Monster in My Bed

Chapter Eighteen | It's Bigger Than Expected

There are a lot of things that I don't like. Some things I really don't have a reason for. Like birds for example. I can't stand birds. Something about the way they just chirp around, flapping their little wings makes me want to shank a baby.

I did have a very good reason for strongly disliking anything classified as a vehicle, though. I never had good experiences with cars. If I wasn't excessively vomiting throughout the car within the first ten minutes of it being in motion, it would be considered a miracle. Just the thought of being in one made me queasy.

I blame my parents.

Growing up, we rarely rode in vehicles. Dad acted like the word 'car' was a bad word. He always said that it wasn't worth the risk. 'License plates are too easy to track", "gas is too expensive", "I'm not getting caught without a license" were just a few of the abundance of excuses that he chose to use.

Okay, I'll admit that not having a license is a pretty good reason not to drive a car, but for someone who murders people for a living, not so much.

We did take a bus a few times and even a train once, too. The bus was okayish, but I didn't last five minutes on the train before violently vomiting inside of some little old lady's grocery bag. She then went on to call me 'dziecko diabła'—whatever that means.

To be short, I didn't like cars and cars didn't like me.

The end.

So, one can only imagine the look on my face when Matteo had oh-so-calmly told me that we were going to be flying to the Leaders' Conference.

Flying as in a plane.

A plane as in a bird-car.

A car with wings.

I could have thrown up right then and there.

Now, I don't know what sort of saint I must have been in my past life, but the world was definitely working in my favor. Well, I thought that it was, at least. I felt a weight the size of Daniella's big head being lifted off my shoulders when Matteo eventually gave up trying to find all of the documents he needed so that I could board the plane.

Apparently, there's this thing called a passport you need when traveling from one country to another. I never had one. I told Matteo that I had never used one before, and I'd crossed both the Canadian and Mexican border various times with my parents. He then proceeded to tell me that I'm 'a convict' and what I had done was 'illegal'. I told him to calm down. He didn't find it humorous at all.

If only he knew all that I'd done.

I swear, I'm not as much of a narcissist as I sound, but I figured that since I couldn't fly on the plane to the Leaders' Conference that we just wouldn't go anymore.

Oh, what a glamorous life that would be.

My luck went from bad to worse.

"I hate this stupid car," I breathed heavily with my body hunched over and my hands placed firmly on my knees.

True, flying in a giant bird-car for two and a half hours to Manitoba, Canada sounds atrocious, but let me just say driving for a day and a half makes me want to bathe in a tub of battery acid, and then set myself on fire.

We could have possibly been there already if it hadn't been for Matteo having to pull over so that I could dry heave on the side of the road every twenty minutes.