The next week to come droned on like the never ending lecture of an angered
parent, and it was all beginning to prove very ill-mannered indeed. Sure,
everyone felt like drying up and blowing away with the breeze, but these
were all minor destinations compared to Fidget's. Ever since she had first
arrived at Camp Lakeway about a year ago, she'd been spectacularly thin and
tall, almost like a twig. Sure it had paid off with attracting guys and
being able to fit in the tiniest clothes sizes, but the only thing she had
to wear out here was her over-sized jumpsuit, and out here petite sizes
weren't considered anything too great. In fact, Fidget was so small to
begin with, that the complete loss of food had made her insides devour
themselves, unlike the others who all had at least a little more weight to
support themselves, and it was killing her.
She looked so frail sitting in the back of the truck, leaning against Chase for support. Her eyes were large and hollow, as if they'd been rubbed so much that the colors had just been washed away, and she was always just staring at her feet. She no longer smiled or jumped about or even fiddled with her braids, on the contrary she always just sat there, looking ready to be buried beneath the ground.
"You wanna sit it the front seat, Fidget?" Twitch asked her one day, still containing his talent of talking as fast as a rocket. "It's a lot more comfortable then back here?"
Fidget hadn't even looked at him and in the end, Static had to help hand her down off the truck and onto Twitch's shoulders so he could carry her limp body to the passenger's seat. The others found it amazing how just one more week of nothing to look forward to, could make a girl so rib-thin, that a tiny boy such as Twitch could carry her as easily as a plastic bag.
But they found nothing amazing about the dark circles around her eyes and protruding bone that were now so obvious beneath Fidget's thin skin that she could be easily mistaken as a science class skeleton.
One evening, with Lei at the wheel and Fidget in the back of the truck, Chase lay the back of her hand across Fidget's forehead to find that she was feverish beyond belief.
"She's really sick," Chase coughed. "We've got to get her some help!"
"We're all really sick," Squid said, leaning up against the windows dividing the truck from the trailor.
"I wanna see," Zippy said before she too gently touched Fidget's face. "Wow," she cried, pulling back. "That's a high fever."
"She's getting worse," Chase replied, stroking Fidget's grimy skin. "We've got to do something."
"What are we gonna do all the way out here?" Magnet asked. "There's nothing we can do for her. Or ourselves."
Chase sat back again, defeated. But she didn't let Fidget's cold, brittle fingers leave her own as they drove on through the night.
* * *
Two days later, it got worse.
Fidget started seeing things, wild hallucinations as an effect of her desperate hunger.
"Look there!" she screamed out of the blue one day. "It a Red Robins restaurant!" she pointed off into the distance where all that could be found were endless mounds of sand. "Can we pull over and get just a bite Patricia? Please? PLEASE?" the truck zoomed on, passing the 'Red Robins'. "I HATE YOU PATRICIA! All I wanted was a bite!"
No one knew who Patricia was.
Later that afternoon, Fidget saw something again. "Look! It's a cow! I love cows! Cows are my friends! One day, I was running and I said, 'Hi cow!'... HI COW!" she waved at the empty desert. "You know what? My mom got very, very sick one evening and my brother and I went and called the doctors and the doctors said that she had mad cow disease and I love cows!" she started laughing uncontrollably before Twitch put a reassuring arm around her.
"She's getting worse," Chase repeated, staring wide-eyed at the protruding fender as if she too were about to explode into hysterics.
The next day, Fidget was fast asleep in Twitch's grasp, looking like some mummy who had just been disposed of her filthy linen wrappings. Her head bobbed on her neck as the truck moved over the gravel-scattered road and Chase worried it might break from her shoulders and just roll away.
"She's not looking so good," Zigzag said, eyeing Fidget suspiciously.
Twitch looked on the verge of tears as he brushed Fidget's limp hair away from her face, but the tears never came.
Lei sat down on Fidget's right side and gently lifted her wrist to check her pulse.
"I don't want to know," Twitch said solemnly before Lei even had a chance to react.
Lei looked down at the both of them sorrowfully, but promised to keep her results to herself.
As the evening came Twitch moved Fidget to the front of the truck again, saying that it was too cold for her to be exposed to the wind when she sat in the back. The others didn't complain but Static pleaded to stay at Fidget's side. Chase yearned to be there in the front as well but decided against it and settled for a seat beside Zigzag at the tailgate.
"It'll be okay," Zigzag reassured her, nudging her shoulder.
"I hope so," Chase said, shivering in the wind.
"Hello," Zippy said, plopping down beside Chase. "You know what tastes good?"
"A bowl full of cookies and cream ice cream," Chase and Zigzag said together.
"No!" Zippy laughed. "Chocolate truffles!"
Zigzag groaned at his hunger but Chase smiled at Zippy's laughter. It had been the first, most reassuring thing she'd heard since the day she'd been driving around the hill in Odessa, and at that moment she was the happiest she'd been in weeks.
"Are you doing okay?" Chase asked, looking at Zippy as if she were her daughter.
Zippy nodded. "Yep," she said. "I've got enough fat to last me all winter," she said, patting her thin stomach.
Chase's throat was too dry to muster a laugh, but she was happy to at least crack a smile.
"Don't worry Chase," Zippy said, lowering her voice. "You do that too much already! Besides, we'll be home soon and we can all go to the doctors and get our teeth cleaned! To tell you the truth, it was kind of exhilarating before but now peeing on sticks has just gotten plain boring!"
Chase didn't even want to comprehend what Zippy had just said. Besides, she was much to tired to even try comprehending anything at the moment.
"That's it," Zippy cooed. "Go to sleep my little Canadian chum... For tomorrow's a new day!"
"I'm not Canadian..." was the last thing Chase mumbled before drifting off into a long wanted subtle sleep.
Chase awoke to the sounds of screams and heavy gasps of breath sounding from somewhere near. Immediately, she sat up and stared about her, only to find the dark and plain scenery still flying past and the thousands of stars wielding above. But the short gasps for air still came and as Chase listened harder she realized where they were coming from.
"FIDGET!" she screamed, slamming herself up against the truck's rear windows and staring in shock as Fidget twitch violently in her seatbelt, her eyes wild and her mouth agape.
Everyone in the front seat was already awake, with Squid at the wheel and Lei and Static upon either side of Fidget. Soon, due to Chase's screams, everyone in the back of the car was awake as well and all trying to snatch a peek at what was happening.
"Fidget!" Static cried, desperately trying to calm her friend down. "It's okay! You're going to be okay!"
Twitch took one look through the windows at Fidget before sliding back to the tailgate where he sat in utter silence.
Magnetic gasped in shock and threw her hand over her mouth in a silent scream when she caught a glimpse of Fidget, all pale and shaking. Zippy and Rogue stared wide-eyed, as if unable to take their eyes away from the image of her small body being thrown about in the torturous pain and Zero went back to try and comfort Twitch.
"Fidget! Fidget!" Chase sobbed.
Lei too was crying in the front seat, her hands shielding her face as tears poured from her eyes. "Not now," she kept whispering to herself. "Not now."
Squid pressed harder on the gas peddle and the truck went even faster across the dusty road, sending a few of the trailer occupants falling back off their feet.
"We have to get somewhere now!" Chase cried.
Squid didn't even look back at her in the rear-view mirror but continued to pay close attention to the road. But a half hour later, even with the truck going almost full speed, they still didn't see any signs of civilization, and Fidget's condition was getting worse. Chase's tears were all dried up by now but her face was still permanently glued to the dusty, tear-streaked window.
"THERE!" Squid shouted, breaking away from his solitude silence at last. He was pointing at a small blue sign just off the road that had a list of different gas stations and restaurants that was indicating to the next right.
Everyone stared at the sign as if it were a beacon of silver light.
Just a quarter of a mile further and there were more signs, repeating, "Crystal City: next right."
Squid was almost going 98 miles per hour when he swerved off the main road as soon as they came across the exit for Crystal City. Now to find a hospital.
Crystal City was the largest city they'd all come across in months, filled with lots of office buildings, neon signs, bars, banks, restaurants, corner stores, jewelry shops, mall outlets, lots of car dealers, lots of traffic, and even more people walking about through the evening air. But Squid didn't yield all of this as he zoomed throughout the city, gradually decreasing their immense speed. Finally he pulled over and asked a man who'd just been about to get into his car, where the hospital was.
"There's a hospital there on 23 and Brookshire," the man replied, nodding east, before realizing the truck was full of gruesome kids. "It's not hard to miss."
"Thanks," Squid said quickly before pulling away and driving east. 23 street was easy to find as it seemed to run throughout the whole city but once they were on it they couldn't figure out which way the hospital was. Even after pulling over and asking two more people for directions they will still lost.
"Will someone just tell us where the god damn hospital is!?" Squid cried, slamming his fists down against the dashboard.
"It's right there," said a kindly old woman who'd just been passing by. She pointed to a large building down the street where a siren conveniently began to blare.
"Thank you!" Magnet called from the back of the truck as Squid began to drive again.
Squid hadn't even stopped the car before the building before everyone jumped out of it, Fidget being carried in Zigzag's arms as he ran towards the front door. As soon as he was inside he raced to find a nurse, nearly throwing an elderly man off his feet and knocking over a tray of cleaned emergency instruments on a cart in the process.
"Miss!" he cried, hurrying towards a woman in a white lab coat who had a clipboard in her hands. "Miss! My friend-starving-gonna die!" he said breathlessly.
The woman took one look at Fidget's deducted state before calling some of the other nurses over with a gurney and then prying Fidget from Zigzag's arms and placing her onto it.
"My name is Dr. Edwards," the woman said loudly to Fidget. "Everything is going to be okay."
Zigzag collapsed into a spare waiting chair as all the others let out a sigh of relief.
She looked so frail sitting in the back of the truck, leaning against Chase for support. Her eyes were large and hollow, as if they'd been rubbed so much that the colors had just been washed away, and she was always just staring at her feet. She no longer smiled or jumped about or even fiddled with her braids, on the contrary she always just sat there, looking ready to be buried beneath the ground.
"You wanna sit it the front seat, Fidget?" Twitch asked her one day, still containing his talent of talking as fast as a rocket. "It's a lot more comfortable then back here?"
Fidget hadn't even looked at him and in the end, Static had to help hand her down off the truck and onto Twitch's shoulders so he could carry her limp body to the passenger's seat. The others found it amazing how just one more week of nothing to look forward to, could make a girl so rib-thin, that a tiny boy such as Twitch could carry her as easily as a plastic bag.
But they found nothing amazing about the dark circles around her eyes and protruding bone that were now so obvious beneath Fidget's thin skin that she could be easily mistaken as a science class skeleton.
One evening, with Lei at the wheel and Fidget in the back of the truck, Chase lay the back of her hand across Fidget's forehead to find that she was feverish beyond belief.
"She's really sick," Chase coughed. "We've got to get her some help!"
"We're all really sick," Squid said, leaning up against the windows dividing the truck from the trailor.
"I wanna see," Zippy said before she too gently touched Fidget's face. "Wow," she cried, pulling back. "That's a high fever."
"She's getting worse," Chase replied, stroking Fidget's grimy skin. "We've got to do something."
"What are we gonna do all the way out here?" Magnet asked. "There's nothing we can do for her. Or ourselves."
Chase sat back again, defeated. But she didn't let Fidget's cold, brittle fingers leave her own as they drove on through the night.
* * *
Two days later, it got worse.
Fidget started seeing things, wild hallucinations as an effect of her desperate hunger.
"Look there!" she screamed out of the blue one day. "It a Red Robins restaurant!" she pointed off into the distance where all that could be found were endless mounds of sand. "Can we pull over and get just a bite Patricia? Please? PLEASE?" the truck zoomed on, passing the 'Red Robins'. "I HATE YOU PATRICIA! All I wanted was a bite!"
No one knew who Patricia was.
Later that afternoon, Fidget saw something again. "Look! It's a cow! I love cows! Cows are my friends! One day, I was running and I said, 'Hi cow!'... HI COW!" she waved at the empty desert. "You know what? My mom got very, very sick one evening and my brother and I went and called the doctors and the doctors said that she had mad cow disease and I love cows!" she started laughing uncontrollably before Twitch put a reassuring arm around her.
"She's getting worse," Chase repeated, staring wide-eyed at the protruding fender as if she too were about to explode into hysterics.
The next day, Fidget was fast asleep in Twitch's grasp, looking like some mummy who had just been disposed of her filthy linen wrappings. Her head bobbed on her neck as the truck moved over the gravel-scattered road and Chase worried it might break from her shoulders and just roll away.
"She's not looking so good," Zigzag said, eyeing Fidget suspiciously.
Twitch looked on the verge of tears as he brushed Fidget's limp hair away from her face, but the tears never came.
Lei sat down on Fidget's right side and gently lifted her wrist to check her pulse.
"I don't want to know," Twitch said solemnly before Lei even had a chance to react.
Lei looked down at the both of them sorrowfully, but promised to keep her results to herself.
As the evening came Twitch moved Fidget to the front of the truck again, saying that it was too cold for her to be exposed to the wind when she sat in the back. The others didn't complain but Static pleaded to stay at Fidget's side. Chase yearned to be there in the front as well but decided against it and settled for a seat beside Zigzag at the tailgate.
"It'll be okay," Zigzag reassured her, nudging her shoulder.
"I hope so," Chase said, shivering in the wind.
"Hello," Zippy said, plopping down beside Chase. "You know what tastes good?"
"A bowl full of cookies and cream ice cream," Chase and Zigzag said together.
"No!" Zippy laughed. "Chocolate truffles!"
Zigzag groaned at his hunger but Chase smiled at Zippy's laughter. It had been the first, most reassuring thing she'd heard since the day she'd been driving around the hill in Odessa, and at that moment she was the happiest she'd been in weeks.
"Are you doing okay?" Chase asked, looking at Zippy as if she were her daughter.
Zippy nodded. "Yep," she said. "I've got enough fat to last me all winter," she said, patting her thin stomach.
Chase's throat was too dry to muster a laugh, but she was happy to at least crack a smile.
"Don't worry Chase," Zippy said, lowering her voice. "You do that too much already! Besides, we'll be home soon and we can all go to the doctors and get our teeth cleaned! To tell you the truth, it was kind of exhilarating before but now peeing on sticks has just gotten plain boring!"
Chase didn't even want to comprehend what Zippy had just said. Besides, she was much to tired to even try comprehending anything at the moment.
"That's it," Zippy cooed. "Go to sleep my little Canadian chum... For tomorrow's a new day!"
"I'm not Canadian..." was the last thing Chase mumbled before drifting off into a long wanted subtle sleep.
Chase awoke to the sounds of screams and heavy gasps of breath sounding from somewhere near. Immediately, she sat up and stared about her, only to find the dark and plain scenery still flying past and the thousands of stars wielding above. But the short gasps for air still came and as Chase listened harder she realized where they were coming from.
"FIDGET!" she screamed, slamming herself up against the truck's rear windows and staring in shock as Fidget twitch violently in her seatbelt, her eyes wild and her mouth agape.
Everyone in the front seat was already awake, with Squid at the wheel and Lei and Static upon either side of Fidget. Soon, due to Chase's screams, everyone in the back of the car was awake as well and all trying to snatch a peek at what was happening.
"Fidget!" Static cried, desperately trying to calm her friend down. "It's okay! You're going to be okay!"
Twitch took one look through the windows at Fidget before sliding back to the tailgate where he sat in utter silence.
Magnetic gasped in shock and threw her hand over her mouth in a silent scream when she caught a glimpse of Fidget, all pale and shaking. Zippy and Rogue stared wide-eyed, as if unable to take their eyes away from the image of her small body being thrown about in the torturous pain and Zero went back to try and comfort Twitch.
"Fidget! Fidget!" Chase sobbed.
Lei too was crying in the front seat, her hands shielding her face as tears poured from her eyes. "Not now," she kept whispering to herself. "Not now."
Squid pressed harder on the gas peddle and the truck went even faster across the dusty road, sending a few of the trailer occupants falling back off their feet.
"We have to get somewhere now!" Chase cried.
Squid didn't even look back at her in the rear-view mirror but continued to pay close attention to the road. But a half hour later, even with the truck going almost full speed, they still didn't see any signs of civilization, and Fidget's condition was getting worse. Chase's tears were all dried up by now but her face was still permanently glued to the dusty, tear-streaked window.
"THERE!" Squid shouted, breaking away from his solitude silence at last. He was pointing at a small blue sign just off the road that had a list of different gas stations and restaurants that was indicating to the next right.
Everyone stared at the sign as if it were a beacon of silver light.
Just a quarter of a mile further and there were more signs, repeating, "Crystal City: next right."
Squid was almost going 98 miles per hour when he swerved off the main road as soon as they came across the exit for Crystal City. Now to find a hospital.
Crystal City was the largest city they'd all come across in months, filled with lots of office buildings, neon signs, bars, banks, restaurants, corner stores, jewelry shops, mall outlets, lots of car dealers, lots of traffic, and even more people walking about through the evening air. But Squid didn't yield all of this as he zoomed throughout the city, gradually decreasing their immense speed. Finally he pulled over and asked a man who'd just been about to get into his car, where the hospital was.
"There's a hospital there on 23 and Brookshire," the man replied, nodding east, before realizing the truck was full of gruesome kids. "It's not hard to miss."
"Thanks," Squid said quickly before pulling away and driving east. 23 street was easy to find as it seemed to run throughout the whole city but once they were on it they couldn't figure out which way the hospital was. Even after pulling over and asking two more people for directions they will still lost.
"Will someone just tell us where the god damn hospital is!?" Squid cried, slamming his fists down against the dashboard.
"It's right there," said a kindly old woman who'd just been passing by. She pointed to a large building down the street where a siren conveniently began to blare.
"Thank you!" Magnet called from the back of the truck as Squid began to drive again.
Squid hadn't even stopped the car before the building before everyone jumped out of it, Fidget being carried in Zigzag's arms as he ran towards the front door. As soon as he was inside he raced to find a nurse, nearly throwing an elderly man off his feet and knocking over a tray of cleaned emergency instruments on a cart in the process.
"Miss!" he cried, hurrying towards a woman in a white lab coat who had a clipboard in her hands. "Miss! My friend-starving-gonna die!" he said breathlessly.
The woman took one look at Fidget's deducted state before calling some of the other nurses over with a gurney and then prying Fidget from Zigzag's arms and placing her onto it.
"My name is Dr. Edwards," the woman said loudly to Fidget. "Everything is going to be okay."
Zigzag collapsed into a spare waiting chair as all the others let out a sigh of relief.