Excerpt: More Love in the Time of Vampire Robots

Bernie drove as they left the California shore and headed east toward their homes. The sun had risen now and the highways were clogged with traffic that slowed their progress to a crawl. Forrest had remembered to call shotgun this time, and got to sit up with his girlfriend. Bradley sat in the back and mostly slept. Occasionally, he would wake up, gasping for air and slap a few pieces of duct tape over the hole in his chest.
Forrest had a million things he wanted to say to Bernie now that it was cemented that they were boyfriend and girlfriend. He wanted her to know his favorite color was black, although lately he had been spending a lot more time thinking about dark gray and sometimes green. He hated peas and loved fried chicken but was afraid to tell people that. Sometimes he rooted for the mouse when he fed his snake. His favorite movie was It's a Wonderful Life, even though he told people it was Bladerunner. He was not afraid of ghosts, but he was frightened by the possibility that they didn't exist and that he wouldn't have a chance to come back to earth free of his corporeal being to spook people.
He wanted to know what her favorite color was, whether she liked watching the NASA channel for hours and hours, what her favorite flavor of Pop-Tart was, if she liked his overcoat. He wondered if she also ever secretly watched old educational programs from her childhood and pretended like she was still little, but incredibly smart. He wanted to ask if he could hold her fake leg again. He was curious what kind of shampoo she used, if it would be okay if sometimes he just sat by her bed and watched her sleep all night, and maybe touch her hair while she did.
The main thing he wanted to know, though, was what they were going to do next. He imagined she wanted to know the same thing, and he was waiting for her to ask.
About an hour into the drive, she asked Forrest, "So?"
He played it coy. "So, what?"
"What next?"
He was relieved to hear her say it. "I was wondering the same thing myself. What do you think, should I move to New Mexico or do you want to move to Texas?"
Bernie looked out her side window at the traffic around them and the sun rising in front of them. Then she said, "I meant, should we stop for breakfast?"
"Oh," Forrest wanted so badly to kick himself that he did, in the left shin with the heel of his right foot. "Ow."
"Keep going then?"
An hour later, they reached the edge of suburbia and the start of the scrub desert. Forrest had sat quietly, pretending to be happy just sitting there, but secretly still mad at himself. He wished he knew what she meant, so he wouldn't have been caught off-guard and said that, yes, he was hungry and wanted to eat. Now, he was starving.
The quiet had also given him more time to think about the question. He thought it might be better if he moved to New Mexico to be close to her. It wasn't as though he had anything holding him down in Texas. He could live in the motel. It had cable TV. Plus, as he had learned on this trip, people speak English in New Mexico, and it is closer to Egon in California.
Besides, moving away from home would be like starting college early. The main appeal of college was not the books, the classes or the higher learning. It had always been about reinventing himself. Since he was in sixth grade, he had planned to go to college far away from Texas and where nobody he knew was going. Between the time he left home and arrived on campus, he would recreate himself as a cool and popular kid who had lettered in most of his high school's sports. He would explain that some unfortunate, sympathy-inducing injury kept him off the courts, field and rink from pursuing his All-American career.