Chasing Nirvana

Thirteen

"First stop: Eden!" Georgie announced breathlessly from the backseat. She had a huge map spread out in front of her and was bouncing up and down in her seat. The initial nervousness and the fear of getting caught were wearing off and the possibilities of what we were about to do were just hitting us. Camping by the road side, sleeping out in the fields and having the freedom to run wild and do whatever we want...it sounded like the kind of summer only kids in movies has. And we were going to do them all. Sort of. Georgie and Scooter seemed to be having a truce right now and even Jimmy seemed relaxed as we sped down a dark road, the trees on either side of us blurring into oblivion. We were headed towards Hickory, a bigger town just north of Milton. From there, we could get onto the interstate highway towards Eden, North Carolina, which was our first stop.

"Can we get some music?" Georgie called from the back. Jimmy reached out and flicked on a switch and Arctic Monkeys began blast through the stereo player. I settled back in my seat, knowing that it was a Georgie-Approved band, and closed my eyes. (She had a list of musicians that she approve and disapprove and whenever she was in my car, she would pester us until we were playing something that suited her taste.) The drive to Eden wouldn't be long, in fact it was under three hours but given the time we left town, we would probably arrive there early in the morning, barely giving us time to rest or eat breakfast before we leave for the second stop, which we hoped to reach by noon. I let the beat of Artic Monkey's Do I Wanna Know lull me to sleep, and tried not to think about what would happen when my parents woke up and find me gone.

I had been dozing in and out for a while when I felt the car slowed down and rolled to a stop. It was just half past five, meaning that while we had been driving over an hour, there was no way we could have reached Eden already. So why were we stopping? I sat up and looked around groggily. Two trucks rumbled past our car before parking a few lots down. In the building about fifty away, dim lights flicked on and off. I squinted at the sign above. REST STOP, it said. There was a slam as the door behind me was kicked shut, and then I saw Scooter doing a weird-hop dance to the washroom.

"He said he needs to pee," Jimmy said. Must be all the alcohol he had been sipping on.

"Well, he better do it quick because I don't like the look of those truckers," Georgie said.

I looked out of the window at the truck. A few burly men had gotten off and they stood in a loose group about halfway between us and their trucks. They were smoking cigarettes and every few seconds, one of them would look over at our car as they took a drag. Even though they were probably on the road just like us and meant no harm, I couldn't help but to feel uncomfortable.

"Why?" Jimmy asked. "What's so bad about truckers?"

"Nothing," Georgie replied a little testily. "It's just that we got to be careful on the road, and they're keep staring at us and – what are you doing?"

Jimmy had stuck her head out of the window.

"Hey!" she yelled over to the truckers. They glanced at each other and then back at her. "Hey!" she called again, this time using her hand to wave them over.

"Jimmy no –" I tried to pull her back in but it was too late. Two of them had broken away from the group and were walking over to us. One of them spat out a wad of tobacco he had been chewing onto the ground. The other simply swaggered over to us. As they stopped in front of the car, I heard Georgie took a long, careful breath in the back as though she was trying to minimize her existence as much as possible.

"Whaddya want, little girl?" one of them asked. He bent down to look at us through the window. His Yankees cap was ratty and faded, and his face was scraggly. Immediately, my guard shot up by a thousand notches.