Free Don't Stop Now by Julie Halpern Page B

just shut up until Gavin left, which wouldn’t be very long anyway because Dad gets home from work soon and Mom will be back right after that. She said she would. And that she hates me.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    I’d love to be able to share the sordid details of our night together, but, alas, there are no sordid details to share. When Josh finally emerged from the bathroom, not as a blond but as a sort of sweet potato–flavored, I mean colored, mess (the bleach wasn’t enough for his brown hair), I was already a shriveled prune danish and decided to get out of the tub and into bed. Josh, on the other hand, was all ready to chillax in the hot tub, and so by the time he came up to our round space bed of love, I was, as he told me seventy-six times and counting this morning, snoring like a silverback gorilla.
    I dress in one of my new shirts, which reads, wisconsin: BEER, BRATS, AND CHEESE: THE BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS , and throw on a pair of cheese boxers as undies. We partake in the continental breakfast set out in the lobby—choice of three cereals from magical mechanical cereal dispensers in which all you do is turn a dial and * presto * the cereal dumps into your bowl, OJ, coffee, and assorted very dry, but still delicious enough pastries. It’s only eight in the morning, but we decide to get on the road.
    â€œOne thing my dad always taught me”—flecks of cruller fly as Josh speaks from his green dentist-barber chair—“the early bird misses the traffic.”
    â€œProphetic.” I nod. I’m a tad peeved about last night because I guess I was expecting something to happen. But Josh doesn’t have a clue. As usual.
    After we stuff our faces to the point of feeling like continents (so that’s why they call it a continental breakfast), I pull out a map of Wisconsin. We sit on a flowery couch in the lobby, having both exhausted ourselves of space-themed jokes (“That’s one small crap for man, one giant turd for mankind,” Josh proclaimed this morning as he emerged from the bathroom).
    â€œWe can either backtrack and head through Madison or take some smaller roads and hit I-Ninety at La Crosse,” I tell Josh.
    â€œNo turning back,” he states, ejecting himself from the green pleather.
    â€œLa Crosse it is.”
    Â 
    Josh checks out, and I step into the hot Wisconsin summer. It’s already humid, which means today will be sweaty in the Eurosport’s lack of air-conditioning. I face the Don Q Inn and try to imagine who else is in there, doing what they’re supposed to be doing in a FantaSuite theme room. What a waste.
    When Josh emerges from the hotel in his dick shades and I CUT THE CHEESE IN WISCONSIN T-shirt, goofy smile displayed, I drop the spite and remember that we have plenty more hotels to come.
    The car is already starting to look like a tornado hit indoors, so I tidy up by stuffing the maps into the glove box. But there’s so much stuff already inside that the maps keep sliding out. Along with the maps, a photograph falls to the floor. “What’s this?” I ask.
    Josh peers over at me as he drives. “Oh. Um, that was from some party we were at. I thought it was a good picture, so I kept it.”
    It is a good picture. Me and Josh, with our arms around each other, vamping for the camera. My hair looks really good, edgily bobbed, and I have on my favorite perfectly fitted heather gray T-shirt. Josh looks even better. Model hot, but completely unaware of the hotness. I’m so drawn to this perfect couple that it takes me a minute to notice the figure in the background: Penny. She’s holding a cup, shoulders tensed as they often are, and she’s blatantly watching me and Josh. Her expression is hard to read. Is she happy? Intrigued? Jealous? Plotting to murder us in our sleep? Isn’t there some detective trick whereby, in order to catch a killer, you have to get into their heads? Not that Penny’s a