Authors note: hey guys, thanks to whoever a read my first crappy chapter! I think this ones going to be a lot better. I have a good feeling about this story. I've been in Wyoming for the past week, so it's been hard to find Internet. But, I have about 10 hours left so I thought id just start writing more chapters in my notes! Anyways, thanks for reading, I hope you enjoy it.
We're driving up to Alex's house right now. To be honest, I'm a little conflicted as to how I feel about the subject of him coming with us on our trip. We're going to Wyoming; it's a twenty-two hour drive there. I don't really know why we have to drive so far just to go camping and see a national park. I mean, we have one of those woodsy areas in our backyard. Not that I go in it, but it's there.
And you can see why I'm not exactly excited about being in a minivan with two teenage boys for twenty-two hours. Not that we'll be driving that in one day, oh no, it's a three day trip there and back.
There is some positives, for instance, maybe my brother won't bother me so much now that he has some other worm to entertain him. However, I'm pretty certain that both of them will eventually go after me to cure their boredom.
Oh god, we're here. Headphones. Now. Maybe I can just stay in the car...
"Zoey, take those darn earbuds out. We're going inside." My mom says. Dammit.
Surprisingly, Alex has a really nice house. It's surprising because you would think he'd have burned it down doing something stupid by now. I walk in the door with the rest of my family. I'm the last one to walk in, of course.
"Zoey! What the hell?!" My mom whispers soon after we enter their home. "Take off your shoes! Good lord.." I look down. I might have just tracked a few footsteps of mud through their house with my Converse. She turns around to see Alex's mom, and greets her nicely. The usual "oh-your-house-is-so-lovely" kind of stuff they stay to each other every time they visit. They start to talk about one of their stupid garden club meetings, and I contemplate what to do about the mud I just smudged all over the floor. I take off my shoes and slip into the kitchen. I bring back a couple of paper towels back to my mess and begin to wipe off the slightly embedded mud from their nice hardwood floor. Hey, at least it's not carpet.
"Oh, hey," I hear a voice say from the stairs nearby. It's Alex. I don't look up, I'm already too determined to make this floor clean. I think I do that with most of the things I do. After 30 seconds of doing something, I'm completely set on finishing it.
"You need help with that? You really don't have to be cleaning that up..." Is he still trying to talk to me?
"It's cool. I got it." I mumble back. Where are my headphones when I need them?
I sense him still standing there. What the hell does he want? I can still hear our moms talking about their garden club. How much planning does it take to plant some damn petunias? I think I'm getting more irritable by the second. It's not my fault I had to wake up this early. I just wanna go back to sleep.
He finally walks away, and I continue scrubbing the floor. Why is this so damn hard to get off? Did I step in some bionic, mutant dog shit or something?
"Here," the worm is back. "You really don't have to clean this up. It's always hard to get stuff off of this floor. But since you're so stubborn, I'll help you do it." Alex says. I give him a look, and we continue scrubbing the floor together. Eventually, the floor looks cleaner than it did before. I sit back on my heels. Lord, just let me sleep.
"Is everyone ready? Everybody go to the bathroom before we leave!" I hear my mom call finally. I don't think I've ever been this excited for her to persuade us to go to the bathroom. Because it means we're leaving. Alex runs back upstairs, to get his bags I guess. Or maybe he's going to take a shit, I don't know. All I know is I'm calling sitting in the back of the van, so I can sprawl out my legs and relax. I decide I should probably go claim my seat in the van before everyone else. It's then that I hear the words that make me the most irritated I've been all day.
"Zoey, you're going to have to share those seats with Alex and Logan."
"WHAT?" I cry. "Whyyyyy?!"
"Because," Dad says. "Alice's car seat is on the right and we have more luggage on the left."
Ugh, whatever. As long as I get some sleep. Headphones. Now.
As soon as I see Alex and Logan walk towards the van, I lay my head down and attempt to fall asleep and drown out everything with music. Key word: attempt.
"Hey, Alex, could you sit next to Zoey? If that's ok. I don't want to know what will happen with the two of them sitting next to each other for more than an hour," she says, pointing to Logan and I.
"Yeah, sure," he laughs, looking at Logan. I've kind of given up trying to go to sleep. Too much noise.
"Hey," Alex says as he crawls through all of our junk.
"Hey." I reply, not looking at him of course. That would take far too much energy.
"What are you listenin to?" He asks. Did he really just ask that? That's the #1 rule of what not to ask Zoey when she has her headphones in. Everyone knows that. Because when I tell them what I happen to be listening to, they ask to listen to it to. And then they turn there noses up when they hear screaming. Anndddd then they call me emo. It's actually quite funny. Yes, I listen to music with screaming, you asshole. You listen to music about weed, money, and strippers; I wouldn't consider my taste in music so strange.
"Bring me the horizon," I mumble back, looking at my shoes.
"Oh, really? I love that band." What? A person who's not in an entirely different dimension likes the same type of music as me? That's odd. I suppose I shouldn't get too excited, he probably knows like one song off of their Sempiternal album.
"Seriously?" I say, actually creating eye contact. Wow Zoey, good job.
"Yeah. You know I saw them at Warped Tour last year? God, they're amazing live too." I look at him as his eyes light up talking about it.
"No way!" I exclaim, and punch his arm. "I've always wanted to go to Warped." He looks straight at me for a solid two seconds at least, then looks away.
"Yeah, it's pretty awesome..."
"Do you, uh..?" I take out my other headphone out and offer it to him. Never done that before. Maybe that's why I did it so awkwardly. Dammit Zoey.
"Oh, yeah, sure." He smiles and puts it in his ear. The minute the music hits it you can tell by the look on his face. It practically lights up like a house on Christmas or something. It's not just punk music I have on my phone, I have a lot of indie alternative stuff too. It's nice to have some of that stuff on there too, I guess. It's about a half an hour before the music starts to lull me to sleep. I'm just about to fall asleep when I hear "Blood" by the Middle East comes on. I reach to change the song, assuming that Alex doesn't like indie. I mean, look at the kid. I grab my phone, but he grabs my hand. He's half asleep.
"No, leave it. I like this song." He leans over on my shoulder, his hand still on mine, and I can feel his breathing against my neck. Normally, I would shove whoever laid their head on me off and tell them to get away from me. But for some reason, I didn't. And before I could think about why, I fell asleep too.
