American Vacanza

i fall asleep and it screws us over • siena

There is a park bench in my backyard, and it sickens me.

My stepfather's company headquarters were built where a sprawling public park filled with emerald greenery and children's laughter and college ultimate frisbee players once sat. After kicking all of these carefree, untroubled youth out of their play space and relegating them to a smaller, less beautiful park, he took a bench from the safe haven and placed it in the back garden of his obnoxious mansion to represent how he took joy away from the greater San Francisco area.

And I'm even more appalled that I fell asleep on it last night. I mean, sure, sleeping outside in the cold San Francisco night was better than enduring Madison's ice storm. But now, all because of Madison, there was a crick in my neck that wouldn't go away.

The last thing I remembered was walking out of dinner, wanting to avoid any extreme blowups from my stepsister. I sat on the bench for a while, but must have fallen asleep as I counted the stars.

So I stiffened upright and staggered toward the sliding glass doors, rubbing my contact-lens-free eyes until a somewhat-focused picture of my family comes into view. Hurriedly, my mom, stepdad, and stepbro (who, admittedly, was not as bad as the other two, but maybe that was because he was away at college all the time) were packing away, getting ready for the Italy trip.

I was beyond grateful that Mom had decided to let me bring my old friend Naomi, from back when I lived in southern California. Especially since it would just be the family - plus Madison's deadbeat boyfriend Ethan.

Ew.

I stumbled inside, still half-asleep. "Oh, Siena, honey. We were going to wake you up last night, but..." Mom began to explain.

"It's fine. I didn't mind, except... I think... I might have some, like, bug bites? Or something?"

"Are you tired, honey?" Mom sighed, peering over me like I'd suddenly turned green. You can go back to bed, if you want. It's only five, and our flight leaves at nine. We'll wake you up at seven or so, if you want."

"Thank you," I mumbled, stomping up the cast-iron spiral staircase up to my room. My mom married a billionaire six months ago, and I still couldn't believe the size of his house. There were four people living here: myself, Madison, Mom, and Pete. Isaac didn't even live here anymore. Why did we need such a big house?

My thoughts were interrupted when I walked into my room and promptly fell back asleep.

________________________

"Sienaaa!" Madison's shrieks were loud enough to shake the house - the entire crazy, sprawling, unrealistically-high-square-foot thing.

Figuring it was just one of her mindless freak-outs about misplaced hair dye or something like that, I pulled my pillow over my head and pretended not to hear anything. Mom would come into my room and wake me up when it was time, and Pete, my stepdad, would deal with his daughter.

That was the unspoken rule in this house: take care of your own kids, no truces, no alliances. Mom and Pete tried to get us to be some kind of nuclear family, but we weren't.

"Siena! Come down here! It's an emergency!" she shouted again, a slightly fewer number of ceramic items shaking on my shelves.

"What is it?" I groan-shouted. I don't know if it was obvious enough, but I really didn't want to go down there. I called Madison "Mad" for a reason. I didn't want to have to go downstairs for some stupid reason like a misplaced cell phone that was actually just in her purse, or perhaps an "emergency" date situation in which her douche boyfriend, Ethan, cancelled.

Ethan. Ew.

"It's nothing like anything I've done before. Just friggin' c'mere!" she yelled.

I groaned and walked out of my room to the steep staircase, where I had to hold the railing to keep from falling down. My vision was always blurry right after I had woken up (although you already knew that.)