Five Years of Fame [COMPLETE]

39. A Last Minute Road Trip

Winter, Year 1 Month 11

Olivia was passed out in the passenger seat. Dani would have smiled at the small snoring sounds that floated out of her nose every few minutes if she wasn't focused on getting them home safely.

The roads were empty. That was to be expected of a highway at three in the morning. But still, Dani checked her side view and rearview mirrors every three minutes like she was driving to pass her driver's license test.

When Olivia had promised her they'd soon be out on the road together again, this was not what Dani had in mind.

Nothing that had happened that night was anywhere close to what Dani had had in mind. She expected a quiet night closing up the record store, a quick stop at Hank's for a chat and a sandwich, and then home to bed as she had one last final exam the next morning at an ungodly hour.

She made it as far as Hank's. They chatted, caught up, and then he left Dani to her rear booth with her phone propped up against the salt shaker. She ate, barely aware of how the food tasted, wrapped up in her sister's performance, recorded only a few hours before, live from Madison Square Garden.

Her headphones blocked out the noise of a party of secretaries celebrating the holidays a few tables over and she didn't even notice the youth group that had made a trip into the city to see all the Christmas lights clogging up the bar stools. Olivia was crushing it on stage. Nothing else mattered.

Dani couldn't help but smile as her sister belted out the high note to her second to last song. She made it one verse into her duet with Jayden, her finale, before turning it off just as he was about to sing.

She carried her plate over to the counter and was in the middle of calling out to Hank 'Merry Christmas' when her phone rang. She answered it before it could ring a second time, smiling with a 'Congratulations' on her lips. But the person who spoke before she could was not her sister. And what they said froze her in her tracks for one long second. And then it sent her speeding out the cafe and down the highway, headed south.

Dani called her mom as soon as she regained conscious thought and could think of anything other than what she was speeding towards. Luckily the roads were clear for a Connecticut highway headed towards Manhattan at Christmas time. All the traffic was coming towards her, people heading home for the weekend.

"Get her home."

Those were Molly's only instructions. They were followed with promises that she would be waiting for them when they got back and she was sending her prayers with Dani, an unnecessary reminder for Dani to drive safe ending the call.

Dani swore when her gas light came on two hours in and at least another hour and a half to go. Anything that kept her from moving towards her sister felt like a personal insult.

There was a small TV mounted on the gas pump, playing a continuous reel of stock commercials mixed in with sporadic news updates. The bit that played while Dani stood at the pump almost made her overflow her gas tank.

"- causing the Manhattan speedway to back up all the way to Fifth Avenue. No causalities as of yet but the offending car sped away in the commotion. The police are asking for any information anyone on the highway at the time might have as to the make and model of the car. Two passengers were rushed to the hospital once an ambulance made it through the chaos. No report as of yet to their condition nor their identity but sources are already saying that the damage was sufficient enough to total the car."

Dani was racing away from the gas station before they could play more helicopter footage of the car wreckage on the Manhattan highway that ran along the city. She left just as close up photos of the passenger side were published and added to the circulation.