Cam

"Dude, slow down!" I called out to Derrick as he raced at top speed towards the car. We both ran, but I was more of long distance jog cross country while he was more of short distance sprint track.

"How bout you hurry up!" He yelled over his shoulder across the Kroger parking lot. Thump, thump, thump. My feet pounded as they hit the asphalt. I don't know why Derrick thought it was a funny joke to park all the way across the parking lot, which happened to be a quarter of a mile long. Not very long in general, but rather large for a parking lot. Not to mention my toes turning into icicles inside of my shoes. Finally, the car didn't seem so far away and was drawing closer to me. Everyone else that came with us trailed behind in a small pack.

Derrick got in the driver's side, and I slid into shotgun. Everyone else piled into the backseats of the SUV. It was a little cramped, considering we were filling eight out of eight seats.

"Where are we going?" Matt asked, tossing his long hair to the side. We've been trying to get him to cut it for years, but he refuses. In fact, it's so ridiculous in length that he is forced by Mr. Brimer to wear a headband in gym. And with Mr. Brimer (the aforementioned gym teacher) being my dad, it's a bit awkward whenever Matt comes over and his black mop is flopping freely.

"Mogermentry Park." Derrick responded as he pulled the van forward. Now I see why he really parked this far back. No backing in or backing out. For someone who gets a C- in every class, he sure is smart.

"Why there? The wolves are out at night." Michael groaned. Michael was another one of our buddies, and had the exact same blonde hair color and cut as Derrick. Our whole group joked all the time about who copied who.

"But so are the stars, and Mogermentry Park has the clearest sky in all of Mogermentry." Mitch replied to Matt in a rather snippy tone. He was secretly one of my favorites after Derrick, if I had to choose. Matt liked to keep things straight and to the point, and thought on his feet well.

"I didn't come for stargazing, I came for an adventure!" Michael huffed.

"We're going to a park, with a forest and plenty of places to go on an 'adventure'!" Mitch retorted.

Michael held his hands up in defeat. "Touché."

"How far away is it?" Matt asked. His blue eyes looked at mine through the rear-view mirror.

"I don't know, twenty or thirty minutes?" I turned to Derrick for confirmation.
"Closer to thirty." Derrick mumbled, engrossed in the road ahead of him.

"Ugh, that's gonna take a million years." Michael settled into his seat and closed his eyes. He was the rather dramatic one.

"Why don't we play a game?" Mark asked from the far back. He, another one of our close knit eight, was the most athletic one. Even more so than Derrick. If you think you've thought of a sport that no one has played in the last one hundred years, you thought wrong. And of course, he was the first of us to think about playing a game, since games were usually first on his mind.

"Like what?" Marcus replied. He was the shortest one, and definitely the geekiest. He loved to put theories and old ways of teaching to good use. This particular way of teaching was 'the Socratic method' which was 'answering questions with questions'. Or so he told us.

"I don't know, you think of something!" Martin shot at Marcus. He was definitely the most spunky of the group, and despite his outrageous confidence, lacked the ability to see social situations very clearly. Exhibit A: He mistook a question from Marcus to him instead of Mark.

"What about I Spy?" Matt yelled over the arguing that had just erupted in the back seat between Martin and Marcus.

"We're moving, so I Spy would not be a very functional game for us to play at the moment." Marcus said in his 'professor voice'. As usual, he managed to poke his head above the waters of debate to answer a question before diving right back in.

"Okay, what about 20 questions?" Matt asked me, since Mitch and Mark had decided to involve themselves into Martin and Marcus's argument, and Michael was sound asleep.

"Yeah sure." I said, looking in the rearview mirror. Everyone else was still arguing, except for Michael, who was sleeping like a hibernating bear. "EVERYBODY STOP!" I screeched. The fighting ceased and Michael was startled awake.

"Nice." Derrick whispered to me, which everyone heard since the car was at a newfound silence.

"We're playing 20 questions," Matt squeaked. I had apparently frightened him too.

"Ooh, I'll go first!" Martin started waving his hand around like a palm tree and 'accidently' hit Marcus in the face.

"Ow!" Marcus slapped Martin on the back. Hard.

"Hey!" Martin exclaimed punched him back. They broke out into a mini fight that only a nerd and a overly dramatic person could have.

"Woah, woah, woah!" Matt hollered over the shouting, breaking up Martin and Marcus. He was our underdog peacemaker. Martin and Marcus ignored Matt's strong hands and continued their 'fight', which must have been the weakest by far ever witnessed. "Marcus! What does E=mc2 mean and who created it?" Which sent Marcus into a long spiel of things that the rest of us had yet to understand or care about. "Martin! Have you thought of your thing for 20 questions?" Martin perked up and completely forgot about Marcus. The peacemaker strikes again. I thought.

"Okay, I've got it!" Martin announced. "Ask me questions!"
"Alright, is living?" Matt asked.

"Nope! But it was at one point." Martin replied.

"So it's been killed?!" Matt freaked. He was totally against killing anything a

vegetarian as reinforcement.

"No! Well, kind of. But what it's made of didn't have a brain!" Martin held his hands up in defense.

"Oh, okay." Matt tried to brush off his little melt down, but the aura of freak out still hung in the air.

"Is it eaten?" Marcus quizzed. He had apparently finished his explanation of E=mc2.

"Yeah." Martin replied.

"We're here!" Derrick exclaimed with as much enthusiasm as a thirteen year old that has been slaving over a steering wheel for thirty minutes could muster.

"What was the answer?" Matt asked Martin.

"Bread!" Martin replied, beaming as if it was the most creative answer anyone had ever thought of out of both this century and the last.