I awoke to a voice booming down upon me from the sky like a megaphone. I opened my eyes and saw a cop standing over me with a rare grin on his face, his squad car parked on the side of the road behind him.
He had asked us, "Are you alive?"
I began to question that myself, as I sat up from the nest of grass.
"We've been getting calls about two dead bodies laying on the side of the road." he spoke again.
I began to rub my eyes, "I'm alive. We're stranded."
"You might wanna move down the road or call someone to pick you up. It's dangerous to hitchhike here." He spoke as if not suggesting.
I rose to my feet and kicked Ack in his shoulder. He rose to his feet and we watched as the cop hopped back into his squad car and headed down the way for which we were headed.
"Now'sa good'a time as any." Ack stated, rubbing his eyes deeply as he moved over to the road and stuck his thumb out.
I began to walk further along our way and stuck my thumb out as I went.
We went in for what felt like an hour, until some clean white Subaru with tinted windows pulled over and the passenger rolled her window down, "Where to?" She asked.
"Heading to Korē Korē." I replied, hunched forward.
"Done." replied the woman, sipping from a can of bourbon.
Ack jumped in first and I hopped in behind, the car reeked of cigarette smoke but I didn't complain. Then we pulled off into the road again.
The driver looked to be a woman in her early thirties, she had straight blonde hair, tied up in a ponytail that stuck out of the back of her baseball cap.
The passenger had wavy black hair and a nose ring with black painted nail polish.
"What do you two do?" The passenger asked, licking her piercing green eyes onto us.
"We're looking for work." we said in unison.
"Oh yeah? Well, we're strippers." laughed the driver.
"Not me. I can't really anymore after I got put on this." the passenger corrected, pulling her ankle up I onto the dash to show off her ankle monitor or 'Rolex'.
"What'd you do to get out on that?" asked Ack.
"Nothing, I didn't do it." replied the passenger, pulling her anklet back down.
I rolled my window down and I watched as visible smoke began to clear into the sunlit air.
"What are your names?" asked the driver, staring at us through the rear view mirror.
"I'm Max, he's Ack." I answered, watching her spark a cigarette. I was sure Ack would ask for one given the opportunity and he would've surely got one, but he never did.
"Max and Ack? We're Haze and Winter." replied the driver, not revealing which was which.
"Do you guys know a chick called sugar tits?" Ack boomed.
"Sugar tits?" the passenger said, pulling a face.
"Yeah, I just figured you might have ran into her, y'know, in your line of work." grinned Ack.
'Fuck sakes.' I thought, we were never gonna get home at this rate.
"My kind of work!? You mean and exotic dancer!? The job description!" the passenger hurled.
"Yeah, anyway, my brother knocked her up a couple years ago. Figures it'd probably be a small world with the stripping and all. Small country, ain't it." Ack buried himself.
No wonder that cop from before wasn't willing to give us a ride. We were relentlessly diabolical.
"No I don't know a fuckin' sugar tits you ungrateful prick! We should—Nah!– Drop them off now Haze!" said the passenger presumably named Winter.
"No! Please, we're sorry. We really need this ride. Ack! Chill the fuck out! He didn't mean any disrespect." I assured Winter.
But it was no use, we had barely made it any further down the road and we were kicked back onto it again.
We stood on the side of the tarseal road, and watched regretfully as they zoomed off at top speed.
I turned to Ack, "That wasn't me that time, you prick!"
"What did I do? I just wanted to start some banter, no need to get all pissed off about it!" Ack reacted, looking along the long road.
"You decided to bring up sugar tits in conversation with a couple strippers, what were you thinking?" I hurled, wiping sweat from my forehead.
"And? What better time to bring up a stripper than when you're in a car with two of them? What? Would you prefer if I brought her up in front of your mum?" laughed Ack.
"That's not the point. The point is, we're stranded again and it's all because of that big fucking mouth of yours!"
"Oh, well I guess we're one-for-one right now because if I'm not mistaken we had a ride all the way home until you opened your mouth about animal torture!"
"That was different! That guy looked cooked, cooked cunts are into sick yarns like that!"
Ack placed his hands on his hips as the sound of a vehicle approaching began to stir amidst the buzzing of insects. "Well I suppose we start over again."
"Yeah, but this time we just sit and don't speak unless spoken to, answer their stupid questions and get this ride over with. I'm not sleeping in the bushes or a library again." I said, as I dropped my thumb towards the road.
This time we got a ride with a single mother and her three kids inside of a mini van. The vehicle smelled crisp and fresh, with enough seats to go around, her three kids all looked to be under the age of seven, who were all buckled into their booster seats in the third row of seats.
Ack sat alone in the second row of seats m, and I sat up front alongside the single mother who wore a thin gold cross necklace around her neck, her eyes were wide in bloom but nothing was behind them.
After a short time of driving I couldn't help but think that I knew her somehow. And then it hit me once she'd mentioned that she teaches Christian studies at schools across the nation that she had taught mine and Ack's class, way back when.
The ride was going smoothly. I was relatively confident that no stunts were going to be pulled. But I pondered the idea of dropping the fact that she'd taught us Christian teachings in primary school to build a relaxed rapport with her.
After all, she now had two strange teenage boys sitting in her car who reeked of tobacco smoke. I was wearing a wizard riding a dragon tye-dye shirt, and Ack had a fleece deep blue Nike jumper with cigarette burns through his sleeves.
We still had hours to go until we were home but I ultimately thought against it and let this ride for as long as it would.
She dropped us off in Whangarei, the northernmost city in the nation. About a 40 minute drive from home. From here I felt safe, as though my bed was within walking distance and that I would soon crawl into it.
Despite spending half my childhood in this city I didn't know where the homeless tended to wader and rest after dark. At course they had told us the mat the homeless would sleep in skip-bins during the day and wander at night.
At that same token I had only been a young child when I lived in this city, so it was to no surprise that I was ignorant to the ordeals of that section of local life.
But that would not matter it seemed, the sun was still hours from setting and we were only one ride away from salvation. All it would take is one kind soul.
We stood at the very end of town for another half hour, and then got picked up by a tradesman, yarned to a minimum and then arrived back in Korē Korē with our homes awaiting us.
I slapped hands with Ack at our dividing paths and carried on home. I looked for the spare key in the false rock and unlocked my homes door.
Walked down the hall and collapsed into bed.
Thirty minutes later there was a knock on my door, I got up to answer it and found Ack standing in my hallway, apparently he'd been locked out of home.
I got him a blanket and he stayed the night in the lounge on the couch. A sleeping situation that was only to become a tradition for the years that followed.