Road Trip

“Aww Shit,”

Just one droplets warning we got, before the Pennsylvania heavens opened above us and the rain came pelting down like never before.

“Close the fucking hood Max!” I called over the crashing and splashing of the rain. He was frantically pushing at the conspicuous silver button that was supposed to close the hood while you drove.

“Stupid fucking car,” Max muttered, moving his now soaking wet mane of hair out of the way so he could see.

“I’m stopping, we’ll have to do it manually,” I sighed. My clothes stuck to my body, making me extremely cold, and the sponge that protruded from the leather seats was soaking up all the water, making the seat all squelchy and unpleasant to sit on.

As I pulled over, non-convertible cars rushed past as Max jumped over the car door, pulling the hood over the car. Dryness and a dark shade descended over the car as Max got back in and closed the door. His clothes were saturated and dripping with rainwater, as he plonked himself back on the seat.

“Before we set off again, can you check the cooler?” I asked, starting the car again with it’s usually just-woken-up jerk. I watched Max lean into the back, grabbing a candy bar from the cooler while he was at it.

“It’s fine, do you want a candy bar?” He offered, holding a bar of Hershey’s up at me. I accepted, and attempted to start the windscreen wipers as the rain trickled down the windscreen, making it impossible to see. I remembered there was only one, thankfully it was the one that wiped my side so I could kind of survive.

“We need to get this car pimped, dude.” I grimaced, slowly setting back off down the highway.

“Don’t I know it,” Max sighed. “But if we do, nothing happens to the look. Okay?” Max got all defensive, crossing his arms over his chest. “You know I like it looking like a messy piece of shit,”

“Sure. But the veggie smell has to go,” I grinned, taking a bite out of the candy.

-----9.23pm------

We were now half way to Pennsylvania, and the summer sun was only just beginning to set behind the horizon. The rain had calmed down a bit, but it was still coming down enough for us to keep the hood up. As we drove, the car began to make the strangest squeaking sound, which concerned me.

“Fucking hell that squeaking is annoying,” I growled, going a bit faster, only for the squeaking to get louder and the car to protest more often.

“D’ya think a mouse crept into the engine?” Cracked Max, munching on some beef jerky. I took a hand off the wheel to playfully punch him, causing a protest from him and the car.

“I don’t know but it’s annoying. I think it’s on it’s way-” I was cut off by a huge banging sound, and I suddenly I lost control of the car, as it spun across the fairly empty highway out into the other lanes, spinning and screeching. I panicked.

“FUCK!!” I heard Max scream, his packet of beef jerky flew out of his frantic hands onto another car’s windscreen, causing that driver to panic, and suddenly there was nothing but panic surrounding me as we held onto our seats until the car came to a slow halt.

“Shit what the hell was that?” I asked, catching my breath. My heart was thumping in my chest, as I watched thick black smoke emerge from the hood of the car. Max said nothing and just got out, as we’d ended up on a grassy dune on the other side of the highway that we needed to be. I saw him open the hood, and cough and uncontrollably as more smoke came out. He walked back to the side where the wind wasn’t blowing the smoke, and placed his t-shirt over his nose and mouth. He just stood and stared. I got out, pulling my shirt over my nose too and stood with him, watching the wreckage that was our car producing massive amounts of smoke, and in turn but our trip on hiatus.

“Overheated?” I suggested meekly.

“We have been doing a lot of driving,” Nodded Max, who just started at the broken car. He knew that the trip could be on pause for a long time now, and I think that was what upset him.

We stood in silence for quite a while, until even the smoke began to thin out a little, and became wisps of grey smoke instead.

“What do we do?” I asked, watching a car zoom by.

“Flag down a car? Call someone?” Max suggested, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket.

“Okay I’ll try flag down a car while you call someone. Anyone.” I looked sharply at Max, and wandered toward the edge of the grassy dune and commenced with the arm waving. Pennsylvania must be full of ignorant people and assholes because all I got was a few honks, a lot of rude finger gestures and even more people ignoring me. I ended up giving up and opening the car door, sitting in it but keeping the door open to talk to Max.

“Got anyone yet?” I asked.

“Well I called my uncle Sam since he’s responsible for this piece of shit and he’s in Vegas at the moment. He never told me he was going back to Vegas. So he’s a no go,” He sighed, wiping his brow.

“Have you tried breakdown services?” I scoffed. He could be a little dumb sometimes.

“Uhh…no,” Max giggled, and dialled some number in his cell.

“You’re an idiot sometimes,” I stated, getting into the car properly and climbing into the back to grab a beer. I thought I better get Max one, since he seemed pretty upset about the whole car thing. He spent ages doing up the engine to this thing, and he just seems to have fallen in love with it.

-----10.32pm-----

Nearly an hour later, we were definitely in a better situation. Even though it was still raining.

Max managed to get hold of some breakdown service in Philadelphia, and they offered to give us a lift in their truck, towing the car along with us, and take us to a hotel on the outskirts of the city, they’d fix the car, and we’d be able to get on our merry little way. At a price of course. But this kindness was due to Max telling them our little sob story about Ronnie, Holly and Jasmine and so on. So the guy took pity on us and helped us out. He was called Chris.

“Hey aren’t you guys too young to be drinking?” Chris said, as he watched us guzzle down our 3rd Bud while he had been there with us.

“No way man, I’m 22,” I grinned, throwing my empty bottle into the bushes behind the grassy dune. “And Max here is 24,”

“You don’t look it,” Chris looked puzzled. I exchanged glances with Max, giggling. This guy had really brightened our spirits. Or maybe it was the Bud…

“You guys need to get to that hotel. You seem to be a bit delirious. Or drunk.”

Max giggled. “I think it’s both,” and with that, we both burst into laughter. Ahh, a good few bottles of Bud made any worries go away. Shame we didn’t stash any Jäger…

“Come on then, if we go now we can skip some heavy traffic coming our way and get to Philadelphia by midnight.” Chris climbed into the driving seat of his huge towing truck and us two dorks got in the two passenger seats beside him, still giggling and slapping each other on the back.

----Philadelphia outskirts, Pennsylvania, 12.11am, June 4th------

After annoying Chris like crazy for nearly 2 hours, giggling, laughing out loud, whispering to each other and babbling about nothing to each other, we finally came off our high, just as the big city of Philadelphia approached upon the horizon. Max was muttering almost incoherently whilst leaning on my shoulder about how upset he was about the car breaking down. And it made me realise that the girl-grabbing trip we set out to go on wasn’t really working out so far. And that hurt me. And was likely to be hurting Max too. We set off from Atlantic City in such high spirits despite our experiences, but the car-and the rain had really put a damper on our outlook. I sighed, allowing my head to loll onto Max’s as my eyelids began to droop…

“Don’t fall asleep, we’re here,” Chris said, pulling off the highway and into a motel, but a slightly nicer looking one than Motel Jersey. I slapped Max back into the real world by shoving him off my shoulder and it took a few “Huh, what?”s for him to realise that we had arrived.

“C’mon, we’ll get our packs from the car. Thanks so much for the ride, Chris.” I gave him a tired smile of gratitude and got out, pulling Max into the crisp, cold fresh air which slapped more alertness into us both.

Grabbing the packs-and of course, the cooler, from the back of the car, giving Chris both our numbers and waving him off, we checked in, paid, and within almost no time at all we were sat on the generic; yet comfortable beds, adjusting ourselves to our sudden new surroundings.

“It’s better than New Jersey at least.” Max muttered, pushing his pack under his bed. I nodded in agreement, throwing my damp t-shirt off onto the dressing table to dry overnight. I stripped off my board shorts and did the same with them, intending just to sleep in my pants tonight.

It seemed Max was doing the same, but he left his cargo shorts and Maiden t-shirt in a heap next to his pack and climbed under the covers, pulling them over his head as I heard him sigh. I became suddenly worried about him, and squeezed in the tiny gap between our beds and sat on my bed facing him.

“Max don’t worry about the car. Or the trip,” I rubbed my eyes and yawned, bashed. “The car will be fixed tomorrow and the trip will be able to carry on like nothing ever happened. No regrets, right? The car breaking down wasn’t your fault.” I tried my best to assure him, but the mound of sheets that was Max weren’t responding. So I went on.

“Hey, how about when we get the car back tomorrow, we drive around and find a strip club somewhere? You gotta like that!” I exclaimed. Women were Max’s vice. This had to cheer him up.

“Okay.” He muffled. “But I’m not fucking no stripper chick. I wanna save myself,”

I was shocked. Max, saving himself?

“Why?” I asked in disbelief.

“For Holly,” He muttered, and a hand emerged from the covers to his lamp, turning it off. The penny finally dropped. He missed Holly. “You got a problem with that?”

“No, Max. I think it’s great of you,” I smiled, turning my lamp off and climbing into bed, sinking into the soft new sheets. “Night,”

“Night Craigifer,” I could just see him grinning under the sheets. I grinned back, and allowed my tired, hard worked head to surrender itself to asleep.

----Philadelphia outskirts, Pennsylvania, 9.16am, June 4th------

A rendition of Walk by Pantera woke me the next morning.

I sleepily fumbled around on the bedside table, trying to find my cell knowing it was my ring tone. I heard Max groan, so I actually opened my eyes to grab it and answer it.

“Hello,” I croaked unenthusiastically.

”Hey Craig its Chris,” Chris boomed cheerfully. He’d slept well then, obviously.

“Hi is our car ok?” I mumbled, falling back onto the pillow and lazily closing my eyes again, holding the phone to my ear.

”Yeah it’s finished. You guys are gonna love it,” He laughed ”I’ll come drop it off in half an hour?”

What he said didn’t really register, but I was aware that that was what he’d said.

“Sure,” I yawned, nearly falling back to sleep again.

”Okay see you then bye!” He exclaimed quickly and hung right up. I rubbed my eyes, and prodded Max in the back with my foot to wake him.

“Wake up,” I mumbled, standing and pottering into the bathroom to wake myself up. I ran the cool water from the tap, and let it splash over my hands before I threw some onto my face, making me feel a lot better and refreshed.

I pottered back into the main room, grabbing my chequered pack to pull something to wear out of it. I chose my black punk t-shirt, my leather jacket, my black skinny jeans, my dog tags and my black and blue skate shoes, and went back into the bathroom to get dressed.

When I emerged from the bathroom, Max was up and energetic, sporting a Cannibal corpse t-shirt and some black skinny jeans with red and black chequered vans and his pistol necklace.

“Let’s go grab an express breakfast and go out and get our car back!” Max exclaimed, throwing his messy tattered pack onto his shoulders and leading the way to the canteen on the bottom floor of the hotel. Now I knew why he was so energetic. The car.

“C’mon I’m real excited!” Max rushed into the canteen, the smell of hot cooking gracing my nostrils when I managed to catch up with him. We grabbed some bacon and a few bread rolls and made some sandwiches on the go, as we-or just Max and I lazily followed-checked out and went straight into the car park to wait for Chris. I hungrily munched on my sandwich, the smoked taste of bacon making my mouth water with approval. It tasted so good. Glancing at Max, he’d already wolfed down his sandwich and was pacing up and down across the entrance of the hotel, causing the automatic doors to slide open and shut constantly. It was an amusing sight.

“C’mon how long did he say he would be??” Max exclaimed, enthusiastically throwing his hands around. I looked at my watch.

“We’ve got 15 minutes to wait yet Max,” I sniggered. He sighed in exasperation and sat on the floor by the door, head leaning on his hands. He looked like such an impatient child. I giggled.

----Philadelphia outskirts, Pennsylvania, 9.43am, June 4th------

We waited half an hour, and Max was on his wit’s end when I received a text message from Chris saying he was just coming into the car park now, so to look for him. Max stood, jumping up and down to try and catch a glimpse of Chris’ face. I did the same, suddenly excited to see the flashy and new auto.

And the car that we saw Chris driving was certainly not our car.

Flashy and new was exactly what we got, lets just say that.