Take Me To Hawaii

20. The Car

Take Me to Hawaii - A Tratie Fanfiction - Chapter 20 - The Car - Day 3

They hadn't talked much on the way down to the parking lot. They walked the same route. Down the hall to the elevators down to the floor of the lobby, past the gift shop, and out the main doors. Travis had only stared at the floor as he walked. When they finished their journey down the small path outside he stopped and stared, still in a trance, at the spaces. 

It was fuller than the other day. More people must've arrived since they had. The car Katie had been sure she'd recognise easily was now swallowed up by a sea of identical cars. She wondered how many people went to the same car-hire company, their profit this year would be huge.

"Where's the car parked?" She asked him. He stared blankly, eyes flitting between each and every vehicle. He took a deep breath and swallowed. He didn't know. "That's okay," She said, shoving her hand into her pocket to retrieve the keys. "I can unlock it: whichever car lights up will be ours right?"

"Yeah." He was quiet again. Come on! She'd done so well in cheering him up! He can't go back to being how he was again just because of one mishap! 

The small Katie in Katie's brain that controlled her every day like in Inside Out was probably banging her head against a wall, repeatedly. Big Katie felt like doing the same.

She pressed the button on the key fob. A  car on the other side of the ground lit up. She hadn't remembered him parking so far away.

"There it is." She said. He nodded slowly.

"Yeah."

She wasn't having this. He could mope about in his own time but he wasn't about to make her very very early morning miserable. She wanted him to go back to being normal Travis so he'd feel comfortable and consider opening up. Then she would be able to get him to tell her more about what was bothering him and get it fully off his chest! She needed him to be normal Travis Stoll again: Pull pranks, talk smack, stand up to her nonsense, and never back down from a challenge...never ever back down from a challenge.

"You know? I've always been faster than you." She said without thinking. She didn't quite know what she would be thinking if she was. You don't challenge Travis Stoll everyone knew that. Right now he wasn't Travis Stoll though. He was a shell of himself. 

His head snapped up to stare at her, his face morphed into confusion that she had to try not to laugh at. He'd knitted eyebrows so closely together that they became a unibrow.

"What?" He overpronounced the T  like an old upper-class British lady. "Katie, we have never even ran a race together! How could you possibly 'know' that?"

"I know..." She turned to him in a way that felt so familiar but so alien, folding her arms and sticking her chin in the air with a smirk on her face. She lifted her eyebrows for an added effect as she spoke down to him. "But if we did we both know I'd win."

"That's bull-" He started but she cut him off.

"I mean think about it. Your track record in races isn't very good." He shook his head at her and she could see his tongue brushing over his teeth by the skin above his lips protruding in a right-to-left direction. She smiled at her success in riling him up which only added to her next statement. "Considering you lost the race in swim team tryouts in sophomore year."

"Oh?" His small memorable amount of anger was almost laughable, Katie had never been so glad to see it.

"To someone a year younger no less...well...a year younger than me which makes Percy-" She laughed now, mocking him. "Two years younger than you."

"Are you just going to talk shit to me?" He snapped at her but not in the way he had in the room. He hadn't snapped at her like this since their last argument at school between fifth and sixth period.