Newsies Road Trip AU (nope, no creative title)

The moment they realized

***

A Smallish Road Through Rural Ohio

3:16 PM

***

Race was starting to get bored with this dream. Yes, rainbow unicorns were all well and good, but he was in the mood for some action. Where was a good nightmare when you needed it?

Spot had finally managed to find the tablet. Unfortunately, there was no nearby wifi that he could steal, so he couldn't do anything particularly interesting. He did a bit of poking around and discovered that somebody had downloaded an old documentary about saltwater prawns. Shrugging, he plugged in his headphones and clicked on the file.

Les was curled up under the pile of bags, thinking. There was something wrong with this picture, he knew that much. He couldn't think of what it was, though. The van shook as it went over a pothole. He buried himself a little deeper.

Race jolted awake. The first thing he noticed was that there was nobody sitting between him and Spot. The second thing was that Spot was just as bored as he was. Before he could properly put these two facts together, though, a third thing occurred to him.

"Guys! We left Crutchie at the rest stop!"

Les sprang out from under the bags like a jack-in-the-box, scattering backpacks and carpet bags all over the back seat. "I knew something was wrong!" He awkwardly scraped the stray bags back into the pile. "Has anyone told Jack?"

Jack turned around. "Told me what?"

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure we're missin' someone." Race smirked. "I thought ya checked that everyone was here."

Davey started glancing around, clearly uncomfortable. "Uh, yeah. It did look like that, didn't it?" He momentarily scanned the road. "Well, I guess we're going back, then."