earbuds

eight

We check out and head back to his car, putting what needs to be in the front seat where I am and in the back seat. I get comfortable and Clay starts the car and drives. "It might take a few hours to a day or two. He recently moved locations so the police or government don't find him." He says. "He's a wanted man, of course. Me? Not yet. Not yet anyways." He grumbled the last part. "And you? You're important because-"

"Of reaching my parents, yeah yeah." I roll my eyes and kick my shoes off, bringing my knees up close to my chest. With a sigh, I speak up. "What do you do? If your friend is a hacker and a fake document maker thingy, what do you do?"

"I mostly do the hard research stuff. I can reverse search people and things if I need to. I used to do that stuff before I was fired."

"Police?"

"Kind of." He glanced at me. "I worked on the undercover side. I would do the most research and then go undercover. There was this one time I did a few things wrong, I shot the wrong person. I was fired, not charged for the killing I did which was weird, but it was right before they finished up the earbud version that you use. They were pressed for time and needing to get their security set out to stores and businesses."

"Oh." I mumbled. The car grew silent, uncomfortably silent, but I didn't push to fill it. I stayed quiet.

The night grew, the moon way up in the sky, the stars above in the darker part, the car continues. The clock read 2:02 am. I was for sure feeling tired, even after the yawn, but I didn't want to sleep. This man could kill me. I don't know anything about him. Well, I know some stuff, but not everything.

"What's your favorite animal?" I ask, tiredly looking at him. "Mine is (fav animal)."

"Where'd this come from?" He chuckles lightly.

"You know a bit about me, I mean, whatever I talked about, if you listened to everything." I pause. "And I'm curious. Tired, but curious."

"Cats. Lions are cool." He says, simply. "Any other questions? I guess I can answer anything until you fall asleep." His voice grew soft, calm.

xxx

Eventually, I did fall asleep, we were talking about music and what musical artists we liked. He shook me a little and it woke me up. The sun was rising, but we were stopped at a rest stop. It looked abandoned.

"Where are we?" I asked, groggily.

"Still a good 30 hours away. I stopped at an abandoned rest area. It's not boarded up, we could explore it a bit if you want to stretch. I just took a nap." He opened his car door and leaned on the door and the top of the car, dipping his head in. "Did you know? Maybe not. It's 2035 of course, but back in the 2000s, 2010s, 2020s, there were these rest stops. They weren't so abandoned like now. Just snack spots and places to use the restroom so not very entertaining." He chuckled.

I unbuckled and opened the door, getting out to stretch.