Peppa Pig: Escapee

Chapter 9

Peppa had no clue where Hounslow was.

It was a little embarrassing when she pulled out her phone and looked up Hounslow on Wikipedia.

Suzy was just as flummoxed as her, though, and she also looked at Peppa's phone.

"London... suburban town... borough," Suzy read out loud.

Cecilia sighed, loud enough for Suzy and Peppa to look up from the Wikipedia article. "So. What are your names?"

"Suzy," Suzy said. "And that's Peppa."

"Like the cartoon?" Cecilia asked through another spoonful of affogato.

She nodded. Cecilia gave her a thin-lipped smile.

"Where are you from?" she asked.

"We're from... not Hounslow," Suzy said, fidgeting with her hair. Peppa turned off her phone and stuffed it into her coat pocket.

"I can tell," she assured Suzy. "Where are you from, then?"

Peppa and Suzy looked at each other - their town wasn't even put down on maps. It was just random, free space that would get put in some city or another. Sometimes it was marked as part of Luton, sometimes marked part of Slough, sometimes marked part of London. 

They didn't really have an answer to her question.

"So," Peppa said, ignoring Cecilia's question. "Cecilia. Um. Do you know where the nearest hotel is? Or motel. I'm not picky."

Cecilia shrugged and had another spoonful of her dessert - gelato melts fast in 70 degree weather. "I don't know. Use Google Maps or something."

A quick Google search showed Peppa a hotel a little less than 10 miles away.

"Well. Okay. Thanks, Cecilia. We'll be on our way," Peppa said, putting her phone back in her pocket.

Cecilia gripped her glass and twirled her hair around her finger. "Bye."

She chugged the rest of her dessert. 

Melted ice cream stained her lips. 

Peppa and Suzy kept walking.

"Doesn't it take, like, 2 hours to walk 10 miles?" Suzy whispered after walking about 10 feet.

Peppa tried doing some math in her head. but math had never been her best subject. "Um. Maybe?"

Suzy massaged her temples. "You're... going to walk for 2 hours?"

"I guess not," Peppa sighed. "Should we get an Uber?"

Suzy stopped walking, and Peppa bumped into her shoulder. "I don't have the app."

Cecilia stared at them while she paid for her dessert, handing the check to a blonde waiter.

Peppa waved at her awkwardly.

"I don't have the app either," she murmured, turning back at Suzy.

She stared at Peppa, long enough for Cecilia to get up from her table.

"What?" Peppa asked.

"Can you... download the app?"

"Okay, but we don't have money?" she shot back.

"We have checks," Suzy reminded her. 

"Don't we have to cash those? At some bank? Before we can use them?"

Suzy groaned. "You're such a killjoy. Do you want to walk 10 miles?"

"No!" Peppa said, a little too loudly. A few birds nesting in a ginkgo tree fluttered away, startled, dropping a few leaves behind them.

"No," she said again, her tone quieter. "We could walk to the bank? And then cash in our checks, and then get an Uber from there?"

Suzy thought about that for a bit. "Better than walking 10 miles, I guess. Where's the nearest bank?"

Peppa rubbed her eyes and pulled out her cracked phone. "6 miles away."

Suzy groaned again. "That's so far still," she whined.

"What the fuck do you want to do then?" Peppa snarled.

Suzy opened her mouth to speak again, but Cecilia had caught up to them and sighed, again, behind them. "I don't know what I expected you two would do."

Peppa stared at her blankly. Suzy nodded.

"You two are really, really, really, loud," Cecilia continued. "Oh no! The hotel is 10 miles away! We need to cash our checks! You need a ride, don't you?"

"Yeah," they said in unison.

Cecilia moaned a little, held up her car keys and honked her car, which was parked behind the café. "It's horrible how nice I am, and how much time I have before my first shift starts. You two owe me at least 3 weeks worth of caffeinated desserts."

Cecilia's car was a blue, a Honda, and uncomfortable. Her car had new-car smell that got Peppa carsick, her cup holder was littered with tissues, and her ashtray had a mound of cigarettes.

"I don't smoke," she said, catching Peppa's gaze. "My ex did. He was an archaic little pig - constantly telling me to go back to the kitchen and be traditionally feminine, like we were in the 1700's and he was the husband that nobly went out every day to hunt and kill and expected piping hot dinner on the table by 6:30."

"Stupid bitch," Cecilia yawned. "Dumped him after 3 months. I can't cook to save my life, and I certainly wouldn't cook to save his. He smoked everywhere, his lungs are probably blacker than licorice. I couldn't stand him. Never got around to trashing his cigarettes, though. I think I leave it as a reminder of how pathetic humans can be sometimes; like, the cigarettes make me feel good sometimes."

Peppa had no clue what to say to Cecilia's spiel. Suzy fiddled with her thumbs.

Cecilia got the memo and shut up.

"So," she said, breaking the wall of tension that had wedged between them. "Where are you guys going?"

Peppa pulled out her phone. "Uh... the Bull Hotel thing?"

She swerved right, nearly hitting a trash can. Turns out she wasn't any better at driving than Peppa or Suzy. "Oh, that one?"

"Yes," Peppa lisped. 

"Well, shit, I wasn't supposed to turn right," said Cecilia, right before taking a pretty perilous U-turn in the middle of a narrow road. 

She nearly ran into a tree, just like Suzy had.

"Sorry," she said. Peppa's phone flew out of her hand and landed in the cupholder in a way that would've made NBA players proud, and one of Suzy's chandelier earrings fell out, and landed on the car floor with a soft clink.

Their drive to the Bull Hotel was bumpy, to say the least. Cecilia's driving made Peppa yearn for Suzy's nausea-inducing driving.

Half an hour later, they pulled up at the hotel.

Cecilia somehow managed not to kill all of them while driving.

"Well, we're here," Cecilia said. "Suzy, give me your phone."

Suzy held her phone closer to her. "...why?" 

"I'm going to put my number in your phone in case any of you need my ass."

Suzy unbuckled her seatbelt, unlocked her phone, and handed it to Cecilia. "Okay."

She did a series of swipes and taps and gave Suzy her phone back. "You have barely any apps."

Peppa and Suzy's faces flushed.

"Well. Bye," Cecilia babbled. "And get out of my car."

They got out of her car. 

The Bull Hotel looked intimidating to two runaway 15-year old girls.

"Should we... go in?" Peppa asked.

Suzy hesitated.

Then she nodded.

And pushed open the door of the Bull Hotel.