Don't Stop Now by Julie Halpern Read Free Book Online

the cheese water and plops it into his mouth. “Just melt on your tongue, don’t they?”
    â€œNo.” I shake my head. “I mean I don’t want to go home today. I think I need to get away, too,” I proclaim.
    Josh sits up, sparked by the idea. “Where do you want to go?” he asks, mischief glinting off his mirror shades.
    â€œTo find Penny,” I answer.

    I can’t believe it. Lillian talked to me at a party. I wonder if she caught me staring at her. She never talked to me before. I mean, she never really ignored me, but I just figured she was so tall, she looked right over me. People do it all the time, tall or not. But she talked to me. She gave me some food. She smiled at me. Beautiful teeth. Is that weird I think she has beautiful teeth? She does. And hands. Long fingers. Mine are stumpy.
    So she smiled at me and gave me a chip and some dip, and now I think that means I can say hi to her at school. Maybe we’ll sit by each other in class. Maybe I can hang with her and Josh and laugh when our car breaks down. Maybe that’s what her smile and the chip and the dip mean. Maybe it’s the start of a beautiful friendship.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    â€œI’m in,” Josh declares.
    â€œWait—I’m supposed to convince you with all sorts of important and meaningful reasons about why I must do this. A quest unfulfilled, and all that.”
    â€œWhatever. You don’t have to sell me. The open road. A far-off destination. I’m there.”
    Maybe it’s good that was so easy. If Josh wasn’t so enthusiastic, I might have caved and gone straight to Penny’s parents’ house to confess.
    â€œBut riddle me this: Why are we going to see Penny? Isn’t she, like, the root of all stupidity at this point?”
    â€œNo, well, not really. She’s just lost. And if we find her, then I’ve fulfilled my promise to her and myself that I won’t tell anyone where she is. Then I’m going to make her turn herself in, tell her to grow a set, and finally rid my psyche of this hold she’s had on me for the last year.”
    â€œFair enough. So do we go home and pack? Or should we rough it?” Josh asks.
    I’d hate to go back home and find the cops waiting outside my house. Or worse, run into my mom and have to lie or be guilted into confessing something. “Let’s just go. We can buy some stuff along the way.” Which really means Josh can use his dad’s credit card and we can buy whatever we want. I never was one to take advantage of that as much as other people, although I rarely said no to a free meal. That would be rude, right? But this is the perfect—even noble—excuse to mooch. “But along the way where? Do we just head west and hope to find her standing on the side of the road?”
    â€œWest sounds best,” Josh amuses himself. “Nobody ever found adventure by driving east. Or at least not in the movies.”
    â€œWhich is practically real life anyways,” I concur. “Our ultimate goal can be Portland because that’s probably—maybe, anyways—where she might be. It’s the biggest lead we have. And it certainly is west. About as far west as we can go, really. West to Portland!” I raise my pointer finger into the air in a declaration. Then Josh gets this boing! idea look on his face. “What’s going on in that wacky head of yours?” I ask.
    â€œBest idea ever,” Josh declares. “ Hiding Out .”
    â€œOh, no. No. No?” Hiding Out is this absurd movie from the eighties that always seems to be on the local crap channel at two in the morning. It stars Jon Cryer, the dad from Two and a Half Men , as someone who has to go into hiding for witnessing a murder or something, so he stops at a gas station, takes an ugly T-shirt off a rack, grabs a razor, bleach, and some shaving cream, heads to the bathroom and proceeds to shave off his beard