Like Yesterday (first draft)

Chapter Four

"Mom! James and I are going to see Sam and Carter!" Dani yells downstairs to her parents. Neither one of us could go back to sleep this morning, so we talked for two hours. We decided to tell Sam, Carter, and Luke about leaving today and get it over with.

Dani leads me to a park a few blocks away, instead of continueing down to Sam's house. She sits down on a park bench that faces a small pond. I sit next to her.

"What's our plan?" Dani asks. I look at her with a raised eyebrow. "We can't exactly go over to their house and tell them that we are going to cross the Rocky Mountains and we don't know where we'll go when we get on the other side. I don't think they'll fall for that. We'll need to get them out of there house 'cause it's more than likely that there are some kind of listening device in every house. We don't want our conversation to be caught on tape."

"Okay, but you do know that it is only six, right?" I ask. "Carter's probably up, but there's no way that Sam is. He'll be asleep for atleast another hour."

"True." Dani yawns. "So what do we do until then? I don't neccisarily want to go back to my house."

"How bout we go to the school?" I ask. Dani nods in agreement. Standing up, I offer Dani my hand. She takes it and interlocks her fingers with mine. We walk down to our old school in a comfortable silence.

I let Dani lead me to an old swingset behind the school. We sit on the swings and let the silence sink in for a while.

"We still need to make a plan," Dani finally says. "Maybe we can ask them to meet us here at the school. If we stay far enough away from the building, we should be safe to talk about anything. Don't you think?"

"Sure." I say, not totally convinced.

"Well, do you have a better plan?"

"How do we get them to come to the school?" I challenge. "I mean Sam is going to need a pretty convincing reason to get out of bed and come here. And how will we get Carter away from all the stuff she will most likely be doing?"

Dani thinks about it for a minute. "Just ask Sam to meet you here to throw a football around. I can take care of Carter. Ooh, you might as well have Luke meet you here too."

"Okay." I say. "So you'll do most of the talking, right?"

"Oh, no. This is your idea. You'r talking to them. I don't want Luke going around thinking I'm some psychotic freak for wanting to leave!"

I roll my eyes and laugh. "So, I guess I'll just let him think of me as some psychotic freak then. Sure, why not."

Dani smiles, and starts swinging. I do as well. After a while of swinging, Dani slows to a stop and looks at the school, thoughtfully. I let the swing get a little lower, then jump off. Once I land on my feet, I walk behind Dani and start pushing her on the swing. She smiles.

"You know," I say, "I haven't done this in a long time."

"No, you haven't." Dani agrees. "It's kinda nice..."

"Yeah..." I whisper.

"What time is it?" Dani asks.

"It's probablly around seven," I guess. I say we wait another hour before we go get them."

"Okay," Dani sighs. She tilts her head back far enough so she can see me. "What do we do then?"

I smirk. "Race you to the play set."

Dani grins, "Your on."

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