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Chapter 5
The next morning Natalie was up first, and I woke to her moving around the room.
“Hey,” she said, when she saw that my eyes were open. “I already ordered breakfast. I figured you could wake up to it. Should be here momentarily.”
I hated that she knew exactly which breakfast foods were my favorites so she didn’t even have to ask what I wanted.
“Thanks,” I said, my voice scratchy. I felt like shit. I’d barely slept. Today was going to be a shitshow.
“I, uh, also found a few places we could stop today. You know, fun places,” she said. Originally, I guess she and Gretchen had planned more stops, or excursions, but we’d been just driving and doing our stops at picturesque diners and fast food joints and gas stations instead.
“Sounds good,” I said. I didn’t know how much driving I was going to get through today without a nice long stop and maybe even a nap.
“Coffee?” I asked.
“I ordered you a white chocolate mocha,” she said. I hadn’t been drinking coffee when we’d been friends, but still, she seemed to know what I’d want.
“Great,” I said, getting up and then heading to the bathroom.
When I came back the breakfast had arrived, and we both sat on the bed to eat.
“I wish you didn’t have to do all the driving,” she said.
“It’s not so bad. I do wish we could change up the podcasts. Do you listen to anything that isn’t about death?”
That made her laugh into her avocado toast.
“Yeah, I have a few that are lighter,” she said.
Thank goodness for that.
“So, where are we going today?” I asked.
Natalie just smirked and said, “You’ll see.”
* * *
“This isn’t what I had in mind,” I said as I stared up at the theme park sign.
“Why not?” Natalie asked.
“I literally do not remember the last time I even went to a theme park.” It might have even been with Natalie, that’s how long ago it was.
“Come on, it’ll be fun,” she said.
“Yeah, you’ve said that before. Remember what happened on the class trip to the zoo? You convinced me to go into the tarantula room, I fainted in front of the entire class, and they never let me forget it. And now I freak the fuck out every time I see a spider, so thanks for that,” I said, putting my hands on my hips.
“There aren’t going to be any spiders here,” Natalie said, walking ahead of me and throwing the words over her shoulder.
My choices were to stay with the truck, or to follow Natalie.
I followed Natalie.
* * *
“See?” she said, an hour later as we got off the second roller coaster. I was all giddy from the rides. Natalie had been right.
“Where to now?” she asked me. We’d been taking turns picking rides.
