"Christopher Pike - Weekend" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pike Christopher)

Weekend
by Christopher Pike



ONE
The road was painful. Last summer's hurricanes had dug strategically placed potholes across the narrow
asphalt highway. Every time their dusty Datsun hatchback hit one -- every sixty seconds -- Shani
Tucker's head kissed the car's ceiling. She wanted an aspirin, but they upset her stomach, and it was
already worse off than her head. Long drives were not her forte. She wished that there was room in the
front seat with Kerry and Angie, where at least she could have tied herself down with a seat belt. But
Angie was driving, and Kerry's hand was glued to the radio, searching vainly through static bands.
Though the road was doing its best to slow them down, they were, nevertheless, too far south into
Mexico to catch San Diego's stations. Glancing out of the window at the brittle tumbleweed, the baked
orange hills, and dry, cracked ravines, Shani felt as if she had crossed into another world, rather than
merely into another country.

"Can't get anything on this damn thing," Kerry Ladd said, fretting as usual.

"Turn it off," Shani said. "I have a headache as it is."

"I've got to have music," Kerry said, snapping in a cassette. Pat Benatar started wailing about precious
time. Kerry wasn't the most considerate of friends. But Shani didn't complain. The grinding guitar was the
lesser of two evils. Constant external distraction was necessary to keep strung-out Kerry from exploding.

"I've got to turn off the air conditioning, again," Angie Houston warned, wiping a long straight strand of
blonde hair from her hazel eyes as she flipped a switch next to the radio. "We're beginning to overheat."

"I don't want to sweat," Kerry complained. With the cool air turned off, the rise in temperature was
almost immediate.

"Do you want to walk?" Angie asked, turning down the song's volume. "Shani, how far do you think we
have left to go?"

Shani studied the map her father had insisted she take. The trip from Santa Barbara to San Diego
yesterday after school had been a breeze. They had checked into a Motel 6 and had got away early for
what they had anticipated as a six-hour jaunt to Robin and Lena's vacation house located on the beach
near Point Eugenia. Today was only Friday - unofficially, Senior Ditch Day - and they'd felt that they'd
managed a good jump on the weekend's fun. But they were now over eight hours on the road, and
making miserable time.

Odd, how they hadn't seen anyone else from their class on the road. Supposedly, Robin and Lena had
invited the whole gang.

"Well," Shani said, "we passed Point Blanco over three hours ago, and going by map inches, that's only
a hundred miles from where we're supposed to turn off, so we should be getting close."

"Could we have passed it?" Angie asked.

"I haven't seen anythingto pass," Shani said. "But no, Lena said that we'd see a Margarita Ville Canteen