Going

Going

This whole situation was very different from my norm. It was a combination of things upon things that I did not enjoy, and yet, for some unfathomable reason, I was putting myself through it. I was putting myself through it against the better wishes of my parents, and the logical appeal of my peers, and the bitter disappointment of my teachers, who apparently thought I was kind of a smart kid.

Things I Do Not Like:
1.) Traveling, particularly in cars.
2.) Not being able to shower, bathe, go to the bathroom, brush my teeth, wash my face, or perform other necessary life functions with ease.
3.) Eating peanut-butter sandwiches for a day and a half.
4.) Pete.

There was something insane about my doing this. But they say things like that, don’t they? That love is insane, love is blind—there are all those silly romantic songs that lament falling in love. It was cheap and trivial to compare their heartbreak to this seemingly endless van trip, but that was as close as I could come, at the moment.

Ian stirred in the seat next to me, rubbed his face tiredly against my shoulder before opening his eyes. He grinned when he caught me looking at him.

A Thought:
What would have happened if I’d never encouraged him?

“Hey you,” he mumbled. Then he kissed me on the cheek.

“Hey you,” I murmured back. My arm was dead numb from his weight resting on it for so long; it was one hell of a relief when he sat up and stretched, even if the action did drive him far into my personal space. I was far less enthused when he hefted the guitar back into his lap.

I suppose I could have said something about being poked in the side, but it honestly wasn’t too bad. I suppose I could have moved to another seat, but it just didn’t seem worth the effort. I’d been told before that, for a teenager (thank you, Besta), I whined remarkably rarely. This was unfortunately untrue. I was plenty whiney. I just left all my complaints in my head.

Again, this could seem like a virtue. But, no—my apparent complacency with life didn’t stem from goodwill towards all, a desire to make everyone around me happier by not sharing my burdens. I was, at my base, lazy.

Ian took the wrapper from my turkey sandwich, crumpled it up into a ball, and threw it at Mark. Remarkable musician he may have been, athlete he was not; the ball missed and hit Kay, who was curled up in the crook of Mark’s arm. Kay might very well be the lightest sleeper in the history of the world, and had jolted awake every time we hit a bump in the road. For Ian to wake her up on a rare stretch of flat was simply unacceptable. She glared at him. “I hate you,” she informed him with glowering honesty. Kay did not hate Ian. “What do you want?”

With a beatific, angelic smile, Ian gestured gallantly. “Fair lady, I seek thy knight in shining armor. It would greatly please me if you would wake him.”

Kay snorted, and her hair fluttered. Kay had the straightest hair of anyone I’d ever seen, in a dark honey blond. She didn’t straighten it, didn’t blow-dry it, and, as far as I knew, didn’t even comb it. That was Kay, though: she had this ridiculous tendency to not give a crap about all the things that went well for her. For example, she was just as good on the bass as Mark was. She just picked it up naturally, from watching him play. If she’d ever had the training, the girl would probably be a prodigy.

But did Kay want to be a musician? No. She wanted to be a mathematician. And Kay was not particularly good at math, not naturally. Sure, she took AP Calc 2 our senior year, and sure, that was the highest math class our school had to offer. But she worked her brains out to get the grades to be in those classes. It was ridiculous. She probably also wished she had a hunchback and a snaggletooth.

Now she pushed the strand of hair out of her eyes with an impatient hand. “My knight in shining tinfoil?” she asked. Kay was strictly mean to Mark. It sort of worked, though, because Mark was nice to everyone. “He’s asleep.” She did, however, have his best interests at heart.

Ian dropped the act. “Thank you, Captain Obvious. I can see that. Please wake him, or I will be forced to throw something else.” The only thing within Ian’s reach that wasn’t me or his guitar was the cooler of sandwiches.

I put my foot on top of the cooler. “You will not,” I informed him sternly. But I put my hand on his arm, so he knew I wasn’t really angry.

Kay looked from me to the cooler to Ian to Mark and then pushed her hair behind her ear again.

“Bite me,” she invited Ian, and then curled up against Mark’s side again. I fought to suppress a snort of laughter.

In some ways, I thought that Ian and Pete somehow saw Kay as being my fault. She was, after all, my best friend—she had, after all, met Mark when I’d dragged her along to band practice one day because, let’s face it, it was boring. I didn’t always go, but sometimes I did, and when I went, it was boring.

Pete felt the same way about Kay as he did about me, and Ian was mostly okay with her, but thought she was kind of annoying. Adnan thought she was great, because he was convinced she was going to marry Mark.

“Oi, Mark,” Ian shouted. Mark didn’t move. Kay opened eyes filled with murder.

“I am going to—” She didn’t get to finish.

“Mark, Mark, Mark, Mark, Mark,” Ian crooned. I slapped my hand over his mouth.

Adnan now stirred also. Pete was still driving. “Ian,” Adnan offered cheerfully. “If you do not fucking stop that shit, I am going to rip out your goddamned guts and then feed them to your freaking puppy.” Adnan was a big guy. And he had the experience of all those fights. Ian stopped.

He looked at me with sadness in his eyes—all an act. I did, however, release my grip on his mouth. “I have to ask Mark something about the bass line he was writing, but he won’t wake up,” he informed me mournfully.

“What do you want me to do about it?” I asked. I wasn’t being snotty or snippy; it was a legitimate question. I couldn’t make Kay wake up Mark, and I wasn’t about to go over there and wake him up myself. I wasn’t going to let Ian throw the sandwiches, and I couldn’t take on Adnan in a fight.

Ian pouted some more. He was just playing—I could tell from the twitches at the corner of his mouth. As soon as this exchange was over, he would kiss me, and then start playing with his guitar. “Fix it, Sloan?”

I rolled my eyes at him. “You can talk to him when he wakes up, or when we get there.”

He kissed me and strummed a chord on his guitar. “You always have all the right answers.”

Pete threw his empty, crumpled soda can over his shoulder. It hit me square in the chest. I looked at him watching me in the rear-view mirror, his eyes all innocence. Usually he wasn’t so obvious in his plays against me. “Cut it out, Pete,” I called wearily. That was the only attitude that could properly be taken with Pete.

He grinned. It was the moments like these that told me that he didn’t really hate me, only loved to hate me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sloan Kettering,” he protested innocently.

“Ian, it’s your turn to drive. I simply cannot wait to take your seat and to spend three hours sitting next to the beautiful Mrs. McLellan.” It probably wasn’t safe, the way he was fluttering his eyelashes at the two of us and not watching the road.

“Cut it out, Pete,” Ian called wearily. “Leave her alone.”

We pulled over to the side of the road, and Pete climbed over the back of the seat. Ian took the more dignified approach—he got out through the side door, and entered through the front.

“Make some room for a tired drummer,” Pete ordered, and then sat down and fell asleep leaning on my arm.