Heart Shaped Rock by Laura Roppe Read Free Book Online

me the fun.” After the drama of the past couple days at my house, I’m actually, surprisingly, in the mood to let loose.
    “Well, Fun Shaynee, you picked a good night to make an appearance. Kellan says this party’s gonna be redonkulously fun.”
    “Oh my gawd, Tiffany. What is that?” I sniff the air and crack my window.
    “What?”
    “What do you mean, ‘what’? Did you bathe in perfume?”
    “It’s Britney Spears: Curious. You like?” She puckers her lips at me.
    “No, I don’t like. I can’t breathe.” I open the window even farther.
    “Listen to me, Shaynee Sullivan: Sex appeal is fifty percent what you’ve got, and fifty percent what you think you’ve got. I’m just doing my fifty percent.”
    “It smells more like you’re doing your eighty or ninety percent.”
    Tiffany laughs.
    “So, when are we meeting up with Kellan for the party?”
    “He’ll text me when his shift ends in a couple hours. Until then, we’ll just have to find some way to amuse ourselves.”
    “And how do you propose we do that?”
    She picks up two industrial-looking walkie-talkies from her lap. “With some extremely juvenile fun, my dear.”
    “Juvenile, as in ‘juvenile delinquent?’” I ask, arching my eyebrows.
    “Never.” She feigns indignation. “Juvenile as in ‘hella fun.’”
    “Well, all righty, then.”
    “Yeah, it’s a pretty elaborate plan, so hang on to your socks.” Before I can ask another question, she hands me one of the walkie-talkies. “Talk,” she commands.
    “That’s your elaborate plan? Talking into walkie-talkies?”
    “Yep.”
    “Genius.”
    We proceed to talk to each other through our electric contraptions from our respective car seats, a mere eighteen inches apart, for the entire drive to the beach. “Breaker-breaker, nine, I’ve got an oh-five-niner in process on Taylor Street. Do you copy?” Tiffany says. She lifts her finger off her “talk” button and official-sounding static spews out.
    “Breaker, breaker, I read you loud and clear,” I respond. “I’ve got an astronaut overhead, probably a sky bear, must be looking for a five-oh-two. Do you copy?”
    I release the talk button to emit loud, exaggerated static.
    “Roger that,” Tiffany says, breaking into the white noise streaming out of the device in my hand. “I copy that.”
    We break into fits of giggles.
    We arrive at Mission Boulevard, the main drag along the beach, and hang a right, heading north along the shoreline. Now that we’re here at our destination, we commence phase two of our elaborate itinerary—we cruise up and down the boulevard, over and over again, talking to each other through our walkie-talkies all the while.
    “This is the life!” Tiffany shouts.
    I laugh. Yes, it is. “We’re so dope, we’re illegal in fifty-five states!” I shout out my open window. God, I’ve needed to have some mindless fun.
    Tiffany laughs. “You’re such a weirdo, Shay.”
    We’re heading south, talking into our walkie-talkies, when I notice that a teenager driving alongside us in a minivan sharply brakes the moment he sees our walkie-talkies. As if we’re cops, or something. This gives me an idea. “Pull up alongside that guy.”
    She complies, bringing me right alongside the guy’s driver’s-side window, and I mouth, “Pull over.” The boy’s face goes pale, but he pulls his minivan over to the shoulder, as instructed.
    “Tiff, go get him. I’ll stay here and make you sound official.”
    Tiffany snorts. “Got it.”
    She gets out of the car and swaggers slowly over to the confused boy’s window, like she’s the warden of a Southern prison (who happens to wear jangling, bedazzled accessories). I crouch down low in my car seat and furtively speak into my walkie-talkie, spewing some pretty off-the-chain-sounding gobble-de-gook, if I do say so myself. “Unit five-seven-four, we have a three-one-eight over on Island Street. Do you copy?” I mumble. “Unit seven-one-four, can you check out