The World Around the Corner by Rick Ellrod

Author:Rick Ellrod [Ellrod, Rick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: romance sweet
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
Published: 2018-06-17T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

By unspoken agreement they wanted to be back out of Marien before the overcast dusk turned into night. They paused only briefly to pick up fast food before getting back on the road. Jeff glanced at the lowering sky and turned his attention to the traffic, still heavy on the part of the highway running through the city.

“You’ve heard of this Goth style, or mind-set, or whatever it is.” Dana inspected a hamburger soberly and bit into it. “Do you know what Garth was talking about?”

“A little. They call it ‘acid’ these days.”

“You mean drugs, like the ’60s?”

“No, this is something else. Acid, as in a corrosive substance that destroys normal things. It’s another variation on angry-young-personhood, or nihilism, I suppose.” He pulled around a car poking along in the middle lane and picked up speed again. “Personally, I always thought it has a lot to do with resenting your parents, or their lifestyle, or their dull everyday habits. If you can make it into an ideological disagreement, it seems a lot more grown-up. And dramatic.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. So these folks favor breaking off from your family, running away?”

“I’m not an expert. But I have the impression acids think it’s more real to go off and live with people who share their beliefs, or at least their attitudes.”

Dana sighed. “I wish we could do something to help.”

“I suppose we could try spreading the word to everyone we know in the game. Our own personal Amber Alert. But people are so scattered geographically it probably wouldn’t help much.”

“I don’t know if Garth really wants us blabbing this all over the Internet, even if he was willing to tell us.”

“I knew there was something else we should have been asking.” Jeff frowned, annoyed at himself. “We didn’t find out who we should tell. Well, we’ll have to say something to Kirk, at least…”

Dana sat up straight in her seat. “Jeff, get off here.”

They were almost upon an exit ramp. Jeff jerked the car onto the ramp and stamped on the brakes, the engine coughing at the abrupt change in speed. He checked belatedly to make sure there were no vehicles bearing down on them, straightened the car out and said, “What’s up?”

“This exit–” She pointed up at the exit sign. “Crystal Port, it says.”

“Yes, it’s a fairly seedy district nowadays, down by the river. Wait a minute–”

Dana was nodding. “It was ‘Crystalsport’ on the Nairn River where we fought the Thalemanni. They were pretty dark and edgy, too. Think that connection would have occurred to Renee?”

“You bet.” They were on a divided street with a weed-grown median strip now. Cars were parked along the sides of the street. Some were almost new. Others stood rooted to the pavement, decrepit. “What do we want to do now?”

“I don’t know. Let’s just drive around a little, see what we notice.”

Jeff peered up at a street sign in the grey light, turned right onto a narrower street fringed with low-rise apartment buildings. “What are we looking for?”

“Dunno.

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