Chapter 13

Next morning, I was curled up on my tree branch, dreaming mutant bird kid dreams. Blissfully unaware of my three so-called friends huddled together whispering, and glancing up at me. They all nodded and smiled. Ariek and Ethan parted as Kary stepped forward. Said devious girl then proceeded to scream at the top of her extremely high lungs. Causing me to wake up instantly, jump, lose my balance, and fall to the ground with a thud.

The Butts were laughing their stupid heads off.

"I fucking hate you guys." I growled at them. Ariek, between laughter, gasped, "Love you too, Charlotte!" I looked over and saw Ethan bent over, laughing, Kary had tears steaming down her face, and Ariek was clutching his stomach. I had to smile; it was a pretty good prank. I just wished it wasn't on me.

When they finally calmed down, and wouldn't burst into a fit of giggles every time they looked at me. We cleaned camp, made sure no one could tell we were, and headed out to find the nearest train station.

The nearest train station, as it so happens, was twenty miles away from the dinky little town we were in. I had originally wanted to walk there, but Ariek, Kary, and Ethan instantly vetoed me. We asked around and found out that there was a bus that took us to the town where the station was. So we dug around in our pockets, searching for bus fare. Soon we had about a dollar fifty.

"Great! That'll pay for at least one of us!" Ethan said exasperatedly. So we took to the streets, looking on the ground, asking people.

Now there is something you should know about this town. It's probably the most closed off, rural, and desolate town ever. All there is is a couple small apartments, a gas station, and a grocery store. I think the population was like around 42. So there weren't many people to ask for money.

At last we had a nice little pile. When Ariek counted it all up we had a total of four dollars flat. We cheered and Kary even did a little victory dance.

Now we had the joy of waiting for the bus. We plopped down by withering sign that was the bus stop. We talked, mostly about what we were going to do in San Francisco. Then we stated playing hand games like slide, down by the banks, lemonade, etc. I was in the middle of a very heated game of slide with Kary when it finally came.

It was about a fifteen-minute bus drive the next town. Once we got off, Ethan took the lead.

"C'mon, this way." He called over his shoulder. As far as I knew Ethan has never been to California before, much less a teeny weenie town in the middle of nowhere.

He took us down a couple of streets before stopping abruptly.

"Look! What's that?" he said squatting down near some shrubbery.

"Um… a bush?" Ariek guessed.

"No. Under it." He thrust his hand under the branches and when he took it out there was a thick wad of cash.

"Oh my god! How did you know that was there?" Kary exclaimed.

"Couldn't you guys see it?" he asked. We all shook our heads. Even with my good vision, I wouldn't have known that it was there.

"No? Oh… well… let's see how much we got here." Something about this seemed fishy to me, but I just couldn't put my finger on it