If sleeping with one’s face pressed against a window is uncomfortable, sleeping on top of a van, Ramone Morton was discovering, was three times as bad.

Both he and Kennedy had fallen asleep shortly after their strange little heart-to-heart and had miraculously managed to avoid rolling off the sides of the vans and hitting the pavement below. It was a good thing too; that was roughly seven or so feet down. Definitely not as harmless as rolling off a bed and onto the carpeting in the old apartment.

As if the dull ache in his back wasn’t enough, the sun was stabbing him in the eye and his arm, which Kennedy had decided made an excellent pillow, was asleep from the shoulder down.

“Kennedy,” he said, shaking his arm. “Kennedy!”

She grumbled and rubbed her cheek against his bicep. “M’sleepin’.”

“You’re ‘sleepin’ on my arm.” He shook her shoulder with his free hand. “Get off!”

Kennedy let out a little huff and opened bleary eyes. For a few seconds she looked disoriented, but then realization came over her features.

She shifted off her companion‘s arm and sat up. “We slept on the van?”

“Lucky it didn’t rain.” Ramone rubbed the pins and needles out of his arm and also rose, moving towards the edge of the roof, preparing to hop down. “C’mon, I’m hungry.”

Kennedy stretched leisurely, yawned and scratched her head. “I swear to God that’s all you think about.”

“I slept through dinner,” he replied as he slid down to the pavement, landing somewhat clumsily. “Let’s find somewhere to get some munchables.”

He heard Kennedy’s patented ‘but-I’m-not-through-sleeping-yet’ sigh, followed by the sound of her sneakers scraping across the van.

Just as he climbed into the van, she landed on the driver’s side with an unhealthily loud thump and an angrily shouted, “OW!”

The driver’s side door opened, revealing Kennedy, wiping her hands on her jeans--jeans that had a new hole in one knee. She climbed into the van, slithered into her seatbelt, slammed the door and shoved her keys into the ignition, all in one fluid movement.

“I saw a gas station a mile back--”

Ramone cut her off before she could go any further. “No. I want real food and we are not doubling back, under any circumstances.”

The van started to pull out of the parking lot and Kennedy eyed her roommate turned traveling companion askance. “But--”

“No buts, Kennedy,” he said firmly. “There’s bound to be a fast food joint somewhere along the way.”

“And that’s what constitutes real food?” she asked in disbelief. “A greasy sausage biscuit and sludge masquerading as coffee?”

“Don’t diss the sausage biscuit, Kennedy, just drive.”

And drive she did.

---

It was roughly less than eight minutes travel time before Ramone perked up in his seat and pointed out the windshield at what was, quite possibly, the shabbiest looking diner in the history of mankind. The wording on the sign in the parking lot did little to contradict Kennedy’s first impression of it as a sleazy dive to end all sleazy dives.

“Do we have to eat at a place that actually advertises itself as the best greasy spoon in the state?” she asked, pulling into the parking lot.

Ramone unbuckled his seatbelt and looked at her seriously. “Unless you want me to eat the steering wheel out from under your hands, yes.”

Kennedy sighed and turned off the engine as Ramone climbed out of the van. By the time her feet hit the pavement, he was already opening the door to the establishment, drawn inside by the sheer power of his desire to wrap his mouth around something deliciously artery clogging.

The moment he stepped inside the restaurant, his eyes slid shut in rapture.

“French fries,” he whispered reverently, inhaling deeply. “Food of the gods.”

Kennedy scampered in through the door behind her friend just as he was sitting down at the counter, ready to place his order.

The diner was a friendly looking place; well maintained but still somewhat worn and seemed like the décor hadn’t been changed since the mid-fifties. The waitress behind the counter was out of place in the vintage atmosphere, her hair black, streaked with aqua and stood with the same stance that Kennedy had seen a hundred times before in other small town waitresses. One elbow tucked in tight by her waist with all her weight held on one foot as she jotted down Ramone’s order.

Kennedy approached and seated herself next to Ramone, listening to him order enough food for a small army.

When he had finished (after inquiring whether or not they had milkshakes and discovering, to his obvious delight, that yes, they did) the waitress nodded her head at Kennedy.

“What’ll you have?”

“Whatever he’s having,” she said easily. “But switch the strawberry milkshake with chocolate, if you please.”

Ramone looked at her in disbelief as the waitress set about relaying their order to the short order cook.

“What?” Kennedy looked at Ramone’s skeptical expression and frowned. “You’re not the only one who’s hungry, Ramone. I‘m sure I can put away whatever you ordered and then some.”

“I do believe you’re challenging me to an eat off,” Ramone said matter-of-factly.

Kennedy put her hands up. “No, no, I wouldn’t dare challenge you in the fine art of face stuffing.”

“Good. It would be suicide for you to try, anyway.”

A short time later, their food arrived and they made short work of it. They both ate in a systematic fashion with eerie similarity. Burgers were gobbled down first, then fries (with ketchup bottle passed between them as they went) and finally, milkshakes were swallowed down. They even finished within moments of one another, wiping their faces with napkins in unison.

The waitress, who didn’t have any other customers to worry about at that particular point in time, watched them with interest, wondering at their uncanny ability to choreograph their movements with one another. If Kennedy reached across the counter to the left for something, Ramone reached across to the right, moving with such precision their arms didn’t even brush.

With their meals eaten, they both got up from the counter, went to their respective restrooms, then returned to the waitress behind the register.

The waitress rang up their order and watched as Kennedy started shuffling around in her wallet.

“That‘s very progressive of you,” she commented.

“What?”

“Paying for your boyfriend instead of him paying for you.”

Kennedy and Ramone glanced at each other and then back at the waitress.

“We’re not dating,” the said in perfect, practiced unison. “Just friends.”

“Oh,” the waitress replied, somewhat lamely. “I…uh…I just assumed, with the--”

“We’re on a cross-country road trip,” Kennedy replied, saving the waitress the awkwardness that was surely going to be coming with her next few words.

“Really?” the waitress asked, suddenly very interested.

“Yeah,” Ramone added, cheerful to the point of pain, “We sorta just dropped everything and jumped in the van.”

The waitress looked wistful. “Wish I could do that.”

“Why don’t you?” Ramone asked, while Kennedy counted out the proper amount of change and handed it to the waitress.

The waitress shrugged, putting the money in the register. “No way to get anywhere, really. I’ve got friends in California, but no way to get there. I mean, I have some money saved up, but it‘s definitely not enough to get there alone.”

“We’re heading west, you could come with us,” Ramone remarked casually, as if making an observation about the weather.

Kennedy’s head snapped up immediately and she glared at him openly.

“Really?!” the waitress squeaked, “You mean it?”

Ramone made a noise that was somewhere between a grunt and a squeal when Kennedy grabbed him by the ear. “Would you excuse us for just a second?”

Kennedy dragged him about three feet away and turned so that her back was toward the waitress. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“My good deed for the year?”

“Ramone!”

Ramone sighed heavily. “You heard her, she has money but not enough to get there alone. We were heading west anyway and you keep complaining about the fact we don’t have a destination in mind and a third person would help offset some of the cost of this little excursion…two birds, one stone.”

Kennedy‘s eyes opened just a little bit wider. “We just met her!”

“She’s a waitress, what could it possibly hurt?”

Kennedy glanced over her shoulder momentarily before she turned back to Ramone. “Okay, so she looks harmless, but serial killers usually do.”

“Kennedy…”

“Ramone, you don’t even know if she’s got a family or if she’s ready to leave right this second and I am not going to stand around and wait a week for her to get her stuff together!”

“Hey!” Ramone called to the waitress, “If we said we’re willing to take you with us, how soon could you be ready to leave?”

“Twenty minutes,” the waitress returned promptly. “I’m practically living out of my suitcase, anyway.”

“See?” Ramone looked back to Kennedy to see she was turning an interesting shade of purple with distress. “Twenty minutes. Can we take her with us, or not?”

“I wouldn’t be much trouble,” the waitress said, her tone bordering on pleading. “And I’ll pay for gas and stuff…I just want--”

Kennedy held up her hand to cut off the waitress and felt her eye twitch with a sudden blood pressure spike.

She was really going to regret this…

“You can come, but with the stipulation that

you pull your weight or I kick you out on the freeway and hope you get hit by a semi, understood?”

“Got it!” The waitress tore off her apron, jumped up and over the counter before engulfing Kennedy in a fierce hug. “You’ll hardly know I’m there, I swear! Thank you so much!”

Kennedy awkwardly patted the other girl on the back and glowered at Ramone. He made the mistake of doing a triumphant fist pump in the air and Kennedy brought her hand up to smack him in the back of the head for his attitude.

The waitress pulled back from Kennedy and stuck her hand out.

“I’m Sydney, by the way.”

Kennedy took the offered hand and pasted on her best polite smile.

“He’s Ramone, my best friend,” she said. “And I’m utterly, utterly doomed.”