READ THE AUTHOR'S NOTE RIGHT NOW.
TopHatGirl: Hey, kids. The chapter you're about to read below has not been written by me. It's been written by this series's cowriter ecrounox. She's going to be the writer of Ike here, and all of her chapters are in his POV. I'm going to be Shift here. If you haven't read the previous installment of this, titled The Burning(written by me), then you're probably going to be very very confused. Go on and read it, you won't be disappointed. There's already the first 4 chapters up to please you, and I hope you enjoy more of Shift and Ike's...antics. Now go and read!
We decided at one point that whatever we did, we would never go to the same college as everyone else at our school.
I've got to admit, though, it was Shift who determined this. Sometime ago, maybe in, like, April, Shift dragged me over to the Village Inn for a cup of coffee and that's where we discussed our plans. "We have to leave the state for college or something. After we graduate I never want to see any of those douchebags at school ever again," he insisted. And I had to agree with him, because I don't really like the idea of anyone I know breathing down my neck while I tried to get through another four years of school. They would point out all of my mistakes and it would be like I was living with my parents once again.
What do you think you're doing, Ike Broflovski? Why are you hanging out with that stupid goth kid?
And this is what I would tell them: "Because he's my friend, assholes." And maybe I would flip them off, too.
He's the only "friend" that I've picked up throughout my teenage years. That's right. Shift, also known as Charlie and formerly known as Kindergoth, was probably the only person I could imagine myself putting up with for the next few years. When we were at that diner way back, I had nodded and completely agreed with him.
I nodded then, and I was nodding several months later in the passenger seat of his car while music played on the radio. He had given up hours ago on trying to win back his Nine Inch Nails CDs and started pretending that he hated every single "conformist" song that played over and over again on the California pop radio station. I swear I caught him singing along a few times but he denied
all of my accusations.
I knew his dark secret, though. He really doesn't hate popular music as much as he says he does.
In fact, I know a lot of things about him that most people don't.
Like... well, the first thing that comes to mind is his musical guilty pleasures, of course. He once told me that a goth that listens to Katy Perry was about as nonconformist as it gets.
Second; he's surprisingly strong. I mean, I was on a lot of sports teams before and he could still probably kick my ass if he wanted to.
Third; deep down underneath that dark exterior, he's really caring... for his multiple writing notebooks, for his cigarettes, for his car, and me occasionally.
I kept reminding myself of these things throughout the duration of that long drive. And then I remembered part way through that annoying "I Love College" song that we were on our way to check out a few college campuses. Through the few conversations we've had about school, I can't really sum up what our plans were.
Shift wants to become a freelance writer to pay for his school tuition. He said that he would take out a loan and sleep in his car if he had to.
I had to disapprove of this, however. We decided that wherever we went, we would stick together. Loans weren't especially a good idea to use, according to my dad, and there's no way I was sleeping in a car.
So the plans weren't set in stone yet at that point. Maybe that's why we were wandering around California; we needed to find a place to eat, to sleep, and a school that would possibly take in two teenagers searching for a higher education. But I think we mostly just wanted to get away from our home lives.
Fortunately for my parents, I didn't insist on bursting out into arguments with them like Kyle. I just felt sick of them, and sick of how they made mefeel under my own skin. When Kyle had come out, they had enforced their normality onto me and I was forced to be the perfect little angel that would make up for their real son. They figured out my own... orientation, though. They're just in utter denial, as Shift had said. And I was okay with that for now, as long as I was old enough to live away from them. California, at least, would be more accepting.
I turned to Shift, who'd been driving through the mountains since that morning with his eyes glued on the road, probably fueled by the few cups of coffee and a sip of my energy drink that he had had. This was all a déjà vu, only there are tons of trees around these roads instead of the vast expanding fields in
Colorado. That time we had a purpose, and this time we were just two guys on a road trip.
"Ike, I swear I'm going to shoot somebody in the foot if I hear another fucking Ke$ha song. Turn the radio off." he grumbled.
"You know you like it."
"Turn it off! Change it! Just make it end." the car sped up a bit, a few miles over the speed limit. He looked sincere with how aggravated he was, so I pressed the power button.
"Tired?" I asked him.
"Dying."
"Pull over then, I need to take a leak anyway."
"Good for you." he waited to get to the nearest pull away point and pulled the abused car onto a dirt patch. The second we were stopped completely, he let out a big sigh and slouched forward so that his forehead hit the wheel. I told him that I would take over as soon as I was done and got out. Once I had
finished my business behind a pine tree with a conveniently placed roll of toilet paper, I returned to find him in the passenger seat with Peter Murphy blasting from the stereo.
I ran around the side of the car and jumped in through the window. Shift raised an eyebrow and shook his head. There was a newspaper in his lap, probably from the last gas station we stopped at.
"Society's come to a sad, sad place." he offered the paper.
"Yeah, well, I thought you liked it that way." he rolled his eyes and I took the paper. There were several articles about the mysterious disappearance of a few people in L.A., a murder, some kind of political mayhem, the particularly special.
"It's not any better than South Park here, you know." I closed it and chucked the paper on top of the dashboard.
"Let's not make any judgments until we've actually been here for longer than a few days."
All I did was shrug before revving the engine up again.
For some unknown reason, in the pit of my stomach, I felt that life would get much more interesting from that point on. Maybe it would be a change of lifestyle, maybe it would be Shift, or maybe California was hiding some kind of deep, dark secret.