Pelliccia (Book1) (2011 Sci-fi Watty Awards Winner)

Chapter 14

Joey tore another bite out of his peanut butter and jelly sandwich, chewed a moment, and then gulped down his milk. He was so busy eating, that he barely noticed that Jennifer hadn’t even touched hers.

“Are you going to eat that?” He asked with half a mouthful of PB & J.

Jennifer just stared at him. Joey washed his mouth with more milk and continued. “Are you okay there Jen? You haven’t touched your food; you just keep staring at me.”

Jennifer snapped out of her day dreaming. “I’m not staring at you. I’m just.. just.. thinking about our next step.”

“So what’s that?” He asked before taking another bite.

“What’s what?” Jennifer asked.

“The next step.” He mumbled through his full mouth.

“What about it?” she asked.

Joey swallowed and drank the last of his milk. “Are you sure you’re ok? It’s like you’re daydreaming or something. What about our next step were you thinking of?” He asked.

“Oh, uh. Just that.” She hesitated a moment. “Just that, we don’t know what it is, I mean where are we going to cross the border at? We don’t have a passport so we can’t go the normal way.”

Joey looked at Jennifer, he wasn’t sure what was going on with her. She had been acting weird ever since they left. She keeps staring at him like he’s got boil on in his forehead and she hasn’t been focused like she usually is. Quite frankly he was getting worried about her.

“You know you don’t have to go the rest of the way with me.” He said.

“No, I mean yes, I mean I want to though. You know, go the rest of the way.”

“Are you sure? Because you have been acting weird ever since we left. I mean if you are worried about getting in trouble I understand. We can go to the closest bus station and get you a ticket. It’s no problem, I’ll be fine.”

“No, that’s ok, I want to go, I’m fine. I’ll try to focus.”

“Ok. So are you going to eat your sandwich then?” he asked.

“Yes, I am.” She picked it up and took a bite. “See, I’m eating it, yum yum.”

“Ok, so the dirt road crossing I found is about 2 hours away. We should be able to cross there without any problems.”

“Where did you ‘find’ this dirt road at?” She asked.

“Google, ofcourse.” He smiled.

“Oh right, you can find anything on Google. So how come you kept it so secret up until now?”

“I didn’t want to tell you until I was sure you were going with me. I just didn’t want you going back and your parents or police or somebody getting the info out of you.” He said.

“Really, you don’t think I can keep my mouth shut?” she asked.

He looked at her. “Well you did tattle on us when we TP’d the school playground.”

“That was like forever ago, and you didn’t have a good reason too.” She said.

“Uhh, Yeah, we did have a good reason, that toilet paper was almost expired, and we were bored.” He told her as if it were obvious.

“Toilet paper doesn’t expire.” She said.

“I’m sure it does eventually. Have you ever seen a pack of toilet paper from the 50’s? I didn’t think so, I rest my case.”