and rundown buildings and people.

"Ya. At my school we called it White trash headquarters." I say smiling.

She exhales a bit of a giggle and looks annoyed at the gas station. I can see figures moving through the windows but not exactly who it is.

"Should we go check on them?" She asks with a raised eyebrow.

"Ya. There are some dangerous people in Amityville." I say joking yet serious. She laughs accordingly and we climb out of my Volvo. It is a pretty good car, it's my style.

"Hey. I'm Amity." She says after she can stop laughing. I smile back at her.

Me and Trinity used to joke about Divergent. In hindsight Terra is like Trinity, except she's 5'6 and 15.

Once we get out of the car I walk through the trash-filled street to get my gun from the trunk. It's the gold pistol that Deedee had when she shot Alex. I have been using it a lot and doing target practice in the garden.

Terra and I do a quick glance in all directions and notice only one scroungy cat on a porch down the street. We walk over to the door through the gas pumps.

The inside of the store is filled with toppled over snack stands and exploded sodas. There are only a few parts of the room that are untouched, one is the path to a door which I assume is the storage room.

I walk over to it as Terra grabs an extra large bottle of Strawberry Fanta a drink I assumed to be most popular with five year olds. She runs quickly to catch up as I open the door to see Luna and Jona sitting on a large crate and eating a box of twinkies.

After a few minutes if watching Luna and Jona attack an obscene amount of twinkies Terra interjects. "I have a question." Luna looks up with a large layer of smushed Twinkie on her lower face.

"If your gonna eat Twinkies why not eat the ones in there?" She continues pointing a thumb towards the door. Jona looks like he's explaining an expert secret to an amateur as he says, "Employes keep the best stores for private use." He says as a large collection of half chewed Twinkie escapes his large mouth.

We all smile.