Take Me Home | ✔

Chapter Seventeen

[ AUTHOR'S NOTE: I changed up the part in the last chapter about where Vienna knocks over Jackie's bike and they were intially surrounded by big, bad motorcycle dudes - I took that all out, so it never happened :) now they're just walking on the side of the road to wichita falls ]  

[ seventeen ]  - 
warning: unedited!

             tuesday - three days until graduation 

We'd been walking on the side of the road for about an hour.

   Unlike our walking episode in Tennesse where we were surrounded by corn, this time in Oklahoma, we had to keep on the narrow strip of sidewalk separating the rolling green countryside with cars and sixteen wheelers. Like the gentleman Elliot probably was inside, he walked on the side closest to the rumbling fast highway, while I dragged the soles of my feet in the dirt and grass.

   We came up with a plan about a few blocks back. We'd start walking to Wichita Falls, which was about an hour away from Lindsay, Oklahoma, where we currently stood. Since Elliot had family there, maybe we could find a place to sleep and hopefully not spend the night on the side of the road. If we kept on walking west, we'd eventually Texas at one point and go on from there.

    It wasn't the best plan in the world, and it surely wasn't the easiest, but at this point, I was fed up and just wanted to do all that I could in my power to help Elliot as much as he had helped me. But it was hard to keep away from thinking that if our Range Rover hadn't gotten stolen, we might have crossed into Nevada by now.

       "This is fun," Elliot suddenly said. Leave it to him to scrape up even the remote possibility of being positive during a time like this.

       "Seriously?"

       "Think about it, when was the last time you really got to see the United States? The land of the free and the brave?" he started rambling. "I think Oklahoma is beautiful. And just look at that morning sun. I don't know about you, but aside from all the walking and run-ins with the law, I could get used to this."

       He was right. If I was correct, it was about seven or eight in the morning and the sky looked like someone digested pink, gold, and orange paint and threw it up on the sky to compliment the rising sun peeking in through the trees. There was something about Lindsay Oklahoma that was different. Even beside a bustling highway, time seemed to move slowly in the morning. We'd passed different barns and fenced pastures with horses and cows grazing, and I had never seen farms in person. I had rarely even made it out of California to go to North Carolina with my mom's permission. I had lived in a place where skyscrapers and urbanity went rampant and pollution ran wild.

        It was beautiful, and as usual, I was taking advantage of it.

 "You're right. I just – I'm too caught up with this deadline, that's all," I admitted, closing my eyes and breathing in the crisp, fresh morning air of the country.

      Elliot was silent before saying, "What college were you planning on going to?"

    Suddenly, the question knocked me off balance. "I don't know. I haven't really thought about it."

 "You mean, you haven't applied anywhere and your graduation is in three days?" he blinked at me.

 "Of course not, I applied to a ton of schools." Seventeen, actually. I was intent on getting to go to college like it depended on my life.

 "And? Where'd you get accepted?"

  I shrugged. "Only to a few. A couple small colleges around Los Angeles, but not to Stanford," I told him, my heart sinking when I had gotten the letter from Stanford Admissions Offices that I wasn't one of the lucky few.