“so,” i start as i finish off my last blue and pink gummy worm, “where in north carolina are we headed exactly?”

“kitty hawk beach. not for any of my nerdy reasons, don’t worry,” he chuckles, “when i lived in wisconsin my family would go there every summer. my dad got relocated because the place he worked at in wisconsin closed down, but he was pretty high up in the company so they didn’t wanna lose him. we moved to dasher when i was in middle school and i haven’t been there since. i just sorta miss it there, yanno? it was, like, my favorite place.”
“is it really pretty?”

“oh yeah. it’s beautiful. there’s this huge fishing dock there that i like to sit on and just sort of look around at everything. i don’t know if it’s still there, but i hope it is.”

“and you said we should get there at sunrise, right? i bet it’ll be really pretty. also, we need to stop at the next rest stop. i need more gummy worms,” i say as i stuff the empty candy bag into the walmart bag that we deemed our trash bag.

he looks over at me and shakes his head, “how are you not fat? really? no more gummy worms. no more candy. if you’re hungry, eat a sandwich,” he scoffed, “fatty…”

i stop and just stare at him for a moment, “what do you mean i can’t have any more gummy worms? i’m the one buying them, i should be able to eat them if i want to!”

“dude, you ate like 5 packages already. doesn’t your stomach hurt?”

“no, it doesn’t. i’ll stop eating gummy worms when they make my stomach hurt, so why don’t we just stop at the next rest stop and buy some more?”

“do you even know if they have gummy worms? it’s pretty much just vending machines. not all vending machines have gummy worms.”

“it’s worth the try! i want more gummy worms…” i say, crossing my arms and pouting a bit.

he looks over at me and smiles, “you’re like a cute little kid. i feel like i’m babysitting.”

i narrow my eyes at him, “i’m not a child. eyes on the road, buzzkill.”

he looks back to the road without another word and gasps, using one hand to jerk the wheel to the right and reaches the other hand out to hold me against the seat because there is a monsterous black pickup truck driving way over the speed limit in the wrong lane.