Keira’s parents owned a motel, the only place to stay overnight in town. It was one of those kind of gross looking ones with two floors, where someone’s always killed in movies. Her parents lived their, and Keira spent most of her night’s at either Queen’s house or mine, but one of the rooms at the motel was technically hers. Cyrus, for some reason, was really excited about this. “Do you guys not realize how cool that is? To have your own little hotel room, all to yourself, all the time?”
“Motel,” Keira corrected him. “Whatever,” he said. He looked around at all of us. We were sitting by the road again, but Queen was now laying North to South instead of West to East. “Do you at least use the pool?” Cyrus persisted, his hands linked behind his hands as he stood near Queen on the road, staring off into the distance as if waiting for his ride to come pick him up and take him away. Queen popped a bubble and Nate looked over at Cyrus with his eyes squinted against the sunlight, “Not really.” Cyrus threw his hands up in mock surrender and walked back to the edge of the road, falling down beside me in the dirt and weeds. “So instead of going to hang out at the motel you have full access to, where you can take as much advantage of the resources there as your hearts desire, you guys come here and sit on the side of the road.” Queen rose her hand in protest and said, “I lay in the road, actually.” Cyrus looked at me and shook his head, and I fought a grin. “You know what I’m talking about,” he said to me. He looked at Queen and then pointed to me as he said to her, “She knows what I’m talking about. She wants to go hang out at the motel.” Queen’s face was blank, and she said nothing in response, simply blowing another bubble.
Later that afternoon, Cyrus finally forced all of us to go to the motel. “First off,” he said as we all grumpily got out of Nate’s car, “Keira should show us her room.” Keira rolled her eyes, “Believe me, it’s nothing special.” But she led us to it anyway. It was room 146 on the second floor, and the door was pink. She reached into her back pocket and pulled out her skinny wallet. From the slot above her ID, she pulled out the key card and then unlocked the door, pushing it open slowly. Her bed was made, clearly the work of housekeeping by the way the sheets were folded, and the only thing that really differentiated it from any of the other rooms was the huge Guns ‘N Roses poster taped over the bed. Keira didn’t even like Guns ‘N Roses, but her brother, who had moved to Maine and now visited rarely and called never, had sent it to her in the mail one day, inexplicably, with no note-the only thing that identified it as coming from him was the return address on the envelope. She missed her brother like crazy, and adored anything he sent her, which was very little. She had taped the poster up on the wall without a word when it arrived one day in May the previous year, not saying anything about the lack of explanation her brother had given her, just beaming at the poster like he had sent her a long, heartfelt letter written by hand with a quill. The closet was stocked with her clothes and the bathroom had a make-up bag and a toiletry bag on the counter, along with the little plastic cups, complimentary soap, shampoo, and conditioner. There was a mini-fridge, of course, with a coffee maker on top of it, and in front of the bed and next to the closet was the TV, which Keira always turned on when we spent the night here, the volume low, background noise as we talked and painted our nails. Cyrus rose an eyebrow at the lack of personalization, and Keira noticed his expression and said, with a shrug, “Like I said. Nothing special.”
“It’s nice,” Cyrus protested, stepping in farther and glancing around. Keira rose an eyebrow in disagreement. “At least you have a TV in your room,” he said, gesturing to the TV with a smile. Keira looked over at the TV as if it was something rotten, scrunching her nose up before turning and saying, “Ok. We’re leaving.” Cyrus sighed but didn’t protest, and Keira locked the door behind us. “Let’s go down to the pool,” he said, bouncing on his feet with the energy he had from our constant lounging. “We don’t have bathing suits on,” Tim pointed out. “Who cares?” Cyrus said, “We can just stick our feet in. Come on. Please?” He held out the last word in such a childlike way, we couldn’t refuse him. So we piled into the elevator and walked over toward the pool.
It was a hot day, and the pool did look pretty appealing once we were actually inside the gate, so I took off my shoes and stepped calf-high into the water. "That's the spirit!" Cyrus said, walking up beside me and swinging his arm around my shoulder as he slipped his flip-flops off and joined me in the water. I jumped, surprised by the impact of his arm, and my heart continued to pound for the continuity of the time his arm stayed there. Keira noticed my wide eyes and smirked at me, and then came over and said to Cyrus, her arms crossed over her chest, "I dare you to go in." Cyrus rose and eyebrow, and then grinned, took his arm off my shoulder- I shot Keira a look of gratitude- and rubbed his hands together before stepping out of the pool and walking over to the side. He glanced at the water with narrow eyes and then timidly stuck a toe in- though he had just been standing in the pool and knew very well the temperature- before backing up toward the gate, taking his shirt off with on quick motion, and running toward the pool, doing a cannonball that splashed all of us. "Oh, man," Nate said, laughing and looking down at his shirt. "Great," Tim said, shaking his arms of the water. I laughed, pushing my now-wet hair out of my face- I had gotten splashed more than anyone, based on where I was standing, and said, "Thank you, for that, Trace." Cyrus was treading water and grinned widely at me, "Any time."
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