-11-
The rest of that day after the triplets left was beyond boring. Sure, I pranked Stacey, and I got an unpaid job as a stunt double, but what else was I supposed to do? I'd hoped Stacey would text me, asking where her sleeping bag was, as well as her toothbrush and everything else I hid. If she texted me, maybe I'd hear it and be able to find my phone. But alas, it was gone. At least I had two weeks to find it.

But Stacey didn't even talk to me. I watched as she walked inside her tent and didn't come out. Maybe she just didn't brush her teeth and then found her sleeping bag once she was in. Either way, I lay there waiting for her to do something until I fell asleep.

»»»»»»«««««

The weirdest thing happened when I walked into the living room the next morning.

My mind was in the process of saying: I'm so bored! But then, there was the sound of a gunshot on the TV (not in real life) and Sherlock Holmes was echoing my thoughts as he shot Mrs. Hudson's wall and said, "Bored!"

Stacey was on the couch, watching Sherlock reruns with her phone in hand. I thought back to when we'd first arrived here, and Martha told me to take Stacey to the store with me because she had no one to talk to and she'd been watching Sherlock reruns all day. After that, neither of us seemed stuck for something to do.

Maybe I should fix things.

I sat on the far side of the couch (which didn't help, because it was a very long couch) and tried to think of the best way to word my apology.

Turns out I didn't have to be the first one to talk. It took about ten minutes of both of us ignoring each other, while just like last time, my mind was working on overtime to find words. I looked down. I was even wearing the same shirt!

But anyway, Stacey was glaring at her phone. I swear I could see steam coming out of her ears. I almost said her name when she stood up and said in a shaky, but very demanding voice: "Logan. Get in the car."

"Whose car?"

"I don't care."

The sternness in her voice scared me enough that I followed her. While she walked out the door, I grabbed my mom's keys from her purse on the counter.

"Where do you wanna go?" I asked nervously as I unlocked the car.

Stacey swung open the passenger side door of our van and hopped inside.

"Anywhere," she said.

Confused, I stuck the key in the ignition and slowly pulled out of the carport.

"You don't have any destination in mind?" I asked.

"Just shut up and drive somewhere."

I drove away from the house and down past the neighbor's houses, and I kept going until all there was to see were grassy fields.

Stacey pulled out her phone again. I was shocked to see tears forming in her eyes. I wanted to try to see what was on her screen but I needed to keep my eyes on the road.

Utopia's voice echoed in my mind. We asked her, but she only said someone was just being mean to her on the phone.

Whoever it was, I felt like punching them.

"Talk to me," Stacey said suddenly, pushing her phone deep inside her pocket. It kept vibrating and she looked like she wanted to see what it said, but she withheld.

"What should I say?"

"Just say something to distract me."

"Um...well, you know how I told you that I generally avoid people? There's reasons for that. When people first see me, I guess they think I look like a pretty cool guy. It's always the same pattern. People invite me to hang out with them, guys and girls. But once they learn about me, they laugh and then don't talk to me again."

Stacey looked at me with complete empathy. I tried not to look at her, because I didn't like empathy.

"What do they learn about you?"

"Are you sure you want to know anything about me?"

"Why would I judge you? We've talked to each other and honestly, I think you're really awesome. What could make me think less of you?"

"I'm sure you'd think less of me if I told you I was a serial killer who took people for rides in my mom's van before killing them."

She laughed weakly. "Come on, just tell me."

I took a deep breath. "Well...I guess people think I have weird hobbies. I like to play with kids, for one. I have no interest in football, or soccer, or any of those 'cool' sports that all the cool guys do. Never ridden a skateboard. Instead I play ping pong with old guys at the recreation center on weekends. I like to keep my grades up, which people think is a bad thing for some reason. I don't even fit in with the nerds, I guess. I'm not interested in band, but I like to play the piano. I don't watch, read, and draw anime, but I like to finger paint scenery. People will just ask me if I like to do any of those things, and I tell them no. They'll ask if there's anything I do like to do and then they laugh when I tell them."

Even just looking through the corner of my eye, I could tell Stacey was beaming.

"You like to play the piano?" she said. I just nodded in response. "Why is that not cool?" I shrugged. "You know there's a ping pong table in Martha's garage?" Stacey continued.

I tried not to visibly show how happy that thought made me.

"So what's wrong with you?" I asked, but it was clearly the wrong thing to say.

Stacey just gazed out the window. "Well-"

She stopped abruptly. Half a second later, she said something else. "Holy crap. Stop the car."

"What?"

"STOP THE CAR!"

She'd begun to unbuckle her seatbelt. The van was slowing down, but before it was even stopped, Stacey opened the door and jumped out.

I slammed on the brakes and scrambled to undo my own seatbelt. Once I managed to get outside, I followed Stacey as she ran down the road.

"What are you doing?" I called, but she didn't respond.

She stopped after a few feet and bent over in front of a wooden crate with red words that said: 'please take'. I caught up to her and tried to catch my breath and see what she was looking at.

It was a puppy. A small, cream colored Labrador with a tiny face and tiny paws. Stacey held it in her hands, petting it gingerly.

Before I could even think, I said, "Awww."

Stacey laughed. "I couldn't just leave this little guy on the road. I'm gonna call him Baxter."

I cocked my head and looked at the puppy from a different angle. "Stacey, he's a girl."

"Dang it! She looks like a Baxter."

"How about we call it Baxter Jane?"

She laughed again. "You sound like Evita."

"So no?"

"If we're doing that, she needs a last name. Baxter Jane Evans."

"What about your last name?"

"Yours sounds better."

This time it was me who laughed. "Sounds good."

We began to walk back to the van, and I said, "Did you get hurt jumping out of the car?" Only now did I notice she had dirt on her shirt and a few scratches on her arm.

"Not badly," Stacey replied. "I'm only bleeding a little bit."

"Please don't do that again," I said.

"Only for small puppies."

»»»»»«««««

We'd stopped at the store on the way back to Martha's and picked up some dog food and bowls to put it in. Stacey insisted on taking Baxter Jane inside, and the cashier immediately told us she wasn't allowed. Stacey argued with the woman for at least five minutes, and we had to settle for Stacey standing right outside (technically she wasn't in the store) and she yelled to me while I wandered around trying to find the brand of food she'd seen on TV.

Now we were in Martha's garage, uncovering the ping pong table while Baxter Jane sat on a stack of blankets, watching us curiously.

"Do you know how to play ping pong?" I asked Stacey.

"Somewhat," she said. "Go easy on me and eventually I'll get it."

"Alright, but you should know: those old guys at the rec are hard to beat. They whipped me into shape."

Stacey scoffed, but she still smiled.

"Teach me how to play now," she said, picking up a paddle.

"Okay, well, there's two ways to hold a paddle. There's the pen grip, which looks like this...." I showed her how it was supposed to look, but she just looked confused.

"That looks stupid."

"Uh, I guess it does. I prefer the shakehand grip."

"So the pen grip is like you're holding a pen and the shakehand grip is like your shaking hands?" Stacey clarified. "Whoever invented this wasn't very creative."

"You're still holding it wrong." I walked over to her and showed her what my hand looked like. Still, she couldn't seem to hold it right. She held it at the wrong angle.

I put my hand on top of Stacey's and adjusted her paddle. I felt her stiffen beside me, and I instantly felt embarrassed.

I cleared my throat. My voice didn't sound quite right when I spoke next. I almost sounded like a little kid. "Keep your fingers loose, so your wrists can move."

She nodded, slowly pulling her hand from mine, and took her side at the table.

"Okay," I said. "I'm going to serve it, and then you're just going to return it, all right?"

"Have at it!" She sounded excited.

I smirked and let the ball bounce once before I hit it over. Stacey swung but hit nothing, and the ball hit the floor.

"Dang it!" she said. "I need a tennis racket!"

"You've played tennis before?"

"Only in PE. I was pretty good at it, too. These stupid paddles are so little."

"Here," I said, and handed her a ball. "You try serving."

Stacey successfully hit the ball over. I returned it with no problem. It was like that for a few minutes. One of us would serve it, the other would return it, and at some point Stacey would screw it up.

"You're doing great," I told her after she hit a ball backwards at the ceiling behind her.

At one point, one of Stacey's balls went to the side and hit Baxter Jane in the side. It wasn't very hard, I swear. Baxter looked up curiously and jumped from her pile of blankets and walked under the ping pong table, toward the treadmill on the other side of the room.

"Baxter, no!" Stacey called and chased after the dog. But Baxter Jane didn't like being chased, and she hopped onto the treadmill and she was about to walk behind into a crevice that would be difficult to get her out of, and Stacey dove onto the treadmill and grasped Baxter Jane in her hands.

The door to the garage opened and Martha poked her head in. "What's going on in here?" she said. "Why is there a cute little puppy in my garage?"

"I found him earlier," Stacey admitted, face down on the treadmill. "He was just chillin' in a wooden crate."

"But don't worry," I pitched in. "We already bought the food ourselves."

"Can we keep him?" Stacey lifted her face to plead with Martha.

"I suppose...as long as you clean up after him."

"Her," I corrected.

"Right." Martha slowly shut the door.

"Well, Baxter Jane is now legal in the house," I said.

Stacey stood up. "Indeed."

I gulped and said, "Stacey...I'm really sorry about my crankiness the other day."

"Oh, it's fine. The worst part was when you made me sweep up the sugar."

"I was trying to sound like I was joking, but clearly I failed."

"The bitterness was clear."

"Sorry."

"It's okay," Stacey laughed. "I forgive you. But say, did you hide like everything I own?"

"Gosh, I thought you'd never notice."

"I slept on the bare floor of the tent last night with dirty clothes and dirty teeth. And it gets cold at night."

"I expected you to come after me or something."

"I was trying to ignore you."

"You failed."

"Well, I was about to explode."

"What was that about, anyway?"

Stacey looked at the floor. "Nothing."

"If that was nothing, then I'm a female squirrel."

Stacey cracked a smile, but the light in her eyes was gone.

"Look," I said. "It's alright if you don't tell me. I guess I'll be right here to drive you to nowhere for a while."

She lifted her gaze to my face. "Thank you."
__________________________

Ahhhhhhh this chapter is muy bueno :D

Let me know what you think! PLEASE!

And if you're reading and not voting, shame on you!

Jk, whatever floats your boat, I guess. But I'd love you if you voted. *puppy dog eyes*

Anyway, please feel free to rant in the comments!

Oh yeah, picture of Baxter Jane Evans attached! :D

Seriously do you guys like this story as much as me? I live it. (yes I meant to say live.)

*says "peace" in hippy voice*