Page 42 of Shut Up and Drive

Agreen road sign blurs past: our next exit with services is in twenty miles. I glance down at my fuel gauge and exhale in relief.

We can make it twenty more miles.

But my stomach has other plans. The rumble starts high in my gut, but slows to a stop as my colon sounds like it’s clearing its throat. My mind goes from zero to sixty in half a second, before ultimate panic sets in.

I squeeze the steering wheel—among other things—within an inch of my life as I push harder on the gas pedal.

“You okay?” Sera asks as her eyes dart to the speedometer.

“Uh, yeah. Fine. I just don’t want to lose any time because we have to stop again,” I squeak out.

The desperation kicks up a notch as the rumblings increase in intensity. Every muscle in my body tenses, and although I’m doing my best to hide it, Sera knowssomething is off. Her suspicions are confirmed when my bowels scream out in agony and her head whips in my direction.

“The burrito!” she gasps in horror, and bursts out laughing.

“Don’t laugh!” I beg. “This is quickly becoming the ninth circle of Hell!”

“Oh my gosh! This is such poetic justice for all the crap you put me through yesterday—pun intended.”

“If you make me laugh, and I ruin this rental car, I’m taking you down with me!” I shout like a gladiator going to war, which only makes her laugh harder.

Then she takes my picture.

“Don’t. You. Dare,” I warn, pointing my finger at her.

“I’d pull that finger, but I’m not sure what’s loaded behind it.”

“Ha, ha, very funny,” I say, my voice two octaves higher than normal. “But seriously, that hit like a wrecking ball, and I swear the miles are going in reverse now.”

By the time we get to the exit, I’m hanging by a thread. But what I haven’t noticed until now is how quiet Sera has gotten.

“You doing okay over there, Spencer?”

She forces a smile and shifts awkwardly in her seat, shoving her shoes on like she’s prepping to make a run for it as soon as I roll to a stop.

“Not so funnynow, is it?” I taunt.

She grabs the “holy crap handle” above her door. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m just adjusting.”

“Riiiight. It’s hitting you too, isn’t it?”

“No. I am perfectly fine. You just want me to share in yourmisery.”

“Oh, I can tell you already are. You’re just five or six minutes behind me,” I say through clenched—everything.

I exit the freeway and we pull into the first gas station we see.

“Uh, if red flags were a gas station, this one would be the poster child,” she says nervously.

“Well, I’m not sure where the next one is, and frankly, I’d settle for a hole in the ground at this point.” I shift in my seat, hell-bent on keeping control over a game I’m losing quickly.

She lets out a shallow laugh, until her stomach joins mine in the Symphony of Regret. “Okaaaaay,” she says as her desperation escalates. “But let’s make it quick,” she says, eyeing the door on the building that saystoiletin faded serial killer letters. “That restroom doesn’t look like a great place to be vulnerable, if you know what I mean.”

I whimper, completely at the mercy of a two-dollar burrito. “The fact that the entrance is on the outside of the buildingisa bit creepy, but I’ll go in first and make sure there’s not a dead body in there.”

“How noble of you,” she says with sarcasm as my stomach goes for gold in the diarrhea olympics.

As soon as the car is in park, I bolt, running straight to a restroom I’m sure has been a crime scene at least once. I grip the knob. When it doesn’t turn, I run to the entrance of the convenience store.