Page 37 of Hero on the Road
Three weeks without any money.
The rest of the plan was good, though. We needed to get out of sight—without Colin tagging along and updating the world about our doings—and hope everyone forgot what Colin himself had written. We needed the label to stop watching us.
So if we decided to make appearances for additional money—I wasn’t saying we were going to, but if—the label might not notice it.
I didn’t want to lose those contracts. But I also didn’t want Olivia or me to starve.
Not that she was being much help on that point. I’d thought last night that she’d finally opened up and let herself start to enjoy what we were doing, but the news this morning had put her right back into her box. She’d been cold and businesslike all morning, reciting only the facts and refusing to give me her opinion.
In short, she’d gone back to the Olivia I’d known from high school. Distant and uninvolved, like she was busy solving the problem inside her head and didn’t want to involve me. Up to this point I’d felt like we were at least partners in this whole thing. In this predicament together.
Now I felt like I was the only one taking action.
I really wanted to get out of the public eye, and we were driving out of our way to do that. But my biggest goal during this time in the forest—the thing that was even more important than getting away from the buzz—was giving Olivia some time away from it all. Maybe if we got to where trouble couldn’t find us, she’d open up to me again.
Because I wasn’t going to be able to do this on my own. I needed her help.
* * *
Olivia was looking doubtfully at the hookups for things like water and air, which each camp site seemed to have. “I’m guessing we can’t use any of this stuff.”
“Definitely not,” I said. “We don’t have the right equipment for that. We’re going to have to use the showers and bathrooms down the road.”
She groaned and made a face. “Public showers have never really been my thing.”
“And yet you’ve been doing just fine for the past week,” I pointed out, forcing a smile onto my face. So far, my idea of her coming back to me once we got out of the public eye wasn’t happening. If anything, she’d become even more stand-offish.
Or stressed, I told myself. This could be a reaction to the worry. I had to give her at least that much credit.
I lifted the cooler out of the van and walked it toward the picnic table attached to the site. We might not have the right hookups for water or air, but we had plenty of food. The bartender had given us $500 for playing—our share of the house, he said—and had wrapped up meals, so we more food than we’d had all week. We’d also stopped on the way out of town to buy some junk food for the road, which I’d shoved into the cooler.
“Don’t you think you’d better put that in the bear box?” Olivia asked.
I looked up. “What the heck is a bear box?”
She pointed at a box off to the side of the site. “I’m guessing it’s that thing labeled as a ‘bear box.’ Probably to keep bears out of your food, if I’m guessing.”
I looked toward the box and considered it for a long moment. But we had the cooler and I figured that was probably good enough. “I don’t think we need it. We’re going to eat the cooked food and the rest of the stuff in here is just chips. Bears aren’t going to want that sort of thing.”
She gave me a very jaded look. “I’m pretty sure bears eat anything, Connor. And we used a lot of our money on that food.”
“I’m sure it’s fine,” I said, sliding the cooler onto the table. “You’re worrying too much, Olivia. Give your brain a break.”
She snorted, shook her head, and went back into the van.
And I turned around and walked toward the bathrooms. Maybe she just needed some time alone to get her mind around what was going on. If I left her alone for a bit and then came back…
Maybe she’d finally be ready to start planning what we were going to do next.
* * *
“What are we going to do?” Olivia asked, propping her head up on her hand and staring at me from across the van. “We can’t just stay out here forever.”
“What, you don’t want to live in the van for the rest of your life? Or at least until the label stops paying attention?” I joked.
She made the face that I’d come to recognize as the face that meant she thought I was being stupid. “With you? No thanks.”
Well at least we were back to making jokes. That was progress.
