“Rod, I mean it. You’re going too fast.”
“How fast would you like me to go?”
“The speed limit.”
“Speed limits are for boring people,” I say.
I should clarify something about my mental state right now. I’m nowhere near as sane as I was at the beginning of this book, but I’m not quite as insane as I want Blake to believe. I’m crazy enough to kidnap my cousin, but not crazy enough to rev my car to one hundred and ten miles per hour and ram it into the concrete median. (Not that my car could go that fast without falling apart anyway.) So to summarize, yes, I’m faking. But, yes, Blake is right to be worried. But I’m only going five miles an hour over the state speed limit, and I’m using my turn signal and looking before I change lanes.
“All right, it’s obvious that you’re very, very tired,” says Blake. “It’s understandable. You drove all night. Maybe you should get some rest, and then we can revisit this whole road trip idea when you’re refreshed.”
I do a sudden swerve that makes Blake yelp.
“Sorry,” I said. “Thought I saw a goat in the road.”
“There are no goats on the highway!”
“A yak then.”
“You’re gonna get us killed!”
“Nahhhhhh. That doesn’t sound like me.”
“I apologize, okay?” says Blake. “I apologize for everything! It was wrong, and I admit it.”
“What are you apologizing for exactly?”
“I said! Everything!”
“I’d like some specifics.”
“Pull off at the next exit and I’ll give you all the specifics you want!”
“I don’t think so, Mr. Blakey-Poo,” I say. “You’ll tell me what I want to hear, and then I’ll still be stuck with you for two more months. Much better to take you back to California.”
“But that’s ludicrous!”
“That’s why it’ll be so much fun!”
I guess I didn’t tell you if I’m legitimately planning to drive Blake all two thousand five hundred miles back to his home or if this is a prank. The answer is that I’m serious.
I know, I know, I know. That’s not the kind of behavior you expect from the heroes of books you read. But Blake left me no choice! What else am I supposed to do? If I don’t get rid of my cousin soon, I’ll be so far gone that this whole book will be another six hundred pages of me thinking, Blah blah rrraar blah snorkle giggle blah blah woooo.
Blake lets out a deep sigh. “I know why you’re doing this. You want to hear me beg.”
“Nope,” I say, although I’m not going to lie. Hearing him beg would be pleasant.
“Well, I’m not going to give you the satisfaction. I’m not going to say another word for the rest of the trip.”
“I love that idea. Challenge accepted.”
And so we drive in silence.
After about twenty minutes, I start to consider that I’ve had better ideas in my life than abducting my cousin. What am I doing? I can’t miss school tomorrow because of this! I have to turn back! I need to ask my history teacher for an extra credit assignment to make up for the quiz I bombed today!
And yet…if I give up, Blake will have the upper hand pretty much forever.
He could do even worse stuff. He could make me get straight Fs in school and ruin my college potential. He could burn down my house. He could make my life so miserable that I’ll want to devote my entire existence to trying to unlock the secret of time travel in order to go back to prevent my own birth.
Really, I doubt he’d actually burn down my house. He’s more subtle than that. But I absolutely cannot let him win this round. And if I have to drive him all the way across the United States of America to add a point to my (currently empty) score column, I’ll do it.
I keep driving.
We hit the hour mark. Blake remains silent. He’s staring out the window like a droid in hibernation mode.
Two hours.
Two hours and eleven minutes.
Two hours and nineteen minutes.
Two hours and twenty-six minutes.
“You’re low on gas,” says Blake.
“Ha!” I shout. “You spoke! I won the battle of wills! Loser! Loser! Loser!”
“That’s fine, but we’re still running out of gas.”
“Admit that I won! I want to hear you say it! ‘Rod, you won.’ Say it! Why won’t you say it? Speak the words, Blake! Speak ’em!”
You know what? Maybe I’m even less grounded than I thought. I didn’t expect to have quite that big of an outburst when Blake finally spoke. And the hysterical giggling doesn’t help. I’ll be honest. Blake isn’t safe in this car with me.
He looks scared.
“Yeah, we’ll stop for gas,” I say.
“Thank you.”
That fool. If he’d let us run out of gasoline, we would’ve been stuck by the side of the highway, and he would’ve been saved! I guess Blake Montgomery isn’t so perfect, now is he?
I pull off at the next exit.
“Are you going to make a run for it when I stop at the pump?” I ask.
Blake shakes his head. “No.”
“Are you sure?”
“You’d shoot me in the back.”
“Oh, I don’t have a weapon,” I tell him. I want him to be intimidated by me, but there have to be boundaries.
“Still, I’m not going to try to escape.”
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“Because you’ll stop at the pump and I won’t leave.”
“That sounds suspicious.”
“Did you bring handcuffs?”
“No, sorry.”
“Do you want to lock me in the trunk?”
“Yeah, but I don’t want somebody to see me doing it.”
“Then maybe you should have worked out a plan for refueling the car before you dragged me along.”
“I said this was spur of the moment.”
“Still, you knew that your car didn’t get twenty-five hundred miles to the gallon, right?”
“Yes.”
“I’m surprised it gets four miles to the gallon.”
“Now is not the time to criticize my car.”
I pull into the gas station and stop in front of a pump. If Blake unfastens his seat belt, I’ll instruct him in a very firm tone to immediately refasten it. If he unfastens his seat
