HNNNNG I'M SO SORRY THAT THIS TOOK SO LONG TO GET OUT! I've been so busy with school, and then summer came and I got so distracted with all my freedom, and then I picked up digital drawing, and then I got so overwhelmed with back-to-school stuff! Not to mention the fact that I had no plan whatsoever for this story, so I had no idea at all what to do for the rest of the story. But after a few hours of discussion with Arina-Peachy I finally figured out what to do for the rest of the story.
Argggh I really do apologize for this seven month long hiatus, it wasn't meant to happen but it just did. Anyway, as of today, this story is back on a regular update schedule!
Anyway, I hope you enjoy this very long awaited chapter. And just as a heads up, this story will have quite a bit of suggestive language every now and then during violent scenes, such as later in this chapter.
Hope you enjoy!
HESSA'S POV
I take a large glug of the plastic water bottle before setting it down on the soft earthy soil of the rest stop. I had bought it at a vending machine using some spare change in my pocket. I had more, and I offered my partner-in-crime one, but Mr. Lassy-Boy over there is too stubborn to take help from a girl. Whatever, it's his loss. I don't care.
I stand up from the pavement, stretching out my stiff legs and pressing my back against the brick wall of the vertically challenged building. I cracked my joints and looked around for Connor. Where had that boy scampered off to? He could be in the bathrooms, but they were fairly unpleasant when I tried to go. But men are different than us women, so his opinion is probably different than mine. But baby droppings smeared against the diaper changed board and graffiti on the toilet seats is pretty disgusting to all genders in my opinion.
Picking the water bottle back up off the floor, I peer around the corner of the rest stop and hope to see any sign of Connor there.
Nothing. Zip. Just the eerie sound of dripping water fountains and the distant hum of the vending machines. I shrug and turn back around to face the large hill. The rest stop was in a rural part of the state. Small highways were nestled in between large hills and vast forests, along with long valleys. I had grown up a city girl; so being out here was a big change for me. Instead of seeing the dense evergreen trees of the woods, I see two squinted brown things staring right at me.
"Hi Hessa."
SLAP.
"Ow!" Connor stumbled back, holding his reddening cheek. "What the heck was that for Hessa?"
I shrug nonchalantly. "Reflexes. What were you doing out there? I thought you said you were going to go on guard duty!"
"I was in the bathroom." He stuffed his hands in his pants pockets. "Where were you?"
"Sitting right here next to the building! Ugh, you are so annoying – you and your lies!"
Connor shrugs like I did and leans against the wall. I want to slap him again, but instead, something deep and rumbling echoes out across the grass. I tense up and look around.
"What was that?" I ask, looking up at the clouded sky. Connor takes his hand out of his pocket and points straight at me.
"It's you Hessa. Calm down."
I'm about to prove him wrong when the sound echoes out again, this time – right from the center of my chest. My hand goes to my stomach.
"You're hungry," He says. I let my eyelids droop.
"No shiz Sherlock." I cross my arms and look over at the distant woods. "Too bad we don't have any money…"
Connor once again points at me. "Purse."
I look down at my hand and see that I'm still clutching the purse from this morning. I look over at Connor, who's grinning like the Joker, and wring out my bag.
SLAP.
Connor rubs his cheek again as I slip my purse back up my shoulder. "Ack, what is that? Pure stone?"
I swing my bag back and forth. "Limited edition white leather studded Prada – hurts more than it looks." I stop acting like a careless schoolgirl and start to point fingers.
"Alright, we have money. That's stated and done with. But we don't know how much we have, and how long it will last, Connor. We need to devise a plan and find out what the best way to spend our – excuse me, my – money is. And by the way, purse? Are you f-ing three? Get a vocabulary, and some grammar work."
"McDonalds has a dollar menu."
SLAP.
"Connor! Stop it! This isn't a joke! Running away isn't all fun and games. This is a serious situation! For all we know, we could outrun the Juvey-Cops, but end up dying of starvation." I turn away from Connor and lean my elbow on the bricks, pressing my cheek against my fist. Some of my hair (which is horribly frizzy due to this heat) falls into my face, but I just brush it back behind my ear and continue to look at the cracked pavement of the cheap, old, run-down rest stop. A hand lightly touches my shoulder, but I jerk my arm away from it. Instead of pulling away though, the hand just comes back and grips onto my shoulder, but still is very gentle and gingerly.
"I understand your frustration, but anger isn't going to solve this problem," I hear Connor say in a quieter, sweeter tone. "We really need to buckle down and figure this out. I suggest we first take inventory of what is in your purse, okay?"
I sniffle a little bit and sit down on the walkway, taking my purse off my shoulder and dumping the contents out by my knees. As we sift through the contents, Connor looks up from my purse and at my face.
"Hessa, are you crying? Your eyes are all red," He asks, concerned. I jerk my head up to meet his eyes and my hand goes to my face. My fingers feel around the base of my eye to find it wet and a little sticky from my make-up running. Due to my intense frustration I guess I never noticed I was tearing up. I rub the back of my wrist along my eyes to dry up any tears give a meek smile. "I-It's just my foundation rubbing off, m-my skin's always b-been a little red under my eyes…"
"You sure?" He brushes a bit of hair out of my face. I nudged his hand away with the back of my left hand. "Yeah, I'm fine. So, let's see what we have…my wallet – we'll check the contents later – a pack of tissues, a little Altoid tin, that mascara I took the label off of, my favorite peach Buxom lip stain, pepper spray – just in case – some chap stick, my lighter, and my vitamin D pills."
"You have to manually take vitamin D pills?" Connor asks, surprised, and I begin to pack away everything else but the wallet. "Once a week to help me get rid of my migraines, although I doubt I'll need to take them now that I'll be living outside and all." I set the purse aside and flipped the latch on my wallet to open it up. My mother had bought me this wallet for my thirteenth birthday when I had an unhealthy obsession with crafting. It was made entirely out of sterilized antique gum wrapper from some old, long dead company called "Orbit". It reminded me of my parents, which put sour, bittersweet memories in my head (A/N: Cue sad music :P).
The wallet contains several cards belonging to various clothing stores and beauty salons. In the wallet there is also my learner's permit and one twenty-dollar bill, no loose change at all.
"Only twenty dollars? Seriously?" Connor sighs and rests his face on his fist, smushing it upwards. I clench it shut again and shoot him a dirty look. "Hey, I was only going to 'lunch' so I didn't think I'd need that much money!" I mutter a few angry words under my breath and put my wallet back in my purse. "So how are we going to do this?"
Connor turned to his right so that he faced a grassless patch in the soil. Using one of the fallen tree branches from the maple hanging over the rest stop, he drew a large circle. "This is where we are." Connor drew a tiny circle in the bottom left of the circle. "This is the highway we got off of." Connor drew two long lines going diagonal across the very bottom and outside of the circle, but still below the rest stop. "If we follow the highway, it'll be 20-30 miles before we reach a town, seeing that we're in the middle of nowhere, but if we cut through the trees back here…" Connor drew a scribble-y line above the rest stop but parallel to the highway before then drawing a straight line going from the rest stop through the woods. "…Then we'll reach a town that was part of a rest stop a mile or so back where we can get something to eat and plan out next move." Connor finished his picture by drawing another small circle at the tip of the line connected to the rest stop.
I stood up quickly and glanced down at Connor real fast before looking over at the tree line to our left. "Then we better not waste anymore time, okay? I'm starving enough already…"
CONNOR'S POV
So about a half hour later we were able to slip past the town border and into the closest restaurant – which was a Dunkin' Donuts. Hessa suggested taking an alley route over to the (cheaper) McDonalds, but judging by the lack of cars and dark windows, I was guessing that they were closed, which is weird for a McDonalds. Since we got no strange looks from the cashier, I was guessing that word of our escape had yet to reach this small town. Using about 4 dollars, we bought a half-dozen donuts – 3 glazed, 2 chocolate frosted, and 1 vanilla crème for Hessa. Since we were in no rush, we decided to sit down and leisurely eat at one of the tables. Hessa went for her vanilla crème and I went sweet and chose a chocolate frosted.
The first donut consisted of just small talk about the weather, our families, and anything else non-suspicious. We were the only customers in here, but I'm very paranoid right now, and I want to stay on the safe side – for Hessa's sake.
When her and me had finished our donut and were reaching for our second one, a pair of normal cops waltzed in the door.
"Crap, keep your head down!" I whisper harshly to her and lean my head on my fist and look out the window. My blonde friend put's her hands in her lap and focuses intensely on the edge of the table farthest away from the cops as they approach the counter.
"Excuse me miss," One of them says in a deep voice. " Have you seen either of these two AWOL unwinds?" He then holds up a flyer, which was see-through when held by a light. It only took three seconds to realize that it was me and Hessa on the front of it.
"No, I don't think–"
"Achoo!"
Hessa.
Everybody turns around to see Hessa with her face unknowingly exposed. When she realizes it, it's already too late to avoid a showdown.
"Shit!" I whisper and roll over onto the floor near the counter as the cops pull out their guns. It's only a matter of seconds before they start shooting. I leap over the counter and grab the cashier by the shoulders. "Get out of here right now!" I then push her over towards the drive-thru window and duck back behind the counter. I hear Hessa scream, and I'm about to leap up and save her, when I hear a cop grunt in pain and before I know it Hessa's right next to me with a terrified expression on her face.
"What did you do?" I yell over the rapid gunfire.
"I kicked the table over and it hit him and I don't know what came over me but – " I cover up her mouth with my hand and get close to her face.
"Hessa, I love it when you talk, but right now is not the time to ramble! Now get over there and distract them!"
She nods sharply, mumbles a few unintelligible words, and stumbles over to the donut rack. It's not very long before she starts throwing things, and by things I mean donuts. Normally, I'd find this extremely funny, but in a life-or-death situation like this, I can't find any humor in it at all.
I needed to act fast while Hessa had them distracted…
The first thing I see is a shelf full of plastic coffee cups with frail nails attaching it to the mocha-colored wall. Bingo. I leap up as quietly as I can and tug at the shelf with all my might.
"Connor, what the hell are you doing?" Hessa shouts. A bullet barely misses my head. "Just keep them distracted!" I yell back. She screams randomly and continues to throw objects at them. She had run out of donuts though, so she started throwing other random objects, I ignored her and continued to tug at the shelf. Not that long after, though, I hear a loud thunk and one of the cops collapses on the floor.
"What did you just throw Hessa?" I yell at her over all the commotion.
"I don't know i-it was under the cash register and it was metal and had a handle and – "
"You mean you threw a gun?"
"I panicked!"
I scream several angry cuss words before the shelf rips from the wall, causing a hundred cups to waterfall onto the linoleum floor. Before the lone cop can figure out what's going on, I do a leap-of-faith over what's left of the shot-up counter and smash whatever I had of the shelf over his dark-skinned head. Then, everything went quiet – except for me and my partner-in-crime's panting.
"W-what now?" I hear Hessa say with whatever's left of her breath. I think for a moment before telling her, "Check the cash register for money. I'll search the guns."
I kneel down and check both of the cops' small pistols. One was completely empty, and the other had only one bullet left. Ammo was too expensive, and they weren't worth the extra weight. Right as I'm putting the guns back in the holsters of the unconscious cops, I hear distant police sirens.
"Hurry up Hessa!" I yell and begin to throw stuff at the large front window.
"Okay, one min–" She's cut off by the loud sound of shattering glass. As soon as the window's broken, I run over to the counter, grab Hessa's wrist, and run out of the window.
So there you go! I really hope you liked it; I spent seven months on this, even though I wasn't writing it 99% of that time span XD
NEXT CHAPTER: We introduce a new character into our story! Who is she? What is her past? How will she get along with the rest of our beloved cast of characters?
That's a new feature I'm going to add to the story :3
Anyway, I can't wait to write more of the story; the plot is so juicy I could just die!
I hope everybody's still here who read it before, and you all can expect another chapter by the end of this weekend!
Remember to read, rate, and review!
~EnnixiaMaeLin
