Mile Marks

I woke up the next morning to see that we were parked in front of a McDonalds. Alex was sleeping in the driver’s seat, and I realized that soon, I’d need to take a shower. I looked in the side mirror, scaring myself. I looked like hell. Yeah, I’d definitely need a shower.

It was still dark out, and I figured that nobody would see me or the way that I looked, so I got out of the car and walked around the back of it. I pulled open the door to the trunk, and got one of the duffle bags out of the back. I went to the door of the fast food joint, expecting it to be closed, but the door opened with ease.

The girl at the counter didn’t look very enthusiastic about being there at five thirty in the morning. I tried smiling at her, but she just gave me a look of disgust, and went back to having a bored expression painted on her face.

I pushed the door to the bathroom, and walked to the mirror to see how bad the damage was. I never looked good after not showering, so it was bound to be horrible. I looked at my reflection and thought yep, horrible.

I went into the biggest stall that they had and opened my bag. I pulled out a pair of skinny jeans, a batman shirt, and instead of converse, I slipped on a pair of flip flops. My hair looked like shit, so I pulled it into a messy bun on the top of my head. I looked at myself, was pleased enough to leave the restroom, and walked out to the car.

When I opened the door, I found Alex sitting with his feet up resting on either side of the steering wheel. He looked over at me, smiling his cute smile, “Morning, sunshine. I see you got a head start on the day.”

I nodded, “Yeah, well a car will do that to you. It’s not exactly a hotel bed.”

“True that.”

“We’re going to need to find a shower today. I can’t go for another day without taking one.”

“Don’t worry, Romey, I got that covered. We’re driving to see the tallest building in the United States today, and we can stay at a stupid motel. I figured that we can just play the ‘we’re almost eighteen and we have money’ card.”

“Yeah, nobody turns down money.” I laughed, and slid into my seat. “Where’s the tallest building in the US?” I had never been good at retaining facts or geography.

“Chicago.”

“I’ve so always wanted to go there, Lexy!”

“I know, Romey, you always talk about going to all these big cities, seeing places. Oh, and guess what?”

This day was just full of surprises for me. “What?”

“When we go to Seattle—which we will—we’re going to visit the first Starbucks ever.”

That just about did me in. “What? We’re going to see the first Starbucks? Lex! I love you so much! This is like Mecca for the coffee addicts!” God, I was going to cross almost everything off of my bucket list. “How do you know that I want to do all of these things?”

“Rome, I thought we went over this already?” He paused to look at me to see if I recalled what he was talking about. I didn’t. “Because you’re my Rome, and I’m your Lex!”

“Oh.”

“So, are you driving, or am I?”

I looked at him with an are you serious? look on my face. “Your feet have been next to that fucking thing since you woke up. Do you think I want to drive?” He answered with a silly look, and then he stuck his feet in my face, to which I responded with an “ew”.

“You are such a girl.”

“You are such a pig!”

He started the car and backed out of the space we were parked in. We drove for a few minutes in silence. My thoughts from last night came back to me. Why did he act so weird and yell at me about getting in the car and leaving the tent city? I spent a few more minutes with these floating around in my head before asking, “Hey, Lex?”

We had stopped at a light, so he shifted in his seat to look at me head on. “What?”

“Why did we leave that place yesterday? You came running up to me and told me to get in the car.”

He sighed, and faced forward since the light had switched to green. “When you left the group, the guys started talking about you, not good stuff. I didn’t want you to be alone, and I just wasn’t sure about staying there.” I looked at him for a second. “They were just saying some bad stuff.”

“Okay.”

We drove for a few hours in a silence that was awkward at first, but then became comfortable because I figured I’d put some music on. Alex had a lot of CDs in his car. Going through them, I found various Blink 182 records, Jimmy Eat World, New Found Glory, Third Eye Blind, and Coldplay. I picked Take Off Your Pants and Jacket.

Anthem Part two started coming out of the speakers. “It’s not loud enough,” Alex remarked, though it was plenty loud, it wasn’t blasting. I turned the volume up so that it was almost like a concert in the car.

We really need to see this through,
we never wanted to be abused
We'll never give up, it's no use,
if we're fucked up you're to blame

The awkwardness had lifted like fog on the coast, and we were bouncing and singing along to one of our shared favorite bands.

“I see it! I see it!” Alex was yelling like a little kid—or Matt Flyzik—at Disneyland who had found Mickey Mouse.

I decided to play along, shouting, “Where? Where is it?” Alex pointed, and I saw it. It was tall, I could tell even though we were still on the freeway. It was taller than any of the other buildings in the city, and there were quite a few tall ones.

About twenty minutes later, we were driving into the city, and searching for a motel. “There’s one.” I looked out the window, pointing to a Motel 6. Alex changed lanes and pulled into the parking lot. I got out of the car and spun around.

The first thing that came out of my mouth was, “Wow.”