The man walks around our chair and stands closer to the fire. He’s wearing khaki pants and a puffy jacket with an embroidered logo that reads Big Sur Campground, and thank God, because for a minute there I thought he might have been a serial killer.
“I’m Noah. I help run this place.” He holds out his hand to shake but seems to think better of it. Awkward. “Do you think you guys could keep it down? One of the other campers had a quiet word to me about the noise.”
“Yeah, sure,” I say. “We’re ... er ... going to bed now anyway.”
“Okay, well, don’t forget to put out the fire first,” Noah says. “Can’t have the whole forest burning down.”
“Right,” Styx agrees.
He turns and walks a few feet away. I hold my breath, not sure if I want to laugh or run away in embarrassment, but the man faces us again. “Your parents do know you’re here, right?”
Guilt washes through me, but I smile and say, “Of course. They’re totally cool with it. We’re from Monterey. So, you know, they wouldn’t have to go far to find us.”
He glances at the truck parked by the cabin, probably checking the San Francisco license plates. Nice work, Alaska. He’s going to rat us out for sure. “Monterey, huh?”
“Yep.”
“So you probably go to school with my daughter?”
I swallow hard and shrug. “It’s a big school.”
“It’s not that big.” He looks up at the stars and sighs. “You know there’s an amber alert out for you guys, right?”
“What?” I say.
“That’s not us,” Styx adds.
“Okay, you can cut the shit, because your faces have been plastered all over the national news for the last hour.”
“Christ.” Styx exhales loudly and tips his head back, his eyes closed, and brow furrowed.
“You know I have no choice but to report you?”
“Come on, man.” Styx squeezes my side. “Please don’t do that.”
“We have cancer,” I blurt. The man stares at me with his brows raised and a you don’t expect me to buy this bullshit expression on his face. “It’s true. We’re just ... we’re just trying to make it to Disneyland.”
“Disneyland?” His tone is incredulous.
“Come on, Noah,” Styx says. “You remember what it was like to be young, don’t you?”
“I’m thirty-eight, kid. That’s not old.”
“It’s kinda old,” I say, though I regret it instantly when his frown deepens. “Sorry.”
He seems to hesitate, wets his lips, and then says, “What kind of cancer? The News didn’t specify. They just said you were sick.”
“Alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma,” Styx says.
I point to my head and shrug. “Brain tumor. I have surgery next week.”
“Hence the Disney road trip.” Styx grips my waist, as if he’s afraid I’ll be snatched away at any second. I know how he feels.
“Please? Please don’t report us.” I beg. “We just ... we just wanna feel like normal kids for a minute.”
“Ah, shit.” He scratches his stubble. “I could get into real trouble doing this. If I’d been here this afternoon when you checked in, I would have had some questions and made a few calls. You’re lucky Ella was the one to handle your reservation.”
“Is that your daughter?” I ask with a sad smile.
“Yeah.”
“She’s our age, right?” I slide my hands into the pockets of the hoodie Styx gave me.
He shakes his head. “She’s fourteen.”
“What would you do if she were in our shoes?”
“She wouldn’t be in your shoes because I’d kill her if she ever ran away with a boy across the state. Cancer or not.” He sighs. “Look, if I don’t report this, I could get in a lot of trouble.”
“Please?”
“Maybe it’s for the best,” Styx says. “Maybe this was a stupid idea.”
“No. It’s not a stupid idea. It’s the best idea, and it’s the only real shot we have. They’re going to cut open my skull in a week. They’re going to carve a tumor out of my brain, and I may end up a vegetable for the rest of my life. I’m seventeen, sir, and not to lay the guilt on thick, but this may be the last chance I get to be a kid, to kiss a boy, and forget about this disease that’s trying to kill us both. So I’m begging you, please, please don’t report us.”
“Jesus Christ.” He shakes his head. “You feel safe with this guy?”
I sniff and wipe away my tears with the heel of my hands. “Yeah.”
“You trust him enough to know he’ll stop if you ask him to?”
“Of course. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”
He nods. “You have any problems, you go for the eyes, and then the groin, and then you run and find me. Cabin twenty-eight, over there by the big Fir.”
“Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose? Telling me how to protect myself in front of the guy you think I need protection from?”
“Don’t bust my balls, kid.” He points to Styx. “And you, you lay a finger on her when she says no, and I’ll kill you myself.”
“I’m not going to touch her if she doesn’t want me to.”
“If I call the cops now, you’ll spend the night in the waiting room at the police station until your parents can get down here to pick you up. You’ve got until first light. You stay here where it’s warm and safe, but that truck better be out of my campground before my grocery delivery tomorrow at seven a.m.”
Styx nods. “Yes, sir.”
“I’ll report it then, but we never had this conversation.”
“Thank you.” I sniff back my tears.
He nods. “Drop your key in the deposit box by the office.”
“Will do. Thanks, man.”
“Good luck with your surgery, and no more drinking,” He says. “I hope you kids make it. I really do.”
I’m not sure if he means to Disney or through cancer. I’m not sure it matters. We could die in our sleep tonight. All we have is right now. It is the only guarantee life has given us, and I plan to make every millisecond count.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
STYX
I pull into a gas station and turn off the truck.
“Race you for the restroom,” Stones says, her smile wide and unassuming. I just stare at her. I can’t believe she’s here with me. I can’t believe I’m this lucky. The fact that she’s even deemed me important enough to talk to, let alone kiss, touch, and run away with is a goddamn miracle.
“What? Do I have Cheetos in my teeth?” She flashes perfect pearly whites at me, and I grin and shake my head.
“Your teeth are fucking perfect, Stones. Just like the rest of you.”
Her eyes grow wide, like me thinking she’s gorgeous is news. She hurtles across the center console and grabs the cords on my hoodie, pulling me in for a kiss. I slide my fingers into her hair and kiss her so deep she moans. The car behind us honks, and we break apart and grin. “I think your teeth are fucking perfect too.”
I laugh and pull away, opening my door. “Go pee, Stones. I need a minute away from you to calm down and lose my boner.” I slide out of the car and adjust things below.
“For the record, your boner is perfect too,” she shouts.
Chuckling, I slam the door. The guy behind us flips me off, and I mouth “sorry” but he’s an asshole so I’m not really sorry about making him wait while I kiss my girl. His Dodge Dart pulls out, the tires screeching on the concrete as he drives off.
Alaska slides out of the vehicle and bends over to grab her purse. I stare at her ass, and when she stands and turns toward me, I’m holding the gas pump in front of my junk.
“Wow. You weren’t kidding about that boner.” She grins and blows me a kiss. “I’m getting snacks.”
And I’m getting harder just watching her walk away.
I swipe my card, fill the tank, and head inside to piss. Stones comes barreling out of the door, her arms full of snacks.
“Hu
ngry much?”
“Starved. Hurry up. I didn’t pay for these.”
“What the fuck?”
“Go, go, go, go!” she shouts.
“Jesus, Stones.” I glance at the clerk, who’s staring with his brow creased in confusion. He’s not budging though, and I don’t know what the fuck else to do as Alaska barrels forward so I turn tail, hit the fob on my dad’s truck, and run like hell.
Inside the car, I slam the stick into drive and peel out of the gas station, almost clipping another vehicle in the process. The woman lays on her horn, and I lay on mine, and take the right exit onto the freeway.
Stones is cackling like a maniac, and I laugh too, caught up in her madness. “Wanna tell me what the fuck that was about? If you needed money, baby, you should have just asked.”
“I didn’t really steal this stuff,” she crows. “But you should see your face.”
“Are you kidding me right now?”
“Nope.” She grins and takes my hand from the wheel, toying with my fingers and sliding her sleeves over them before resting them in her lap. “I paid for every item.”
“You’re fucking crazy.”
“But I’m never dull,” she says with a crooked smile. She’s still holding my hand hostage, and fiddling with it in the sleeve of her oversized hoodie—my hoodie.
“No, you’re never that.” I take my hand back, needing to focus on the road. When I place it on the wheel, a bright teal velvet scrunchie is wrapped around my wrist.
“Did you buy me a scrunchie?”
“No. I bought me a scrunchie, which I’m giving to you.”
“I think you’re supposed to wear it first so it smells like you.”
“Eww, that’s gross. Who wants my ratchet-unwashed-hair smell on their scrunchie?”
I grin. “Me.”
“Well, that might be kind of hard.” She points to her hair, which is thinning in patches now, and that she mostly covers up with a bandanna tied in a bow on top of her head like a pinup girl. Some days she wears it like a badass biker chick. It’s totally fucking hot. “Lucky for you I bought more than one.” She takes a pink velvet scrunchie and stuffs it in her cleavage.
I wet my lips. “I’m totally getting that out later.”
Stones gives me a flirty smile. “I’m totally going to let you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
STYX
I turn the stereo off and glance at Stones. She’s out cold, snoring lightly with a thin line of drool pooling on her shirt from her chin. I pull my phone from my pocket and turn it on. I’ve pretty much had it switched off since we left SF. I think Stones just turned hers to silent because our parents were calling so much.
I dart my eyes between my Instagram app and the road. I go live, whispering to whoever might be watching, “She sleeps, ladies and gentlemen. She looks like a fairy princess, commandeers my heart like a queen, and snores like a wildebeest. She’s not any of those things. She’s just a girl who’s trying to live while dying. A girl this court jester loves.”
I turn the camera back to my face and wink. “And I think the girl might even love me. Say what you want about how tragic our lives are, our diagnoses, but the way I see it, Alaska Stone and I are the luckiest kids alive. Now, I gotta quit talking before she wakes and mauls me like the beast for filming her with drool on her shoulder.”
I tag her IG handle, end the video, and wince when her phone chimes on the dash. Stones doesn’t wake, and I tuck my phone in the console and drive. We’re so close. Just a few more hours from the happiest place on Earth, but in a way, a part of me doesn’t even care if we make it, because this right here, her asleep and me driving into the night in our shitty little truck is everything. And I can’t imagine a happier place on Earth than right here, with her by my side.
An hour later, I’m fighting to keep my eyes open when we drive into a hotel at Pismo Beach. I shake her gently and she breathes deeply, her lips curling into a sleepy smile. “I was having the best dream.”
“Yeah? What about?”
“You and I stole your father’s car and we went on a road trip to Disneyland.”
“Wow, that must have sucked. I bet we drove each other fucking nuts.”
“We did. But I also dreamed that we were dying.”
My brow furrows—I can’t help it. My features turn to ice; my face shuts down. “Also not just a dream.”
“It’s okay though, because when we died, it was just like flying. The two of us together, we flew, across Disneyland and Big Sur. We flew across cities and oceans and we held hands the entire way, and our lips were flapping in that way they do when people skydive.”
The absurdity of her words hits me like an anvil, and I burst into laughter instead of tears. I swipe at my eyes and clear my throat. “Flapping lips, huh?”
“Yep.” She smiles up at me and grabs her cheeks, pulling them apart rapidly. “You looked so funny too. Do it with me. I wanna see if the dream is anything like the real thing.”
“I’m not doing that.”
“Oh, come on, I did it for you.”
“No.”
“Come on, Styx. I did it for you; do it back.”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Boo, you suck.”
I bite the inside of my cheek. “You really want me to flap my lips?”
“Please?”
“The things we do for love.” I raise a brow. She sucks in a breath, and I ignore it. Grabbing my cheeks, I pull them in and out until they’re making squishy sounds of their own. I do it until my face aches. She grins like a loon.
“Happy now?”
“Love?”
I study her face and smile. “What?”
“You said ‘the things we do for love’.”
“So?”
She clambers across the seat again and climbs into my lap. Her ass lays on the horn, but I don’t care because her lips are on mine, and I was right. This car is the happiest place on Earth. Her kiss is the happiest place on Earth, and nothing I live to see will ever top it.
When we come up for air, we’re both panting. My dick is hard, and I’m trying not to let her feel it through my jeans.
“You love me?” she asks.
“Yeah, Stones. I’m surprised you haven’t figured that out yet.”
“Will you ... will you go get us a room?”
I chuckle. I might need a minute for the blood to drain from my dick before I can do anything, but I nod and kiss her forehead. “You may have to detach yourself from my hips first.”
“Right. Sorry.”
“Don’t ever apologize for wanting to kiss me.” I grin and she climbs off my lap. Her cheeks are flushed, and she looks a little embarrassed at her outburst because she sinks down in her seat and pulls the blanket up to her chin. “I’d kiss you forever if I could.”
“Me too.” Her smile fades and she picks up her phone, likely to avoid my gaze. There are unshed tears in her eyes. I wish we could live, really live, without the constant reminder that we’re dying.
“I’ll be back.” I slide from my seat and close the door, relishing the cool Fall air on my skin. I walk slower to the office than I should, but my boner is awkward, and I don’t need the attendant staring. So I breathe deeply, and I try to ignore that the girl I want—the girl I love—is waiting for me in my dad’s truck.
The old lady manning the desk is more engrossed in her soap opera on the TV than she is in talking to some kid who needs a room for the night. She doesn’t ask questions, I pay cash, and she hands me the keys and tells me where to find the ice machine.
I walk back to the truck and open her door.
Alaska pounces from the front seat. “I saw your video.”
I grimace. “Oh yeah?”
“Uh-huh.” She bites her lip. “You know, if you weren’t so stinkin’ cute, I’d probably punch you for filming me while I slept.”
“No. No, please,” I mock protest. “Anything but your girly punches. I can’t take it.”
Too soon, she moves. I grab our shit from the floor on the passenger side and take her hand. “Come, my lady. Your chamber awaits.”
Alaska rolls her eyes. “You’re such a dork.”
“It’s my special talent.” I lead her to the bank of hotel rooms, slide our key in the lock, and open the door.
Brown. Brown is all I see. Brown furniture, brown walls, brown drapes, and overall, the smell of the room is musk and old Russian dude, sauerkraut, and also, the color brown.
“Wow,” Stones says. “That’s ...”
“Brown.”
“Pretty much.” She moves inside the room, turning on lamps with yellow, stained shades. “I wonder how many kids have lost their V-cards after prom here?”
“I wonder how many people were murdered here.”
She grins at me. “Good point.”
“We can’t stay here.” I shake my head, not wanting to even set foot across the threshold. She deserves so much better than this. I mean, we haven’t exactly been hitting the high-rollers’ rooms on this trip, but she deserves better than ... brown.
“Sure we can.” She jumps on the bed and I move inside the room and close the door behind me.
“Stones, I don’t know if you should be on there.”
“Why? Afraid I’ll catch a life-threatening disease? Too late.” She winks and pokes out her tongue, fishing her phone out of the pocket of her jeans.
I wish she wouldn’t do that. Make light of our illnesses. I mean, fobbing off my illness and making jokes has always been a coping mechanism for me, but I swear to God it’s like a knife to the fucking heart every time she does it. Every time she reminds me this is finite, that we’re finite.
“What’s up, Addicts?” she says to the camera on her phone. “We’re currently in our lovely accommodations for the evening. You guys, you’ve never seen anything browner. Seriously, it’s like shit puked in here. Isn’t that right, Styx?”
Styx & Stones Page 10
