Linda reached out to slap Lauren's hands down. "Lauren!" she shrieked.
"Are you out of your mind?"
Lauren laughed long and hard, reaching for her jacket, poking her arms back through the sleeves. "It could be kind of fun." She grinned devilishly. "Watch one of them wreck."
"You are evil!" When things calmed down between them, Linda realized they were still in the same predicament, speeding toward seventy-five miles per hour, hemmed in between the three semis. "What are we going to do?"
"It's just bored trucker guys having a little fun. Besides, you're the one who wanted to make it back in time for class." She glanced out of the window at the road signs. "Look, we're almost in Santa Claus already."
"I don't like this," Linda murmured, envisioning the truck on their left closing in, forcing her to the shoulder.
"Then get off. At the next exit."
Thankfully, the truckers allowed Linda to angle her car for the Santa Claus exit. When they slowed down onto the ramp, Lauren watched the three of them thunder onward. "We probably broke their heart."
In Santa Claus, they stopped for fuel at the exact same gasoline station with the exact same middle-eastern cashier guy, who said "Ah, we meet again."
Neither one of them was hungry, after the big breakfast they'd ate hours earlier.
"You owe me," Linda said, when they climbed back into the car. "I bought practically all the gas for this trip."
"I already paid you back ten-fold," she said. "I got you to meet your future boyfriend."
It was still before one o'clock when they reached the Illinois state line, and Linda felt more and more confident about her chances of making it to class on time. When Myrtle pulled up into the edges of town at two-thirty, she knew she might make it with time to spare. Hurriedly she parked in the student lot across the railroad tracks and made Lauren run with her along the overpass toward the high rises. Once they arrived at their building and an elevator ride brought them to their room on the tenth floor, Lauren allowed herself to crumple down onto her bed. "You can be Miss Goody-goody and go to class," she said. "I'm going to catch some Z's."
"See you at dinner." Linda grabbed her notebook and her text from their perch atop her desk and ran toward the stairs, scampering down all ten flights of them. Gray clouds gathered overhead, obscuring the mid-day sun, causing her to wonder if a driving rain would stand as the beginning and end of her Led Zeppelin adventure. On the other side of campus she raced through the double doors at Essex hall, climbing another flight of stairs to take her to the lecture hall. Once there, she plopped down in her usual seat beside Marsha, a red-haired girl from Rockford. She poked her and said "You'll never guess where I've been."