The Run

169

I'm lost. Well, I've been lost for a long time now, you know that. But I didn't think I could be any more lost than I already was. Yet here I am. LostER. And for once, I think someone else is the culprit.

It's that girl, Emmie. I had a plan, a very strict one. Not much to do or think about, just let the time pass and do the thing, but she had to come and destroy it all. And I let her.

When we landed in that motel in San Antonio and she told me that she wouldn't leave until she knew I was safe, I... Man, I don't know. I want to say it felt good to have someone care about me, but it's not what I should be thinking, is it? I don't deserve that, and she doesn't deserve that either. She's not so bad. She's young and pretty, and she sure doesn't have much to count on, but if there's one person she shouldn't rely on, it's me. Why is she so stubborn, for fuck's sake? Sometimes I just want to drive to a gas station and just "forget" her there, like some people abandon their dogs by the side of a road. But then another part of me seems to think that 1: it would be dangerous for my plan and 2: her stupid jokes and annoying pestering do make time pass by quicker.

I was ready to crash as soon as I hit the sack that night, and I was laying on my back, looking blankly at the tv screen, thinking about what she'd said when she walked out of the bathroom wearing short shorts and a tank top. Her hair was still damp and she was dabbing at it with a towel. She looked at me, then at the tv – turned off – before rolling her eyes and letting out a laugh. She advanced into the room, grabbed something on the side table and then, instead of reaching for her own bed, jumped onto mine to lay down next to me and raised her hand above our faces. A click, and then she was laughing again in my ears, ready to grab the picture already coming out of the polaroid camera.

"Hey! Why'd you do that for?"

"Posterity!"

"You don't need memories of that." I tried brushing her off, but she was still laying there next to me, shaking that bloody picture that didn't need any shaking.

"That? Is that how you talk about yourself?"

I shrugged. "Don't shake that." I reached for the tiny photograph, but she was quicker and sat up and away from me at the end of the bed.

"You're a person, Joshua," she said with a smirk, still shaking the thing. "And I do need memories of you."

"Why would you need that? You'll forget about me when-"

She burst out laughing. "Forget about you? Forget I went on the run with an ex-superstar that's missing for the rest of the world?"

"Don't call me that. And DON'T-"

I couldn't even finish the threat that she had already taken the camera to her eyes again and clicked the shutter, snapping another picture.

"Don't DO that!"

She laughed again, and I did have to suppress a chuckle at her enjoyment. She raised the camera another time, but I was faster this time and reached for it before she had the chance to do anything else. "Stop!" I said. "D'you even know how much film you still have in this anyway? It's not infinite. You gotta make them count. It's like in the old days when we'd go to Disney in the summer and I'd get a disposable camera. Only 28 pictures, or maybe 32? I don't remember. Anyway, we had to be really careful and only snap the best things. Make them count."

"Well..." she said after a while, taking the camera back from my hands. "I've never been to Disney and I've never had a disp-"

"Wait, what?"