American Vacanza

slow rock and separation • siena

The haunting opening tones of a slow indie rock song bounced through my brain as I watched the night slowly go by from the passenger seat of our car.

In the quiet moment, the stars sparkled like nothing I'd ever seen. It was almost like someone had taken the California ocean and pasted it into the sky. The sky shone in a million different places, mesmerizing me. I'd been absentmindedly staring at it for who knows how long.

A beautiful, placid sight like this shouldn't have to be interrupted, but leave it to Madison, screaming and thrashing so wildly I thought she was going into cardiac arrest. "Oh my god. Oh my god. Siena! Help me!!"

I ripped my headphones off, jerking forward. "What is it? What's wrong!?" I screeched, leaning forward to make sure she wasn't having a medical emergency.

"Oh my gosh, he's calling! SIENA, HE'S CALLING!" She motioned to her phone, which showed a weird picture of Ethan holding a Solo cup. In a normal moment, I'd question it. But my job right now was to make sure Madison didn't crash the car.

"That's a good thing?" I asked. What was the point of ditching Ethan just about an hour ago if she was going to be happy when he called? Were we going to -- God forbid -- go back for him?

"No, of course not. It's horrible! What's going to happen? What's he going to say?" She seemed kind of excited, but there was a frantic edge to her voice. Looking in the car's mirror, I saw that her eyes were wide open, the kind of look a deer gives you right before you accidentally hit it with your car.

"I don't know! Here, you're driving, but if you really want, I'll pick it up!" I responded. Was it possible for attitude to be contagious? I think I read that on a poster in some overly positive elementary school teacher's classroom.

"No!" Madison shrieked, her hands shaking. I could practically hear her heart beating from the backseat as she slowly picked up her phone, simultaneously rolling down the window, and in one swift motion, threw her phone into the ditch below.

"What the hell was that!?" I shouted, making her turn around and stare at me with a guilty, terrified look on her face.

"I don't know." Her shoulders had shrunk down, taking down her aura of confidence with them. I'd never seen Madison so vulnerable. I'd never seen her in a position that wasn't in control, but at that moment, she started to cry. "I really don't want to see him again. I just don't, and next time I see him, he'll be at school, and I'll have to spend my whole senior year trying to avoid him. And I don't want that to happen!"

Okay, so now I was in a bad position. Madison was the extrovert, always throwing parties and out with her friends. I was an introvert. I didn't go to parties, I went to club meetings and service trips. 

I slowly unbuckled my seatbelt and made my way to the front seat, which had so many rips and stains it looked like Madison's $400 jeans. "Its okay. You're going to be fine. you wanted to give him up, and you did it in a way that you didn't have to face him. You didn't want to hurt him."

"I didn't do it because I didn't want to hurt him. I did it because I'm a no good coward who can't even talk to her own boyfriend." Traffic had started to move again and she looked ahead of us with a sniffle. She was done talking.

"So, uh, we should probably stop for the night," I replied quietly, providing a much-needed change of subject.

"Not now. I'm determined to get into Iowa," she said, tightening her grip on the steering wheel as she looked ahead.

I took a deep breath. It would probably do me no good to challenge her, but I found the words coming out of my mouth anyway: "But... tired."

"Unbuckle your seat and lie all the way down. Night-night." It was amazing how quickly she could go from emotional breakdown to tyranny in five seconds flat.

I closed my eyes and sighed. It was just the two of us in the car again, and it would be hard to keep calm. We still had half the United States to cover; 1,500 miles of pure hell.

"That's not what I meant, but if we're not that far away, I can probably stay up. It's only eleven."

"We need to get to Iowa. We still have about an hour," she warned- and when I saw the determination in her brown eyes, it hit me. Her compulsion to get to Iowa was purely to put distance between her and Ethan, to find closure that he was out of her life for good.

"All right." I'd make this sacrifice. If not for my stepsister, I'd be doing it to prevent another breakdown. I leaned my head out the window and gazed at the sky full of stars. Dulled only by the yellow streetlights on the sides of the interstate, the stars still shone like the diamonds on my mother's ring.

I didn't mind the fact that we'd be in the car for a while. I'd discovered the other say that In COULD sleep in the car, so as long as Madison stayed awake, I was fine. But I had a feeling I'd stay awake. Just watching the red taillights of cars around us swish through my view had a hypnotic effect on me, and I felt like I could watch the scene from out the window for hours.

Evergreen trees. A sapphire sky. Dull street lamps that gave off cream-colored light. The heavenly, white-hot stars. An occasional car, though not many at this hour. The sound of tires on pavement. A pink-haired, loud-mouthed seventeen-year-old in the driver's seat. For most people, this didn't sound like paradise, but for me, at that moment, I couldn't think of a place I'd rather be.

Madison's head was bobbing slightly, as if there was soundless music coursing through her head. The only better thing would be to actually listen to music, but since this was an old car, it didn't have anything to hook up your phone to and play music.

"Wait, Madison, do you still have that RAY speaker? Like the wireless one?"

"Probably. It might be somewhere win my bag, here, look," she said, handing me her purse. I pulled out the small, circular speaker, then leaned back to the backseat and grabbed my phone. 

This was the only way to road trip: with loud music blasting. Rock music was a welcome replacement for deadbeat boyfriends anyway.