tired yet? ||cashby||

Chapter 8

The car growled to life, and Austin haphazardly backed out of the tiny parking lot. I watched the beautiful freaks disappear behind us as we drove away.

"Where's this fun place?" I asked excitedly, bouncing in my seat.

"It's a surprise," he said.

"But I wanna know," I protested. What if he was taking me to a meth lab or something? I didn't wanna go into this totally blind.

"I'll give you a hint." He smiled. "It's older than Great Oaks." I thought about that for a long time, trying to make a mental list of every place in town that was very old. None of them seemed like places he would take me, though. Ultimately, I just decided that it would have to be a secret, because I was horrible with hints and guessing games.

"Okay," I sighed sadly, watching the moon peek out from behind some clouds.

"What kind of animal would you be?" he asked randomly, making a left turn. Watching him, I considered.

"I'm not sure. What do you think?" I asked. He laughed a little.

"A baby deer," he said, his eyes flicking to me. I blushed, and smiled. It was like there was no way to escape the good feelings.

"Yeah? I think you'd be like a red panda or something," I said, and he grinned.

"What's that?" he asked.
"Red pandas are like foxes." I explained. "They're really energetic, and have bushy tails."

"Is my tail bushy?" He craned his neck around to peek at his back side, and I giggled.

"Nope," I smiled, putting my feet up on the dash.

"Good. I trimmed it like yesterday, so..." We both cracked up, like idiots and he flicked on the sound system. Dear You by Man Overboard came on, and I smiled really huge.

"Is this my mixed tape?" I cocked my head, and he nodded.

"Don't ask in too much detail, but I've been listening to them nonstop since the other night," he breathed, then chuckled.

"You like them?" I smiled. It made me feel really happy, that he liked something I made. Everything he did made me stupid happy.

"I freaking love them," he sighed. "I was playing one while Michael was in the car, and he got all icky about it, like 'Ew, my brother likes this stuff, too' so I just ignored him." I giggled, nodding and just kind of soaking him in.

"Yeah, Michael is kinda... icky," I repeated his phrasing, making fun of him.

"Shut up, he is," he groaned. "I mean, he can be cool. Sometimes," he amended.

"Well, I don't like him," I grumbled.

"You wanna know a secret?" he asked. "Sometimes I don't either." I held my hand out for a high five, and he slapped it lightly. "Although, he did invite me to Sophie's grad party in a few days," he mentioned. Crap. I'd totally forgotten about that. She'd graduated this year, and would be heading to a university a few hours away in 2 months.

"Are you coming?" I asked nervously, hoping he would save me from hanging out with my family all day. None of them particularly liked me. My grandfather was kind to me, mostly, though. He was an old man now, with long ears and was constantly smoking, even though my grandma told him he needed to stop.

"Maybe," he said passively, shrugging. "I might have to work." This dumbfounded me; I had no idea Austin had a job. It was like the only plane that we existed on together was the middle-of-the-night-in-summer one, where everything was dark and adventurous and wild, and we never felt like failures. It had occurred to me then that we both had these separate lives, where bad things did happen, and nothing was a brand new journey, because all of it was boring and tiring.