Running Towards the Light

Chapter 26 - Road Trip

"Who's ready for a road trip!" One of my brothers yelled, but I was too tired to try and figure out which one of them did it.

I groaned, wrapping my blue blanket even closer to my head in the hopes that I could fall asleep again. No one should be up at this ungodly hour. I was sitting at one of the barstools off of our island kitchen, a couple of my brothers accompanying me. A blue fuzzy blanket that was usually on my bed was wrapped around me to keep warm as it was very early and therefore super cold. Not to mention my attempt at falling back asleep was failing miserably even with this blanket to help.

My oldest brother decided that it would be a brilliant idea to wake us all up at 4am in order to get on the road at 5am and hopefully to the campsite but noon ish as it was about a six hour drive plus stops. Chris had this major problem in his brain where he thinks that it's impossible to take a travel day, he wants to make sure every single day is used up to the fullest. The only problem is, we hate that. Hence why everyone is in a bad mood this morning.

Eight siblings all stuck in two cars while in bad moods — that's a recipe for disaster. But that's Chris' problem now.

"Everyone ready to go?" Chris's voice boomed, making me flitch and groan at him startling me awake.

"I don't think so, C. Look." Dylan's voice chimed in.

There was a second where everything was silent and I assume Chris was surveying everyone that was awake and in the kitchen before we went. That was before a finger poked my neck.

"Whoever that is. Stop!" I growled from under my blanket, but still refused to look out in order to see who the offender was.

I have never been a morning person, I don't like the mornings, and I have no need nor want to change my dislike of early hours. So, naturally, even though I am super excited for our family camping trip I don't really care right now. I just wanna go back to bed.

My oldest two brothers — Chris and Dylan — are big morning guys. Sometimes they even go out on runs in the morning or go get coffee together before all of us wake up so they can talk without eavesdropping. All very suspicious if you ask me. But they just love making us wake up early with them, it's super annoying. But what's more annoying is that my brothers are extremely happy and excited early in the morning. And them being super happy while I'm grumpy never sits well with me. I guess you could call them Early Birds, because they both go to bed relatively early and wake up early.

Most of my younger brothers and I are the opposite — we go to bed late, and wake up late. Within the boundaries of course. Chris has set different curfews or bed times for each of us and on weekends when we don't have school he only lets us sleep in to 10 or he'll wake us up.

Ben is the only one out of my younger brothers that doesn't mind waking up early or going to bed early. He's not really a party guy so he doesn't like the late nights and whenever we wake up early for these trips he's always content with it. Some of this is his laid back attitude because my closest-brother-in-age is just super go with the flow and rarely gets mad. He's fine to do anything so when my other brothers say that we had to get up early he's fine with that too. I don't know how I could be Ben — never get mad, because I get mad a lot.

Cameron might also be an expectation. But I wouldn't call him a Night Owl or Early Bird, I would call him a non sleeper. Cam isn't home enough for me to know exactly how much he sleeps, but I doubt he sleeps much when he spends the entire night out. His nightmares and all.

It's no secret in my family (and to some of my friends) that I get super bad nightmares due to my PTSD, but what most people outside of our family don't know is that Cam does too. My 18-year-old-brother is super reserved so it's not like he'll tell me he's had a nightmare and I haven't witnessed one of his in a couple years — but I know he still gets them. Cameron acts all tough around us — especially me — but I know that deep inside he's still hurting and still hasn't fully recovered from the trauma of our past. And his method for curing his nightmares is to just not sleep.