Morning

The small digital clock in the dashboard read 6:13, barely visible through the glare from the morning sun. They had pulled over late last night, right off the deserted highway into a shallow ditch, surrounded by cactus and Joshua trees. Lola had not wanted to stop; her goal had been to make it to Phoenix last night, but once the caffeine had left her system and without a rest stop for miles, there had been no other option. She rubbed her aching eyes, a quick glance in the rearview mirror revealed them to be so bloodshot it looked like she had pink-eye. If it's 6:13 in San Francisco... add an hour, subtract an hour, Lola could never remember the system. The actual time was of little importance to her anyhow. Wasn't it Einstein that proved that time was all relative? All Lola cared about was getting as far away from San Francisco as her beat-up car could take her.

She looked at the backseat. Dozing there, nestled among the jumbled pile of jackets and blankets, lay a small boy. Walter. He had fallen asleep around the Arizona-California border and had slept peacefully through the winding desert that had enveloped the tiny car, till it became nothing more than two specks of headlights swallowed up by the dark. The last thing Lola had remembered before falling asleep was looking up at the sky and wondering how so many stars could fit on the plane of the sky. But now the stars had fled from the sun, and Lola was left trying to piece together a haphazard plan for herself and the boy. As she had drove yesterday, the list of landmark cities became a mantra, stifling the fear and growing panic she felt. Los Angeles, Phoenix, Tucson, El Paso. Names both comfortingly familiar and terribly foreign. That was all she had. Those city names, that vague outline of where she was headed. She heard a slight rustle from the nylon and polyester cocoon. Walter had started to stir.

Lola beamed at the sleepy child. "Ready for another day of adventure?"