Chapter 9
"Hi, err, three Big Macs and one Chicken McNugget, four regular fries, three lemonades and a coke, please," requested Sam, at the counter of the wonderful monstrosity that is MacDonald's.
"Would you like Supersize?" the assistant asked.
"Pardon me?" Sam blinked.
"Would you like to go Supersize?" the assistant repeated.
Sam looked a little bewildered. "Um, no, I think we'll just go with the normal ones," she said, handing over the change. The girl passed her a tray of wrapped burgers and chips, all greasy, all fatty, and all amazingly under six dollars.
"Here we are, boys and girls," grinned Sam, as she passed us our burgers. "Make it last, it's all were going to have to eat for a while."
Ferdie was suspiciously eyeing his burger. I was under the impression he didn't eat fast food very much. "This is food?" he asked. "It looks like a lump of regurgitated cat food."
"Well, we couldn't afford a gourmet meal, Flawless," I said, picking up some napkins and a few sachets of tomato ketchup. "Come on, guys, lets go sit down."
We sat down at a table near the window next to some guy reading a newspaper, and started tucking into our food. The place was pretty busy, there were quite a few families with young children, and several kids around our age sipping cappuccinos and trying to look grown-up.
"Guess it's the weekend," I said. "Otherwise these kids would all be at school."
"Probably still be the summer holidays here, Mags," said Philip.
"I've completely lost track of the days of the week," Sam said. "Not even sure if it's still August."
Luckily, in regards to our morphing outfits, we didn't look too much out of place. One of the families were obviously having a kids' party, and were all dressed up as superheroes. Even one of the parents was wearing a tight lycra Batman costume.
"Well, we're defiantly in America, alright," Philip said. "The accent is very familiar."
"Hmm, but where abouts?" wondered Sam. "And where to go from here?"
Just then, a guy at the table next to us got up and left, leaving his newspaper on the table. I quickly reached over and grabbed the paper, spreading it out on the table in front of us.
"August the 31st," read Sam. "Assuming this is today's paper, at least."
"Is it a local paper?" Philip asked.
"The Cove Bay Times," said Sam. "Not heard of it, so I guess it must be a local."
"Where's Cove Bay?" I asked.
"No idea, but I'm going to try and find out. Lets hope Controllers don't like eating in fast food places."
She got up from the table, taking a sip of her lemonade, and walked over to a middle-aged woman sitting on her own a few tables away.
"Excuse me?" she said.
The woman turned around. "Sorry?"
"Um, sorry to interrupt you and everything, but I wondered if you could assist me and my friends quickly." She turned and mentioned towards myself and the others. The woman gave us a quick glance, not following.
"We were on a, um, road trip with some friends, but we got lost," Sam said. "So…this might sound really stupid, but could you tell us where us are?"
"You don't know where you are?"
"No," said Sam blushing. "What's the name of this town? And, um, what state are we in?"
The woman blinked. "You're English, right?"
Sam was a little taken aback. "Well, yeah, but-"
"You Brits," she sighed. "Coming over and not knowing how to handle our way of life."
Sam attempted to smile, giving her a 'yeah, that's us!' kind of look.
"This is Cove Bay," the woman said, picking up her tray and walking over to the rest of us. She sat down at the table next to us, and gave an amicable roll of her eyes. "State of Connecticut. You kids college students?"
"Sort of," Sam said. "We got here last night with two of our mates. Now they've taken off somewhere and got our mobiles with them."
"Your cell phones? Have you called the cops?"
"No - I think they just went to find a motel or something. They've just started going out with each other," Sam said, winking.
"I see," smiled the woman. "Didn't tell you what they were up to, I guess? You teenagers!"
Whilst Sam and the woman continued to chat, I scanned through the newspaper, half reading it, half trying to work out whereabouts Connecticut was. Ferdie too seemed to be thinking along the same lines as me.
"I haven't even heard of this state," he said. "My geography's rubbish when I'm talking about Britain, not to mention other countries."
"I've heard of the state, I'm just not one hundred percent sure where it is. Obviously it's somewhere on the east coast, but whereabouts exactly, I don't know. Any ideas, Philip?"
"No more than you," he said, finishing his burger and popping some fries into his mouth. "They call these chips?" he said. "These tiny little things?"
"Actually, they call these fries," I told him. "Chips are crisps here. And this," I said, taking sip from my lemonade, "is a soda."
"How peculiar," replied Ferdie, who was reading the newspaper over my shoulder. Suddenly, he leant over me and grabbed the paper from under my tray.
"Careful, Ferd!" I snapped. "You're knocking my stuff everywhere."
"Sorry!" he laughed. "Just want to have a closer look at something." He skimmed through the articles on the page, then mentioned to Philip and I.
"Look at this," he said. "Some new company is buying Concorde."
"Really?" I said. "Who?"
Ferdie began to read aloud. "Not sure. It says, 'The up and coming company - whose name will be announced on the news this morning - which successfully won the bid to buying Concorde, the classic faster-than-sound luxury aircraft, is offering VIPs exclusive tickets for its' first flight.'."
"Cool," I said. "My dad was really into Concorde. He collected all the memorabilia and was pretty upset when they retired those planes. He'll think it's great to see it in action again. I wonder who's taking over? Probably Virgin."
"Doubt it," Philip said. "It said the company was 'up and coming'."
Ferdie was reading ahead. "Guys, this is the interesting bit though," he said. "The new aircraft will be making its' maiden voyage from New York City to Los Angeles on September the second, carrying a handful of lucky invitees. The selected few have not yet been named, but are rumoured to include Madonna, Hilary Clinton, Richard Branson and a host of other celebrities and politicians."
"Wow," I said. "Madonna. Talk about an illustrious return for the mighty aircraft."
"Yeah, but didn't you hear when it's flying? If this is today's paper, then it's flying out the day after tomorrow!"
"Yeah?" I said, not following.
Ferdie's eyes twinkled. "It's flying to Los Angeles. My geography may not be all that great, but I do know that LA is in the same state as San Francisco. It's what, about two and a half thousand miles to San Francisco? How long would that take to go as geese or cross country?"
Philip took a deep breath. "Flawless, don't be stupid," he muttered.
"And how long would that take by Concorde?" Ferdie said, ignoring him. "It says here, less than three hours!"
"We could go as insects and hide in the cargo area! We'd only need to demorph once!" I said.
"Think of how much time that would save us," he said.
"Think of how many ways we could get killed!" said Philip. "We agreed right from the start - no human transport! And who knows how many Controllers might be on board? We've already tried to hitch a lift across the Atlantic - have you forgotten what we made of that?"
"Come on, Philip, let's at least talk to Sam," Ferdie pleaded, turning round and tapping her on the shoulder. Sam stopped chatting to the woman, looking up.
"Just a second," she smiled at the woman, turning to us.
"Sam, what do you think about hitching a lift to LA?" Ferdie asked her, thrusting her the article. She read through it, her facial expression showing both excitement and a frown.
"I don't think we can risk it," Philip hissed at her and Ferdie.
"It would save us so much time though!" Ferdie protested. He lowered his voice. "And we could just go in as insects in the cargo area - we'd be perfectly safe!"
Sam looked at us. She was obviously torn between saving us a great deal or time and making a very risky gamble. She was about to say something, when the woman she was speaking to turned round and joined in our conversation.
"You guys see that piece about Concorde?" she asked. "Pretty exciting, huh?"
"Very," I said. "You, err, don't know who this company who bought it, do you? It says here it was going to be announced this morning."
"Actually, I do recall hearing it on the radio," she said. "I think there were two companies, actually. The business and some partner organisation."
I looked at her expectantly. "Any idea who it was?"
"Visser Enterprises," said the woman. "That's the one. Some new company. And they're going hand in hand with that group, The Sharing."