Drive Me Crazy Read Free Page A

her house with her duffel bag by her side. She’d been packed for weeks and couldn’t stand the wait for even one more moment. Alexis had planned to pick Sierra up at her house. Then they would head to Kate’s before motoring off to the west in Alexis’s little green Ford.
    Kate stood in her driveway, growing agitated for no reason at all. She had come outside more than ten minutes before her friends were supposed to get there, and couldn’t blame them for the fact that she was still waiting. She reached into her bag to grab her cell phone to check the time, and realized it wasn’t there.
    Crap . She’d left it plugged in overnight, and had forgotten to grab it from the kitchen counter before she’d locked up. She pulled out her keys and let herself back in. The phone was right where she’d left it the night before.
    She had six new text messages and a voice mail. Before she could look at her messages, she heard Alexis’s horn sigh in her driveway. The horn sounded like a dying cow sucking its last breath, and Kate chuckled as she slipped her phone into her pocket and hurried out the door.
    Sierra waved to her from the front seat, and Alexis leaned her head out the open driver’s side window. “I’m driving first shift so I can control the tunes, yo.”
    “You can drive every shift, babe. I will man the navigation.” Kate swung her bag into the trunk and moved around to the back door. She stopped short when she realized the backseat wasn’t empty. “What are you doing here?”
    Sprawled across the backseat, one foot lounging into Kate’s space, was Adam. He was drinking a bottled Frappuccino, and a little bit spilled as he shifted to make room for her next to him. Kate leaned into the window to glare at Alexis. “What is he doing here?” The panic was evident in her voice.
    “Dude, why didn’t you call me back?” Alexis swiveled in her seat. “I called you last night, and texted you, like, eight million times.”
    “I didn’t get the messages.” Kate was staring at Adam suspiciously. His precious soccer ball sat in his lap, taunting her. Her skin crawled at the memory of what had happened the previous afternoon. “Does anyone want to tell me what’s going on?”
    Adam put on a fake smile and—in a ridiculous Valley girl accent—said, “Like, I’m coming with you!” He clapped. “Road trip with the girls!” His face turned expressionless. “Yes, that’s right, Kate. You and I will enjoy the magic of each other’s company for the next”—he looked at the clock on the dash of the car—“one hundred twenty-six and a half hours in this car—approximately.”
    Kate shot a desperate look at Alexis, who glanced in the rearview mirror, and then said, “Adam has a scholarship interview at the University of Michigan. He has to be there on Monday afternoon, and Aunt Michelle can’t leave Jersey until Sunday. My parents knew we were planning to stop to see Kevin in Ann Arbor anyway, so they made me bring him with us. They insisted he didn’t need to take the skanky bus when we were going to the exact same place.”
    Sierra leaned her head out the window. “Come on, Kate, just get in.” Kate scowled at her before reluctantly sliding into the open spot next to Adam.
    “I may have come across as genuine a few moments ago, when I jumped for joy about this road trip.” Adam adjusted his position so he was taking up as much of the backseat as was humanly possible. “But let me tell you that I’m looking forward to crashing your road trip just slightly less than you ladies are looking forward to having me here. But fate aligned and brought us all together, so I think we should make the most of it.”
    Alexis rolled her eyes and signaled to turn onto the interstate. They were on their way. All four of them. As Kate turned to look out the back window to watch their hometown shrink into the distance, Adam said, “So, who wants to play truth or dare?”
     
     
    When they stopped at a gas station