The Search for the Golden Unicorn

"Hey Aiden?" Parker asked, on the verge of sleep.

"Yeah P?" Aiden asked, looking over at his best friend.

"We're really doing this, right? Like... we're going to find it? The Golden Unicorn?" Parker asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

Aiden turned to look at his best friend, and smiled as he saw the tired smile on his face, "Of course we are P. I promise you that in our lifetimes we will find the Golden Unicorn." Aiden said. He put a hand on Parkers shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

Parker smiled and nodded, and soon enough he was asleep. Aiden looked back at the road ahead of him, smiling to himself as he remembered how they had gotten to this point:

It had been a few years ago; the four of them had been sitting around in the living room of their old house, just talking about things as most friends do. Eventually the conversation moved on to what one would do if they found something that seemed impossible to exist, like say for example a golden unicorn. They all agreed that finding such an item would be amazing, but not worth much in terms of money since no one would believe them. They decided that if they did ever find such an item they would travel around the world together while they were still young enough to enjoy it.

They called it their "Golden Unicorn Quest", and every year they'd talk about how even though they hadn't found anything yet it really wasn't that important because what fun is life without a little mystery?

Then last week Aiden's mom had died in her sleep. She had been sick for a few months now, so it didn't come as too much of a surprise but that didn't make it hurt any less. Aiden was devastated by her death and he knew that Parkers parents weren't doing much better after losing their only daughter last year from cancer.

So when Payton had shown up at his house with two plane tickets and told him that she wanted him to join her on a cross country trip starting tomorrow he couldn't say no even if he wanted to. Even though his mom wouldn't have wanted him to sit around moping about her death she'd also likely want him to stay close to home until he felt ready to leave again so he didn't tell anyone where he was going and just left with Payton when she showed up early the next morning with her bags already packed for their trip.

Now here they were: driving through the night along Route 66, looking at all the sights like the giant cactus and some other stuff they'd seen on TV before. It was nice being able to get away from everything for a little while and just enjoy being able to see new things with someone who didn't know anything about his mother's death yet or how sad and angry he was still feeling inside.

They'd been driving through Missouri for most of the day now and were getting pretty close to Tulsa if he remembered correctly when suddenly Payton slammed hard on her breaks as she screamed "Holy Shit!" which caused Aiden to do the same thing except not as gracefully since he wasn't expecting it at all! He jerked forward into his seatbelt which held him back against his seat as Payton swerved out of the way from whatever she'd seen out in front of them!