Chapter 8

Dear Diary,

We’ve been driving for hours now. It’s almost midnight. Marisa told me to go to sleep, but I’m afraid if I fall asleep, it’ll make her fall asleep too. So I’m writing to keep myself awake. I don’t know what to write about though. Just blah blah blah and bleh bleh bleh.

Here’s a sad thing. We left our luggage and stuff in our car. But now it’s confiscated by the cops, so it’s all gone. All we have left is whatever is in my backpack and Marisa’s bag. Luckily Marisa converted all our coins into dollar bills and she carries them around all the time. And I still have my special coins, which is good.

A list of everything we left behind:

- My pretty bomber jacket :( and all our clothes

- Marisa’s phone charger

- My fancy pencil crayons I got for cheap at a thrift store

- Our rain boots (the forecast said it’ll rain soon so that sucks)

- My binoculars

- My basketball

- Marisa’s medicine

That’s probably the worst part. Marisa doesn’t know that I know she takes medicine, but I do. She hides in the bathroom when she thinks I’m still asleep in the morning and takes them. I don’t know where she got them from. She has a bit of the medicine in her purse, but most of it is in our luggage. It sucks. I don’t actually know what they’re for, but they’ve got to be important. I hope we have enough money to buy more. We didn’t get to go back to the casino to collect what we won :( We tried to. But when we drove past, the cops were already there.

I asked Marisa why we had to take this car. There were so many others in the parking lot. 

She said it’s because she JUST saw the family leave the car, so it would be a while before they came back, which would give us at least an hour before the car gets reported missing. That makes sense. But I’m still kind of mad. We stole from a baby, and she doesn’t even seem sorry about it.

I guess she could tell I was still mad because she said she was sorry. She promised that once we ditch the car, the cops would return it to the family anyway, and the baby could have all the toys and dolls back, and the family would have all their stuff back. That did make me feel a little better. But I was still sad. I kept imagining the family coming back and seeing their car was gone. If that were me, I would just start crying. I don’t understand why Marisa never cries. Or seems to be upset or scared or nervous. It must be a grownup thing.

She could tell I was still sad, so she gave me the Ultimate Offer. She would buy me french fries and ice cream to make it up to me. She asked “would that be okay” as if there would ever be a time when it isn’t okay. And I’m not going to lie. It did make me feel a lot better.