Rose's Journal

Chapter 10: The Destination

Flynn looked at her laptop. "Okay, just type in your parent's information on here, and we can look them up."

"Waait a minute, everyone's information is on here?" Luke wrote on his board, questioning how legal this is.

"Yeah, it's kinda like the phone book, I guess. It's just the White Pages. Okay Reggie, you can go ahead and type," said Flynn, moving aside.

Reggie's hands began to shake. He didn't want them to find his parents. He wasn't ready for that. He began to type, but then pressed the off button.

"Reggie! What the hell? I had documents open!" Flynn screamed.

"Sorry, it was an accident my finger slipped," Reggie wrote. Luke knew better than to believe that.

"Reggie, what's going on what don't you want us to find?" Luke said to Reggie as Flynn restarted the computer, cursing under her breath.

"My finger slipped, I swear. You know how clumsy I am."

"Yeah, but I know you better than anyone. That wasn't a slip." Reggie sighed at these words. He knew he had to tell the truth.

"I know where my parents are, well at least my mom. She's still in LA, but she's across town," Reggie said.

"Why did you lie to us, to me? What made you do that? I thought you trusted us."

"I do, more than anything. I just wasn't ready to face it yet, but I have to now. For everyone," Reggie's voice was shaking as he said these words.

"I'll be here for you the whole time," said Luke, grabbing Reggie's hand. Typically, Reggie would pull away out of panic, but he needed Luke just then, and he didn't fight his hand in his. They kept holding hands as Luke grabbed Reggie's whiteboard to hold it up as Reggie wrote the address on it.

"Well, you're lucky my computer autosaved the documents, or else I would have called Ghostbusters," Flynn said, finally getting her computer to restart. Reggie turned the board to Flynn, and she smiled.

"This is where your parents live?" Flynn asked.

Reggie wrote on the board as Luke held it again, "Yeah this is where my mom is."

"Okay then, let's go get that autopsy report!"

Flynn headed out the door as Luke and Reggie followed, still holding each other's hand.

Flynn got in the driver's seat of the car, and Luke and Reggie got into the back seat. "I just got my license last week, so this may not end well. Brace yourselves," said Flynn as she buckled her seatbelt.

"She can't be THAT bad of a driver," Luke said to Reggie. As if to purposefully contradict them, Flynn pulled out of the driveway with her foot firmly on the accelerator. She slammed on the brakes quickly after she left the driveway.

"Sorry about that guys. I sometimes go a little too fast, especially when I'm excited," Flynn said, still trying to shake off that moment.

"Yeah, you're lucky we're already dead." Luke wrote on his board. Flynn chuckled, but Reggie just sat there in silence.

Flynn began to drive again, much slower this time, and Luke just sat there and stared at Reggie as Reggie looked out the window with a blank stare.

Flynn stopped at a light. "Can I put in a song request?" Luke wrote on his board, along with the request.

Flynn looked through the rearview mirror and saw the board and smiled, "Yeah I'll play that."

Flynn pulled up the song on her phone. Reggie heard the opening electric guitar notes and began to smile. Luke knew that there was one song that never failed to make him smile: Achy Breaky Heart by Billy Ray Cyrus. It was a song he secretly loved that only Luke and Alex knew about because he used to play it all the time.

"You can tell the world you never was my girl. You can burn my clothes up when I'm gone. You can tell your friends just what a fool I've been. And laugh and joke about me on the phone," Luke sang with the worst twang possible. He nudged Reggie to get him to take the next part.

"You can tell my arms go back to the farm. You can tell my feet to hit the floor," Reggie began to sing under his breath, but started to get into it for the next two lines, "Or you can tell my lips to tell my fingertips. They won't be reaching out for you no more."

Flynn, Luke, and Reggie all began to sing at the top of their lungs the chorus in faux Southern twang, "But don't tell my heart, my achy breaky heart. I just don't think he'd understand. And if you tell my heart, my achy breaky heart, he might blow up and kill this man." They all laughed and smiled as they sang. Flynn could hear them sing and knew that the song helped Reggie.

They spent the next 45 minutes jamming out to an eclectic mix of music. They listened to some classic rock, Flynn introduced them to her favorites of the 2000's, and Luke and Reggie poofed in their instruments to play some Sunset Curve songs. As they sang Bohemian Rhapsody, they pulled up in front of Reggie's mom's house, unprepared for what was to come.