Ryan's heart pounded in his chest as his eyes skimmed the road ahead of them.

            In a way, this was good.  Food, place to crash, somebody who didn't seem like he wanted to beat him, rob him, or fuck him.  Better than he'd had the last few weeks. 

            But in a way, this was really, really bad.  He was trying to get away, and somehow accepting this felt like a devil's bargain.  Tying him down.  Committing him.  Sure, it was just a ride, but so much was at stake.  For him?  It was everything.

            "Hey, listen," he said.  Seth looked up quizzically.  "You... you can't tell your dad about this.  Ever."
            "Why not?" Seth pressed.  He was gentle, but Ryan still shifted in his seat, awkwardly, wishing he wouldn't dig like that.

            "It's complicated, but..."  Ryan sighed reluctantly.  "That case?  That he was representin' me on?  It's not really..."  He rolled his head over to look at Seth.  "Finished."
            Seth, for his part, managed to contain most of his reaction, limiting it to a simple raise of the eyebrows, only a minor giveaway.  "Aha."  Yeah, Seth got it.  He might be sheltered, but the kid wasn't stupid.
            "So..."
            "So?"  Seth considered this.  "Okay.  I won't tell my dad.  Deal, on one condition."
            "Yeah?"
            "Just answer a couple of questions for me.  Yes or no."
            Ryan shrugged.  He chewed on his lip.

            "Did you kill somebody?"
            "What?  No!  I – no!"  He sat straight up in the seat, leaning back against the door.

            "Didn't think so, Dad doesn't usually get those.  Okay.  Did you hurt somebody?"
            "Nah.  Nobody was involved except for – no."  No details, smart-ass.  Ryan thudded his head back on the headrest.  "I didn't hurt anybody.  I swear."  He waited patiently.  "Anything else?" he prompted, finally.

            "Nope," Seth said.  He shook his head, looking perfectly relaxed now that it was all out in the open.  "Good deal.  No tattling here.  You want to skip town, fine by me."  He paused.  "That's not why you're skipping town, is it?"
            "Not... exactly, no," Ryan said, considering this.  "I mean, it all kind of happened at once."

            "What happened at once?"
            Ryan snapped his head towards Seth.  "Everything.  How much farther to San Diego?"  The words came out in a rush.  Talking about the past was not on his agenda for the evening.

"About an hour," Seth said, looking somewhat thrown by the abrupt change of topic.  "I figure it'll be about eight-thirty by the time we get to the hotel.  Maybe we can grab some burgers or something."

            "Um, maybe," Ryan said.  Should he accept?  Was Seth offering to pay?  And more importantly, was that safe?

            "Watch a little TV.  Rest up."

            "Yeah," Ryan said, trying not to show how relieved he was.  "Yeah.  Why not."  It had been a few weeks since he'd slept in a real bed, and he missed it something terrible.  The first couple of nights had been so awful, he thought he'd never get used to it.  Turned out he was right.  He never had.  He hadn't slept a solid night the entire time he'd been hanging around the park, not even the nights he spent curled up with The Finger underneath the warm summer moon.  He was spoiled rotten.  He wanted a bed.  He wanted darkness.  He wanted silence.  He wanted peace and quiet.  He couldn't just pass out on a bench somewhere the way Dave could.

            "Now, surely you like TV," Seth said, almost patronizing.

            But somehow, it didn't bother him.  "Yeah, course I do," he said. 

            "Anything in particular?"
            "Whatever's on."
            "Dude. You are way too accommodating."
            Ryan scratched his eyebrow.  "You got a problem with that or something?"
            "Matter of fact, I do.  Here."  Seth reached over with his right arm and grabbed ahold of the CD case, which he hurled at Ryan, who caught it in surprise.  "You pick something out."
            "But I don't-"  He fumbled with the zipper.

            "Make a decision already," Seth prodded. 

            Ryan stared at him for a long moment.  "Yeah, okay," he agreed finally, unzipping the case and starting to flip through.

            "Something you like," Seth continued.  "Don't try to make me happy.  Quit being so damn agreeable."
            "I wasn't being agreeable a few minutes ago," Ryan pointed out.  "Back there."
            Seth shrugged dismissively.  "Just pick the music out already."
            "Picking, picking," Ryan muttered.  "Jesus.  You're tough."

            "Better," Seth said, satisfied.

            Ryan flipped through, eventually landing on a CD blindly and leaning forward to insert it into the CD player.  Seth leaned forward to read it as it slipped into the depths of the car.

            "Okay," he said approvingly.  "Good call.  Now, is this something you like?"
            "Yes," Ryan said automatically.

            Seth shook his head.  "You are such a liar.  Dude."
            "What? I-"
            "There is no way that you like Smashing Pumpkins."
            "Do too."

            Seth smirked at him.  "It wasn't Smashing Pumpkins, dude, it was Fountains of Wayne.  Why don't you try looking at the CD next time, huh?"
            Ryan rolled his eyes.  "Okay.  Caught.  Look, it's your car, you pick the music.  Swear to god.  I.  Don't.  Care."
            "See?  Like I said.  You are way too eager to please."
            Ryan sighed aloud.  "Yeah," he said.  "Yeah, that's my problem.  Too much pleasing."  He was trying to keep the sarcastic edge out of his voice, but it wasn't easy. Seth shot him a worried look.  He hesitated.  "I kinda like this song," he offered.

            An electronic tune started up at Ryan's feet and he jumped, startled.  "Oh, right," Seth said, "sorry, that's my cell phone.  Can you pull that out?"
            Ryan shifted the cooler and found the ringing, silver object, tossed carelessly on the floor, which he passed to Seth obligingly.  Seth glanced at the caller ID and held a finger up to Ryan.  "It's my dad," he said.  "No talkie."  Ryan nodded in understanding, pressing his lips together.

            "Hi Dad," Seth said.  "Yeah, I'm still on the road."
            Ryan stared down at his boots.  He could hear the odd timbre of Sandy Cohen's voice on the other end, so close and so very, very far away.  He could have called.  Too late now.

            "Almost, a few more minutes to the hotel, I think.  Yeah, I filled up the tank awhile ago, got my music going, can I call you from the hotel?  Driving and talking on the cell phone is a leading cause of – uh huh, that's right, bye, Dad."  Seth pulled the phone away from his ear and hit the button before sending a smirk in Ryan's direction.  "My dad is a loon.  But then, you knew that."
            "He is kinda pushy," Ryan admitted.

            "Tell me about it.  You should have seen the hoops he made me jump through for this trip – he says he trusts me, but when it comes down to it, he has to spell like every little thing out."  Seth punctuated this by gesturing wildly above the steering wheel.

            "Yeah," Ryan said, twisting in his seat to face Seth, "I knew the guy for like, two minutes, didn't even ask him to help me, and already he was trying to tell me what to do with my life."
            "Somehow, I bet hitchhiking to Texas wasn't on that list," Seth said.

            Ryan froze.  "Naw," he finally admitted after a moment.  He leaned back in his seat.  "It wasn't."
            "His advice is usually better than that.  But everything worked out, cause now you're not hitchhiking at all.  I mean, my dad was your lawyer – that makes us practically, what?  Like cousins or something?"
            Ryan wrinkled his nose in confusion.  "Uh, sure."

            "Okay.  Maybe not cousins.  Definitely not strangers, though."
            "No," Ryan agreed.  "No, definitely not."

            Seth was right, somehow.  A couple of hours into this trip, and Ryan could feel it.  Seth wasn't a stranger, and he'd known that before he found out about their connection.  They'd been in this car forever, just driving along, talking, spending their lives together.  It was familiar to the point of being frightening, but just barely safe enough that he wasn't entirely scared.

            "Do you take your dad's advice?" Ryan asked curiously.

            "I dunno," Seth said.  "Sometimes.  Sometimes he's too pushy, though.  Like you said.  He's always trying to get me to go do stuff I don't want to do."

            "Like?"
            "Well, see, you gotta understand Newport.  Which is tricky, cause even I don't understand Newport.  All these kids, all that money, the social status and everything, all they care about is suntans, and, like, parties, and who's doing who."
            "Uh huh," Ryan said.  He didn't quite see yet what the problem was.

            "It's so shallow," Seth burst out.

            "Oh."
            "I mean, there's so much more to life-"

            "Like comic book conventions?"  Ryan immediately bit his tongue back.

            "At least that's interesting!"
            Ryan shrugged.  He wasn't about to argue.  "So, like, are you not into the money and the social status?  You and your Range Rover, you're just upper middle class?"
            Seth shot him a look.  "I mean, financially, yeah, I'm okay, which is why you are not paying for your own dinner tonight when we get to the hotel, by the way.  But it's just... I mean... there's got to be more to life than that, right?"

            "Uh huh," Ryan said again, still partially in disbelief, and contemplating whether or not he really wanted to refuse a free dinner.

            "So anyway.  Newport.  These kids, the only way to get to know them is to be as boring and shallow as them and do all the boring and shallow things that they do.  And I'm just not into it.  But it's like I have to be if I want to have any friends there, so..."

            "So you just don't have friends there?  Except-"

            "Anna, right," Seth finished glumly.

            "Who just moved there."
            "Yeah."

            Ryan shook his head.  "Look... don't let anybody ever tell you that you're not as cool as them because you're not into that shallow crap."

            "Oh, I don't," Seth said automatically.

            "Well, good," Ryan said definitively.  He caught Seth looking at him and stared at the highway stretching ahead of them.  "Good.  So if Newport's so lousy, why don't you move?"
            Seth wrinkled his nose.  "It's complicated," he explained.  "I mean, my mom works for my grampa, and he owns, like, a lot of real estate in Newport."  He rushed through the last part.  "Her business is kind of stuck there.  I wish we could get out of it, but..."  He shrugged.  "It's the part of being sixteen that sucks."
            "Tell me about it," Ryan grumbled.  He hesitated, glanced out the window, then at his lap, and then at Seth before finally finishing his thought.  "My mom?  She has, like, a new boyfriend every month.  Most of them I'd gladly kick to the curb if I could, but that's the part of being sixteen that sucks.  Is that you can't."  He looked up at the roof of the car, uncertain if he should have said that.  He glanced sideways at Seth and was relieved to see that Seth was clearly not planning to respond, as he was steering them onto another exit ramp.  He finally let his eyes rest on his lap as the dark, uneasy feelings started to settle in again.

            "Ah, there's our digs," Seth said, pointing to the tall, almost glistening hotel.  Ryan squinted up at it as they approached down a side street.

            "You're sure you're okay with sharing your room?" Ryan asked skeptically.

            "Yeah.  No prob.  I'll see if I can get them to upgrade to a double.  It'll only show up on my bank statement, Mom and Dad'll never see it."
            "Huh," Ryan said, offering an obligatory response.  At this point, it felt weird to not respond to Seth's words.  Talking to him was like a habit now.  It was just what Ryan did.  He answered Seth.

            "Or there's a pull-out couch bed in every room."
            "That's fine," Ryan said, his head shooting up.  "I'll just crash on the couch."
            Seth shrugged.  "Let me at least try to upgrade?"
            "No, man.  I don't want you to have to lie to your parents."

            "Why not?  I never get the chance to.  It'd be fun."
            Fun?  Ryan again squinted over at Seth.  "I'll sleep on the couch," he said again.

            "There's really no-"

            "You said you wanted me to quit being agreeable," Ryan said.  "I quit."  He let his mouth hang open slightly, offering up just a little tough-guy posturing for a moment before he relaxed into a small smile.

            "Okay," Seth said finally.  "If you insist, dude."  And with that, he swung the car into the parking lot.