How Important Is Getting There? (4/10+1)

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Chapter 4

For some reason, sleep doesn't come easy for Penny tonight. She has been tossing and turning for hours now and she blames everything from her lumpy mattress (which is not lumpy at all), her stupid pillows (which don't even have brains to begin with), and even the walls (she thinks she can hear the paint cracking).

She starts to wonder if admitting herself to an asylum is a good idea. She wants to see if the padded walls are quieter than the ones in her bedroom. And besides, it's not like she can't rock a straight jacket.

She reaches for her phone and looks at the screen. 1.41 AM. She huffs. Looking at the ceiling, she silently thanks God that she still has another night before the trip. She then spends her restless minutes calming herself down, counting sheep and whatever woolly animals going through her mind.

Wait, elephants don't ha—



//

Penny wakes up to a thud in the living room. For a moment she stays really still in her bed to make sure that she really heard something— or rather, didn't hear anything. She'd prefer the latter, but with her luck, it's absolutely unlikely.

She heard another thud from outside her door and shoots up in her bed.

Shit.

She tiptoes across her room to the door, keeping silent as humanly possible. She opens her door just enough to take a peek and sees a shadow stumbling around the living room. The shadow's big and, huh... we're being robbed by an obese SOB?

She knows it's not a good time to be assessing someone's appearance, but if she's going to jump on someone, she might as well know what she's dealing with, right?

She takes a quick glance at Rose's bedroom door. It's closed shut and there's no light seeping from the bottom gap. The same goes to the guest bedroom's door. Both Chiquita and Rose must be fast asleep. She could wake them up by calling their cellphone but she doesn't want to risk making the intruder panic. She also knows the possibility of either of them actually picking up their phones is slimmer than a strand of cat hair. If there's anything that she's learned from their countless sleepovers, those two are heavy sleepers. Jolly green giant heavy. Not just the jolly old man from North Pole kind of heavy.

OK then, Penny takes a deep breath. Looks like it's you and me, self.

Penny slowly steps out of her room and hides in a nook just outside her door. The fatty (there's no need to be politically correct about someone who's about to empty your apartment, right?) is rummaging through what looks like a duffel bag on the couch. Oh my god, he totally chopped Rose and Cee and stuffed them into the bag!

She didn't know where she got the courage from but once she saw Sir Eats-a-lot walking towards her, Penny decided that she should just find a weapon and go for it. So she runs to the kitchen counter, grabs whatever it is that her hand brushes in the darkness and tackles the intruder to the ground.

“I got a weapon and I'm not afraid to use it,” Penny yells, holding her weapon in the air.

“Penny!” Penny stiffens. “P, get off me!”

She knows that voice. And more importantly, she knows that voice.

//

“You're not fat,” Penny says right after she turns on the light. She now knows that the fatty she was watching in the darkness was actually Tara, bundled up in layers and layers of clothing— and a ridiculously too fluffy of a coat that matches Chiquita's.

“Uh, thank you, I guess,” Tara says with an air of uncertainty. She thinks it's a weird way to greet someone, but she shrugs it off. The two of them unconsciously take a few steps backward and create three bubbles. One bubble for Penny, one bubble for Tara, and another one for the woolly mammoth in the room.

Tara, who's always the first one to burst out of an awkward situation, opens her mouth first. “Why do you have a banana in you hand?”

Penny looks at the object in question in her right hand but doesn't answer. She silently curses the blush creeping up her face.

“Wait. Is that... is that your 'weapon',” Tara asks again, this time using colossal airquotes for that last word. “You thought I was going to rob your house, and you're going to kill me with a banana,” Tara raises an eyebrow and Penny hates it. Yeah, well, I can still choke you with the banana, she mentally replies.

Wordlessly, Penny turns around and walk back into her room. Tara sighs and slumps her shoulders about it but then busies herself by propping the couch cushions for her to sleep. She may have been traveling the world, sleeping in hotel suites, but she holds no reservations about sleeping in couches, nor about not having a blanket. Good thing I have my coat, she says to herself.

It wasn't even thirty seconds later when Tara hears something being laid down on the kitchen counter. She turns around to see Penny standing next to a stack of fresh linen, pillows, and a comforter.

“It's gonna get cold,” Penny says. Tara starts walking over to the kitchen counter, but once again Penny turns around. As she walks away she tells Tara that Rose and Chiquita are asleep. “You can use my bathroom,” she says and doesn't close her bedroom door.

Ten minutes later, Tara tiptoes into Penny's bedroom. She softly closes the bathroom door and finds an unopened toothbrush, marked 'T' with a Sharpie, sitting next to her favorite toothpaste— also unused.

//

When Penny wakes up in the morning, Rose was sitting on the edge of her bed with the typical Rose smirk. “So,” Rose says. “A banana, huh?”

Penny growls, covers her face with a pillow and goes back to sleep.

//

When Penny wakes up for the second time that morning, the house is almost empty. She lazily walks into the kitchen and looks around. Only Rose is sitting in front of the TV. As if on cue, Rose tells her, without even looking away from the TV, that their guests have yet another meeting.

Penny eats her bowl of cereal merrily.

//

“Cee just texted me. She was wondering if we could get them some stuff for tomorrow's trip. Tara's not gonna be able to get out of the meeting anytime soon, so I said we can. So get your ass off the couch and go get changed,” Rose nudges Penny's shoulder with a rolled up newspaper and gets a glare from the nudgee. “P,” Rose calls over her again.

“Ro,” Penny answers, cocking an eyebrow. Penny sees a tired look on Rose's face— and the way that her arm is holding the newspaper in the air, ready to smack her if she must. “Ugh. Fine. I'll change,” Penny says as she gets up. “How is it that she's ruining my time off when she's not even here,” Penny throws her arms in the air. Rose just chuckles.

//

At a craft store, Penny buys herself a stuffed doll that suspiciously looks like Tara, and a pack of pin needles.

Rose doesn't question Penny's purchase.




(end of chapter 4)