Reading minds

And how are you gonna do that?

     I end up texting my dad and telling him that I am going to spend the night at my best friend, Kimberly's house. By now it is almost midnight and I am exhausted, not to mention the fact that Joel can barley walk on his own. We spend at least 10 minutes arguing about sleeping arrangements. I originally say that I am gonna sleep on the couch in his room in case he needs me but he refuses saying that I should take the bed and he will take the couch.
      "It is your house and your room so you should get the bed. Plus I would feel bad about kicking you out of your own bed." I reason.
       "Well too bad for you it is not your choice. Even if you do go to sleep on the couch I can just wait until you are asleep then move you to my bed and take the couch." He responds calmly. 
       I let annoyance creep into my voice, "how are you going to that when you can barely walk?"
        "I have my ways" he says defiantly with a small smile.
"Well whatever those ways are it is not going to work. So what are you going to do? Use magic and *poof* I am on the bed? Ha ha nice try Joel"
"Well you never know what could happen."
We eventually agree to share the bed after it becomes clear neither one of us will let the other sleep on the couch.
          With that argument settled I change into the spare set of clothes that I keep in my backpack. Then rinse the worst of the blood out of our clothes and throw them in the laundry. Something tells me we are going to need them very soon.
         Since we never ate at Jimmy's and are both starving after all of this, I raid Joel's fridge and pantry for food for us to eat. I would cook something but... I burn water and am useless in the kitchen. I end up finding some bags of chips and making us some pb&j's. When I am done I walk back to Joel's room where he is laying on the bed with his leg propped up on some extra pillows.
I hand him a bag of chips and the plate of sandwiches before I sit on the bed. "We'll have to clean that cut in the morning and see how it looks then we will go from there," I declare, plopping down next to him and grabbing a sandwich.
        "Sounds like a plan" he says around a mouthful of sandwich.
      "Hey no talking with your mouthful" I scold, while laughing and smacking his arm gently.
      "Yes Mam!"
      We then lapse into a comfortable silence as we finish all the chips and sandwiches. When we are done I help Joel crawl under the covers then grab my book and go sit on the couch.
     "Hey what are you doing?"
      "Reading, you should try it sometime" I respond.
      "Well you don't have to sit all the way over there. You can sit over here," he says.
       "I thought you were going to go to bed"
        "I was but then I decided I wanted to stay up and write for a little bit" he states.
       "I didn't know that you still write," I exclaim getting up, walking over, and sitting next to him again, "what do you write about"
       "There is no set thing that I write about it is mostly just whatever inspires me. I am not even that good anyway," He explains.
        "I don't believe that for one second Joel Anderson. I remember in second grade you were always the best in the whole school at writing creative stories. You once even went to states in the Publishing Center contest," I point out.
       "Well that was a long time ago," he says dejectedly.
        "If anything I bet you have gotten better."
         "Ha! Nice joke" sarcasm practically dripping from his voice.
         "Well... the way I see it there is only one way to settle this," I decide, "May I read something you wrote," I ask.
        "I guess if you want to," he shrugs and reaches over to his night stand next to the bed. Joel opens a drawer and pulls out four note books. He picks out the top one and flips through it, as he does I glimpse pages covered in words with little notes in the margins. "Here this is what I am working on." He hands me the notebook, the story has no title and I start reading.