Random on Tour: Los Angeles (Random Series #7) by Julia Kent Page A

nothing more can happen—it can. And does.
    And it’s always worse than you’d imagined.
    We dispensed with decorum and both rolled our windows down all the way. The stench was—
    She farted.
    I started giggling. Haven’t giggled since I was eleven.
    Her face was as red as parts of her hair.
    “I—uh—”
    And then I farted, too.
    “Oh, God,” she muttered.
    You lose all pretense of social norms when you start farting uncontrollably in front of someone. It’s the kind of thing politeness can’t even cover up. It’s like my drunk Dad at a big family gathering. Everyone can ignore old Titus over there, but after a while you have to acknowledge that he pissed in your spider plant, stole your bottle of Percocets from the medicine chest in the back bathroom and left empty beer bottles in random bushes outside your house before passing out on your front lawn and waking up to the automatic sprinklers.
    Farts in a small car are just like that.
    “Sorry.”
    “Quit giggling.”
    “Can’t—” Gasp. Fart. “Help it.”
    “Are we sick? What happened?” She began white knuckling it as her belly made a series of sounds like coal cars creaking along on train tracks so rusted they needed to be sand blasted.
    “I don’t know.”
    “Now we both have it.”
    “You sure you have it?” I asked, snickering.
    Her stomach answered for her, and then she broke out in a sweat.
    “Sweet mother of God, what is this?” She hit eighty-two miles per hour and moved into the fast lane.
    Pretty soon she was doing the meditative breathing, too.
    Ten minutes later she pulled over and we both sprinted for our respective bathrooms. My butt cheeks opened up and the gates of Mordor were unleashed. I felt like I was sending hundreds of dwarves and hobbits to their deaths. I had the uncomfortable feeling that my ass was the Eye of Sauron for a few moments there.
    The evil my body poured forth into that poor, innocent toilet was just cruel.
    Wave after wave, cramp after cramp, and as I sat there, a prisoner to my bowels, I realized that there wasn’t exactly a wall of self-consciousness between us anymore.
    We both wandered back to the car, shuffling like something out of a zombie movie. Maggie’s head was down, tapping away on her phone.
    “You calling Lena?” I asked.
    “Why would I call Lena?”
    “Maybe her cookies did this?”
    Maggie looked offended at the thought.
    “I’ve eaten Lena’s cookies loads of times and they were fine.” 
    My stomach rawr-ed in answer, the sound like thunder fading off in the distance. I sprinted back to the bathroom and left her hanging.
    By the time I came back, she was leaning against the car, sucking on a bottle of water like a baby cow calf. She downed that bottle in seconds, then wiped her mouth, tossing the empty in a recycling bin.
    “Lena says she ate more cookies than the two of us put together and she’s fine.”
    “Huh.”
    She glared at me. “So what could it be?”
    “Can’t be the coffee. Or the cream. All I’ve eaten since then is cookies and those gummy bears.”
    She frowned. “I’ve had coffee, cookies, gummy bears, eggs, and—”
    “Let’s check out the gummy bears.”
    Her stomach yawped like Mrs. Wilmer’s Labradoodle. 
    “Go,” I said with a wave, trying not to laugh.
    She took off for the bathroom and I grabbed the bag of gummy bears. Nothing weird. They were just a five pound bags of—
    Sugar free gummy bears.
    Huh.
    Maggie’s smartphone was in a drink holder. I grabbed it and did a quick search on Google. Came to a product page with—
    Hold on.
    One thousand, three hundred and ninety two reviews?
    I opened the page.
    By the time Maggie came back, I had solved the mystery of our rotgut.
    “I know why we’re shitting water,” I said.
    “So eloquent, Tyler. Really. You know how to sweet talk a girl.”
    “Facts are facts. Sorry to offend your sensitive sensibilities.” 
    “I live in a dorm with hundreds of eighteen and nineteen year olds, Tyler.