Freedom

Stop for a Moment

Back to Ruby's Perspective Whoop Whoop

I woke up as the morning light gleamed into my groggy eyes. I was up before Liam once again, he never used to sleep in. As long as I've known him, he's been an early bird. I shrugged it off and got dressed. I brushed my hair and put it in a pony tail. After getting ready I went over to where we keep the food, I pulled out some mandarin oranges and granola bars. Chubs and Zu were awake navigating the road ahead. I opened the curtains and gave them their breakfast.

"Morning" I said happily as I leaned against the driver's seat. I started to eat a granola bar and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. "Zu you gotta get dressed today, we're going out to get stuff today." Zu was excited we hadn't really been out doing things in the world for a few days. We were all getting pretty stir crazy. I brought out a brush and hair ties and started to get Zu's hair tamed. She got dressed and I switched seats with her. I could see out of the rear view mirror that she was coloring in some of the coloring books we got from her from our last stop. I leaned on the side of the van and fumbled through the radio for some music

"How'd you sleep?" Chubs tried to make small talk but kept his eyes on the road.

"Fine." I said cheerily, I looked over at him with a raised eyebrow. 

"If you and Liam get any more friendly I'm gonna make you guys get your own van." He knew saying this would embarrass me. This conversation was my daily dose of Chubs teasing me. "I'm just messing with you, but y'all are lucky I'm the only person in this van old enough to know what's going on between the two of you. There's tension between y'all too thick to cut with a knife." Chub's messing with me seemed like the familiar sibling relationship I once knew. I scoffed and laughed at him egging me on. 

"How much farther till we're at the Walmart?"

"About an 45 minutes. Liam up yet?"

"I don't think so, I'll get him." I went to the back of the van and knelt down next to Liam. I patted his shoulder and started to wake him up, "It'a morning, you've got to get ready." His rolled over slightly and rubbed his eyes. He sat up and re oriented himself to the morning light and confusedly said,

"What? Oh" He started to get up and stumble around the van getting ready. I continued getting all the bags together for our outing. Liam was kneeling in front of a pocket mirror, trying to shave off the stubble on his jaw with an old knife. I walked behind him and rested my chin on his shoulder. "I'll cut you" He gestured the knife in my direction.

"Do it" I said closing my eyes and giggling. I looked at his careful movement and wondered how didn't seem to ever cut himself while doing this; I nicked myself all the time shaving. He saw me entranced by his careful but quick movements with the knife,

"You want to try" I raised and eyebrow and him and responded

"Yeah let me at your neck with a knife." I joked and took the knife. I eyed the sharpness of the blade. I placed the sharp end on his neck facing upwards. Liam took my hand and moved the knife up the curve of his neck. I let out a small breath of release after i lifted the knife from his jaw.

"You didn't kill me, mission accomplished." He finished getting ready and before we knew it, it was time to get out of the van and into the Walmart. I put on my sweatshirt and my backpack and opened the sliding door of the van. We hopped out of the car and locked it. We had parked it behind a building overgrown with foliage. We hoped it would be safe there.

We walked over to the entrance to the Walmart. The sliding glass doors weren't chained but they were too heavy for us to pry open. Liam forced them open and we had to quickly slide in the opening before Liam closed it.

"Zu let's try this again." Chubs pointed towards and exposed wire that we hoped was connected to the overhead lights. Zu removed one of her gloves and gripped the bundle of exposed wires. Sparks started to fly from the wires. A small light in the far corner of the store flickered and burned out. Zu looked a little disappointed.

"Good control this time, I think the lights may have been too far gone." I kept a smiling demeanor and patted her shoulder.

"Well, we have some flashlights." Liam passed around a flashlight to each of us. I turned on mine and eyed the surrounding area of the store for a shopping cart. I saw the rack and tried to shake off one cart. I successfully got one out after a few shakes and brought it back over to the rest of us. "Ok," Liam pulled out a list of what we needed to get here, "We need, more non perishable food, more water and other drinks, more fruit, vegetables, and other perishables, toiletries, first aid, living supplies for the van, and of course get whatever personal items you want." We split up. Zu went with Chubs, as Liam and I went to seperate parts of the store. I started in the grocery section of the Walmart and pulled whatever boxed foods I could off the shelf. I also nabbed some bags and boxes to store them in. Moving through the isles I picked off whatever I thought would be good to have in the van. I decided to next head to the Pharmaceutical isles. Filing through the messy shelves I picked up two bottles of Tylenol, and two first aid kits. I kept wandering through the dark isles illuminating circles of the store and scavenging for whatever wasn't already taken. I got the toiletries, lord know the boys would pick up one bar of soap and call it a day. The last thing on my list was to hit up the clothing section of Walmart. Now that we have a place to store our stuff, its nice to rotate clothes every once and a while. I was fumbling through the dark isles when I heard footsteps from behind me. I stopped dead in my track, I knew whose they were but being in an ominous dark store made the butterflies in my stomach fly out of formation. He stopped behind me and just stood there. I took in the moment of standing there, it felt like time and space were seperate from where we were right in that moment. Nothing happened but the feeling of being on the same plane of consciousness was there. It was almost like our two streams of consciousness were intertwined, without loosing grip of what was around us. The more I let myself slip into this feeling the more I could hear both of our thoughts. The further we let our minds converse the more everything seemed to stop for a moment. His arm reached out and touched my shoulder, the connection cracked. Like a mirror shattering everything came back to reality. Everything faded back and I felt the glaze of the moment fade back to a reality filled view. Reality slowly faded into our minds once again, I turned to face him. His face mirrored mine with a look of confusion and calm. I didn't know what had happened, it was like nothing I'd ever known before. It was almost like a space between our two minds, if that was even possible. All I knew was that I liked that space, I wanted to figure out how to get back to that space. Where everything stopped for a moment.