The Haunting of Sunshine Girl

Chapter 45

Sunshine's sitting in her room. It's the night before the Portland trip and Sunshine is super excited. They're gonna visit Tom Waters, talk to him about his experience with all the BEK knowledge stuff (which is really exciting), and then they'll probably go visit some well-known hot spots. Well, she doesn't really know how Portland knows they're hot spots— is there, like, a website or something? It's kind of weird, but, she's really enthusiastic.

A knock on the door jolts Sunshine from her babbling at the camera. "Yeah?"

"Hey, sorry to interrupt your... camera time." Her mother sits on the bed next to her. "How you doin'?"

"Good, I'm getting all pumped up for tomorrow."

Kat nods slowly. "I actually came to apologize.."

Sunshine's eyes widen. "I'm sorry, what was that?"

Her mother laughs. "You're gonna have it on film."

"Mm-hmm."

"Mom apologizes. Make that a whole— whole series on YouTube." Sunshine makes a face. "I think I probably over-reacted a little bit."

"A little? Hmm." Sunshine leans against the wall and eyes her mother.

"A little bit," Kat echoes. "Uh, I guess exercise will do that to me."

"Yes."

"It's just that I'm worried."

Sunshine raises a brow. "About what?"

"About all of this— about the whole— adventure, and going to Portland, and... all of it."

She yawns. "Why?"

Kat scoffs.

"I'm tired."

"I see that," Kat laughs.

"It's late, man— what, what do you mean? I mean, I don't understand, why is it a bad idea?" She looks down and picks on her fingernails, a bad habit that's formed lately.

Her mother hesitates, contemplating. "I think we don't know what we would get into in Portland, and there's too many unknown factors with all of it—"

"I've researched this for months," Sunshine counters, "I've thought this through, I am ready to do this. I'm very excited and it's gonna happen."

"I think just hiring a film crew and doing some internet web searches is not preparing for any of this."

"Uh, hello, we did personal experience outside, we were runnin', that was nice."

Kat sighs. "Uncle Tommy and I have been talking about it."

Sunshine leans her head back and looks at the ceiling in exasperation. "Of course you have, little traitor."

"It's only because.. we love you, and we don't want you—"

"You still have to put on a fake smile," she says sarcastically.

"It's not fake, we just don't— we don't want anything to happen to any of us." Kat waves her hand.

Sunshine shrugs. "It's not gonna happen," she says matter-of-factly, "we'll be fine."

"We don't know that."

"There's four of us, it'll be fine."

"I don't think that you're getting it. I'm saying no. We're not doing it."

Sunshine does a double take. Wait, what? That's where this conversation has been leading?

"As in we're not going tomorrow, you can— the film crew can film you running in the backyard."