Take Me Home | ✔

Chapter Eight

/unedited, btw/

- x - 

[ eight ] - late night calls & beef jerky 

                  ↠  friday - precisely a week before graduation   

Nothing good ever happens when you're surrounded by this many corn. Nothing good came out of the movie, and nothing good is coming out of it now, when we're completely stranded in corn country. I was already about to pee my pants and I haven't even drank anything yet. 

"What the hell?" Elliot hissed as he ran into the empty lot. "Where did the car go?" 

He raced from aisle to aisle and peered over the gas machines, as if the car would be playing hide-and-seek. He looked to me for an answer, but all I could do was stand with a gaping mouth, like a stupid fish on land. 

"W-wha? H-how?" I stuttered, taking in the bare view of the parking lot, and concentrating hard on the spot where the car used to be, as if it would pop right back up. 

"Who would steal a crappy range rover in the middle of farm country?" I yelled. This couldn't be happening, please don't let this be happening. I looked to all the creepy corn stalks and the shadows they produced in the night, getting shivers up my spine and recalling to flashbacks to my childhood.

"Do you think someone stole it?" he asked, exasperated. 

Then, the image of the creepy drunk guy popped into my mind as if on cue. I bit my lip, and cursed under my breath. 

"What was that?" Elliot asked. 

I gulped heavily, my heart racing and my palms sweaty. "I think someone did steal it." 

"What? Who?" 

It was thus I began to recall the story of how I stumbled upon the strangely suspicious man, and as I retold the events, Elliot scowled. "You should've told me someone was staring at you like that," he shook his head in anger. 

"I thought he was just a passerby, a homeless person," I admitted. "I never thought he would steal the Range Rover! Besides, how would he have done it anyway? I doubt he knew how to hotwire a car." 

Suddenly, Elliot's face fell. His eyes turned blank, but remained the size of dinner-plates. Then, he groaned loudly. "I never should've left the key in the ignition!" Elliot hissed to himself. "I'm so stupid."

My eyes widen, "You left the keys?!"

"I thought we were going to be really quick, but then I saw they had beef jerky and . . . I couldn't resist," he muttered lowly. He sank to the curb of the gas station entrance, his head in his hands and his fingers ready to pull out tufts of his hair. There was no doubt he made an idiotic move, but as he sat there, shaking his head in remorse and regret, I felt sincerely bad for him.

"Hey," I soothed, sitting beside him in an awkward spot, but wanting to make it better. "We can call the police. Or something. We can report the license plate number, and they'll find it, Elliot, they will."

Suddenly, my hand found its way to his back, and I started to awkwardly pat him reassuringly, stroking his plaid shirt in a way my mother would've done when I was crying or devastated. 

He remained quiet but raised the bags of Doritos and beef jerky and the rest of the junk food in his hand. "Do you think we can live off of this for the rest of our lives?" 

I chuckled softly, continuing to pat him on the back, "We'd probably be obese and unhealthy but we'd survive." 

"We left everything inside that car," he kept on saying dismally. "My clothes, the extra food, my passport. Everything was in there."