Thanks to wiseoldman and Brooke for reviewing! (hey, we have the same numbers in our pen names! haha)
Enjoy!
-Sienna
Chapter Two: Freddy's Got It All Worked Out (Freddy's POV)
I never mean to be late. But that doesn't seem to have much to do with it, cause I am anyway…this time I have a good excuse, but Katie doesn't want to hear it.
"Where the hell have you been, Fredward?" she demands. I'm momentarily amused by the steam coming out of her mouth—it makes her look kind of like a dragon. I'm about to tell her this when I think better of it.
"I had to get ready," I say.
"I've been here for twenty minutes. It's freaking freezing."
"Chill," I say, then laugh at myself. Katie doesn't. The cold must have frozen her pout. She's not really mad, though, I can tell. She wouldn't call me Fredward if she was really mad.
"Did you get everything?" she asks, looking at my backpack.
"Clothes, money. Snackage. You?"
"Clothes, money. CDs."
"Why CDs?"
She shrugs. "I dunno."
"Well, I think my Doritos will be a lot tastier than CDs."
"Right…how much money do you have?"
"Only seventy-five bucks…my Aunt Miriam couldn't visit today, so I didn't get the thirty from her I usually get."
"That's okay, I've got a hundred and twenty. We should be fine, right?"
"As long as you don't mind sleeping in the park like hobos," I say, grinning. She smiles.
"If I wanted someplace cushy to sleep, I'd have stayed home."
I'm so excited, I can't stand still. It's one of my worst traits, whenever I'm really hyper-happy about something, I get jittery. Right now I'm doing my best not to jump up and down.
"Are you EXCITED, Brown?"
She wrings her hands in her thick mittens, looking back towards her street. I can't read the expression on her face. You promised you wouldn't flake, I think.
"I'm just nervous, I guess."
"Psh, that," I say. "Let's get going. Then you won't be so nervous."
I step out from the gazebo's shelter and look around the street. She actually picked a good time to run away, because of the snow. It'll cover our tracks, for one, and for two it makes everything brighter, easier to see at night. What little light there is reflects off of it. See, I do know something.
Katie falls into step beside me; it's slow going through the snow until we reach the main road, Oak. It's usually a busy double-yellow-line street, but in the wee hours of the morning, it's silent.
"Come on," I say, jumping off the plow's pile and into the clear road. She follows reluctantly.
"What about cars?"
"There're hardly any cars this late, trust me."
"Obviously I do, Freddy."
I look back at her and grin again. There are snowflakes stuck all over her, her hat, her hair, her eyelashes, her shoulders like dandruff. She must be crazy.
"I don't even know where we're going, but what am I doing? I'm following you into the middle of a road, in the middle of the night, and we're probably going to the middle of nowhere. But I've known you since I was eight, so I'm pretty sure you're not a psycho—a dangerous psycho, anyway."
"Are you saying I'm a harmless psycho?"
She tilts her head. "Yes?"
"Sweet."
We walk north on Oak Road, toward school. Katie doesn't ask where we're going, and I don't offer it. I want to see how far she'll go trusting I have a destination in mind.
"Did you leave a note for your parents?" she asks after a few minutes.
"Yeah, did you?"
"Thought about it…didn't, though. Should I have?"
"You're asking me?"
"You're the expert," she says. "What did it say?"
"'Don't worry. I'll be back,'" I quote.
"Deep."
"Thank you."
"I would've gone into too much detail, I know it. And then they'd find us in a heartbeat, or not even worry, or something."
"Well, they'll figure something out eventually. We're both gone on the same night, my 'rents will find my note and be like, 'damn, did he take the Brown girl with him this time?' Then I'll get arrested for kidnapping."
She laughs, and it echoes off the snow-covered trees on either side of us.
"What, didn't you notice?" I say innocently. "I'm kidnapping you."
"Can't kidnap the willing," she says.
I have a sudden urge to do something stupid, like steal her hat and play keep away. So I swipe it off her head. Who am I to disregard my inner desires?
"Freddy! Give it back!"
She chases me for a hundred feet, slowing when I slow. I turn around and make a face at her, dangling her hat enticingly, still backing up as she approaches.
"Come on…"
"C'mere, girl!" I whistle, like I was calling a dog. "C'mon, Katie! Get it! Get it!"
"Do I look like a dog to you?"
Even I'm too smart to answer that. Fortunately, I'm saved from making any kind of reply by the arrival of a car—a truck, actually—moving fast around the corner, coming towards Katie's back.
"CAR!" I shout.
She starts to run towards me, and this time I run for her too, tackling her onto the snow bank and out of sight. The truck rumbles past on the wrong side of the road.
"Oof," she breathes.
I unwrap one of my arms from around her and jam her hat back on her head. "See, if you were a dog, you would've tried to chase that."
"I'm a lazy dog."
Katie sits up, shaking off me, the snow, and adjusting her hat. I jump to my feet and offer her my hand.
"How much further is it?" she asks as I pull her.
"Another mile or so. The place we're going is where I go a lot, when I run away for the night."
She nods. "Cool."
We walk in silence for a while. It gets darker as we go, as the snow clouds settle in and the flakes fall thicker around us. I keep my eyes and ears open for plows. Getting caught by one of them could be nasty, to say the least.
I can tell Katie wants to know where I'm taking her, but she's fighting hard to stay quiet, something that usually comes so easily to her. I keep walking purposefully. I won't tell until we get there. I don't say so, but I'm thinking to myself as we travel, this would be sorta lonely without Katie. Not half as much fun.