With his eyes back on the road he said, “Pepper wouldn’t call it stealing. We share everything.”

“I’m sure you’re right.” I said and then asked, “You think he’ll ever forgive you?”

“I told you he wouldn’t say I stole it.” Meek said again.

“No, I mean forgive you for not bringing him with us.”

“Oh, well I put that in my letter to him. I begged him not to be mad at me. That I had to do this for you and for me.”

“Still, he’s going to be royally…” I started to say.

Meek interrupted me by saying, “I don’t want to think about that right now.”

Neither one of us had a clue how we did it, but somehow we ended up on a road that was actually on the map we had printed. We had stopped long enough for us to check the map.

“Hey right here is State Route 11. If we go down here and then back up, we’ll be back on track. We simply took the long way around is all.” Meek pointed out.

“Yeah, but if we keep taking the long way, we’ll never get to California on time.” I said as I stuffed the map back into my shirt.

“Let’s go!” I said and we were off again.

We’d been riding something like four hours over all when Meek announced, “We are nearly out of gas.”

“But our first gas stop isn’t anywhere near here.”

“Yeah, well you can thank those cops for making us burn too much gas.”

“It’s been hours since we saw them. Wonder if they gave up?” I asked.

“More likely they put out one of those Amber Alerts like they do for kidnapped kids.”

“You really think they would do that.” I gasped.

“Dude, your grandparents, and my parents are loaded. Do you really think the cops wouldn’t do whatever they were told to do?”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” I surrendered and for the first time I started to think that we’d made a big mistake by taking this trip.

“I know I am right. My parents would buy the United States army and make them search for me.”

“Um, perhaps you should have mentioned that before we ended up four hours from home!” I said mockingly.

Meek laughed.

“Alright, I might be exaggerating a bit, but you get the idea.” He said.

“Hey look!” I said while pointing at a sign that said food and gas two miles ahead.

“I bet you need to get yourself changed too.” Meek suggested.

Until that instant, I hadn’t given the contents of my diaper even a single millisecond of brain time. Now that he brought it up, I realized that I couldn’t feel much below my waist.

“Actually, from the belly button down I am numb.” I commented.

“Really? Because my backside feels like I’ve been riding a motorcycle for four hours.”

We both laughed.