Chapter Text
"So whaddya think, Anderson, you figure it out?" Todd looked up briefly to see Charlie flopping onto his bed, next to where Todd sat at his desk, before turning his attention back to the map laid out on the surface. Todd nodded slowly for a few moments before voicing his thoughts.
"I think I've got the best route. So we start just near the border, in Battleboro." He set his index finger to the spot on the map and proceeded to trace the red lines he'd been puzzling over. Neil sat up without getting out of his own bed, fancying his reading glasses were going to help him see much of anything from across the room. Stephen Meeks leaned on Todd's desk to peer at his explanation.
"Then we pass through Springfield, have to go up through Albany and then Buffalo..." Todd continued, then his finger's route hooked west. "Cleveland, Toledo, then we get to Chicago. We'll have to figure out if we can actually stop in Chicago long enough to explore some, even if we can't stay overnight. Then west, west, west, nothing but plains I think, then we'd get to Omaha. From there, Denver, which I would also love to spend some time in, then Salt Lake City-"
"Mormons," Charlie muttered distastefully. Neil snorted. Todd huffed something that was neither quite a laugh nor a sigh and carried on. "Then I guess we just book it straight through Nevada-"
"Bummer," Charlie lamented. "There's nowhere to stop in Vegas?" Todd shrugged.
"Not that I see," he mused. "Anyway! We'll probably have to change trains several times, last one being in Sacramento. Then we hit San Jose. That seems to be as close as we can get by rail."
"To what?" Richard Cameron's voice made them all flinch a bit and stare at the open doorway, where Pitts looked sheepish and had Cameron invisibly clinging to his side. Knox barreled in, pushing past the two of them and throwing himself onto the remaining space on Neil's bed. Neil grinned and patted his knee.
"To your mom," Charlie retorted, winning snickers from most of the other boys.
"Oh never mind," Cameron muttered, making to leave, but he and Pitts were still kind of in each other's way in the doorway. Charlie relented, sort of, sounding resigned.
"To Stanford, you doofus."
"Stanford?" Cameron echoed incredulously. "You mean to tell me you actually got into a university anywhere, Dalton?"
"That's what they tell me," Charlie scoffed, then pointedly standing up to go peer over Todd's shoulder with Meeks. Pitts shrugged and finally made his way into Todd and Neil's room, parking himself on the radiator. Cameron lingered uncertainly in the threshold.
"You're running off across the entire country? And you're going by train?" he ventured. Neil glanced over at him and nodded. "What, you all are?" The others nodded as well, except for Charlie, who was pretending no one had spoken. Todd glanced up at him and sighed internally at Charlie's stone face. "Jeez, that sounds like an overly tedious way to do things."
"Good thing you're not going then, huh?" Charlie barked, not turning his head from Todd's desk a centimeter. Todd swore he could feel Neil sigh from the other side of the room.
"We'll see you at graduation?" he cajoled Cameron. Cameron blinked and turned his attention from the back of Charlie's head to Neil's earnest face.
"Yeah, I suppose so. One week left. Then it's into the great wide open." Neil smiled his wordless reply and returned Cameron's nod as the redhead exited stage left.
"Neil, I don't know why you even still talk to that clown," Charlie muttered, still staring at the map like it was the answer to life, the universe and everything. "He somehow managed to sell both you and Mr. Keating out over things that were not actual...things."
"Well, he tried," Neil corrected, flipping a page in the magazine he'd been trying and failing to peruse for half an hour now. "No real damage was done." Charlie flipped him a quick look. "By Cameron, that is," Neil added dryly.
"Forget him," Knox sighed. "Now, how do we get our tickets?"