Us Versus the World

T-Minus 98 Hours to Performance

"Hello?" I whispered, feeling every bit a criminal.

"Devon?"

"I'm in." Jesus Christ why did I say that? It sounded as though I was a macho movie character who was talking about toppling an empire. Murphy, though, who I was learning had a flair for the dramatic to rival mine, did not comment, and did nothing to dispel the thrilling feel of the call.

"Be ready in an hour."

Before I had agreed to this, I had done my research. My mother, though she might have inadvertently raised a rebel, had not raised a fool. I happened to know through a couple of quick google searches that there is a loophole in the law. Courts lack jurisdiction over a 17-year-old runaway to force that runaway to return to their home. This means I would not technically be breaking the law, just burning every familial bridge. Speaking of, I decided to write a note.

T̶o̶ ̶W̶h̶o̶m̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶M̶a̶y̶ ̶C̶o̶n̶c̶e̶r̶n̶

Mom:

I will be gone for approximately 1 week. Please do not panic.

I got an opportunity to do something I know you won't approve of, but when have you ever approved of anything I did anyways?

There is really nothing you can do.

I want you to know I will be in n̶o̶ very little danger. I'm going with a̶ ̶g̶i̶r̶l̶ ̶I̶ ̶j̶u̶s̶t̶ ̶m̶e̶t̶ somebody who will keep me safe.

I know you will probably feel obligated to worry, but with this letter, I release you from that obligation.

I̶ ̶l̶o̶v̶e̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶,̶ I hope you can forgive me,

Devon

PS. I know you've installed a tracker on my phone, so I left it behind. In fact, I didn't take anything at all from you.

I grabbed my backpack, which had the rather large accumulation of papers and pens that was my field notebook. And when Murphy pulled up outside my house, I tried really, really, really, hard not to look back.

But I might have anyway.

We drove for a couple minutes in silence. Once we were on a highway, she turned the radio to an Ed Sheeran song I didn't recognize, and the static made the soft song feel like an old-time lullaby. I laid my head on the seatbelt and closed my eyes. Just as I was about to fall asleep, Murphy's voice wove its way into my consciousness.

"Have you written your poem yet? You know you have to write a new one for the contest, right?" There was a long pause, as I let her meaning sink in. I had not known this, and I was beginning to feel like she had deliberately not told me this. "Well, we've got plenty of time." She cut across three lanes of traffic, and even though I did not have my license, I knew this was widely regarded as a bad move because 4 cars honked at us in unison.

"What are you doing?" I was no longer sleepy, because fearing for my life had taken the priority for the moment.

"We have a 50-hour drive ahead of us and 96 hours to get it done in, right? Which means that we have 46 hours that we don't have to be driving." She was coasting through a CVS parking lot, now eyes searching for a spot.

"Right, but 46/4 is 11.5 and assuming we each need 8 hours a night for sleep that only leaves us with 3 and a half hours per day to get breakfast, lunch, dinner and rest stops. So we should probably come up with a schedule instead of squandering our hours on lurking in a CVS parking lot."

Murphy did not seem impressed with my quick logic. She had cut the engine in a parking space and already unclipped her seatbelt.

"We'll make this lunch then. I have to take care of something- can you make sure to grab me some of those Haribo gummy bears?" Before I could even process the fact that she had both completely ignored everything I had said and was also planning to eat a sack of sugar as her lunch, she had pressed a large wad of cash into my hand and was running towards the store. "And make sure you go to the bathroom because we can't stop until dinner!"

Obviously, I should have been pissed. She had just abandoned me in a foreign CVS parking lot after convincing me to go on this trip with her in the first place. I should have been furious. I really tried to muster up at least some feign annoyance, but the grin on my face gave me away. This was an adventure. I was on an adventure.

For some reason, I found myself hopping all the way to the automatic door.

When we got back on the road, and I was eating some sort of protein pack which tasted suspiciously like chemicals, and Murphy was eating gummy bears. I had been trying to work on a poem for a couple of hours, which was going biblically bad. Agitated, I decided I would distract myself and try again in a little while.

"What did you have to do in the CVS?"

"Hmm?"

"I said, what did you have to do in the CVS that was so urgent?"

She took her eyes off the road and gestured towards a bag in the back of her car. I grabbed the bag and pulled out a box of Green Hair Color and a roll of tape. Murphy was smiling.

She ripped off a piece of the tape and, with her back turned to me the best she could considering she was still driving, attatched it to a chicken nugget box, and then to her rearview mirror.

In my own clumsy midnight handwriting, staring back at me was my handwriting with one big red modification it looked like Murphy had done before she picked me up.

                  Will

Things I W̶a̶n̶t̶ To Do Before Graduation:

Putting a checkmark next to a list item has always been the most satisfying thing in the mortal plane of existence for me, but for some reason it felt even better with this list.

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