American Vacanza

walmarts don't even exist here • madison

And after the man had driven away, I realized: that was possibly the most anticlimactic car crash ever.

The car was silent for a while; everyone was replaying the previous, awkward events in their heads, just as I was. The silence was soon broken by Siena's angry complaint:

"Are we in New York yet?" Her voice was low and full of disappointment.

"Ethan, will you map it for me?" I sighed, taking off my sunglasses. The sun was starting to set, and as much as I wanted to avoid any accidental eye contact with Ethan, I couldn't see anything on the highway. Was it even worth mapping all the way to New York? Like, could Google Maps actually give me step-by-step directions cross-country?

"Yeah," he replied, pulling out his (non-RAY, I might add) cell phone. "We've almost passed into Wyoming, like, the corner of south Wyoming. We've still got two thousandish miles to go."

"Ugh, really?" I hit the steering wheel in anger, clenching my teeth. "Oops. We were at 2,200 at Doubleside. We haven't even hit the two thousand mark?"

"Babe, we're not even halfway," he replied.

"Um, I know," I replied, squinting at the explosive sunset. "We'd have to be 1,500 miles away to be halfway, since it's three.... oh. You didn't know that."

"What are you talking about?" he asked. "You know I hate when you talk all AP Math."

"Mad, you take AP Calc?" Siena scoffed, her headphones dangling precariously around her neck. "I didn't know you were that smart."

"Yeah?" I hated when people doubted that just because my hair was an unconventional color, I wasn't smart. "I've only been taking it forever. You don't remember when your mom made brownies when I got into it?"

"No," she replied. "I remember the brownies, but I didn't know they were--"

--"Exactly," I replied.

She shot me a look through the rearview mirror with two possible interpretations. The first was what else don't I know about you? The second one was you showoff.

"Whatever. Let's try to get past two thousand miles today. That was the most depressing thing I've heard all day," I lied.

The real most depressing thing was realizing that Ethan might not even feel sorry for being such a douche last night. Not that him being sorry would change anything; he was still getting left behind at the soonest possible opportunity. But he didn't even feel bad. I would've thought he was an actual psychopath if he weren't so clueless.

"Ohhhhh!" Ethan finally interjected. "I get it now! Half of three thousand is 1.5 thousand! Sorry, I was being a little slow there, babe," he said, leaning in to kiss my cheek for literally the four thousandth time. I wanted to slap his brains out.

I swatted him away. "Don't! Seriously! You're just asking for another crash with a dude who's way less forgiving."

"Any guy's forgiving if you offer him a two thousand dollar check for a hundred dollars' worth of damage," Siena piped up from the backseat.

She obviously didn't know Rule One of being a rich girl: throwing money around like nobody's business works pretty well if somebody's mad at you. I even got out of detention once for fifty bucks- although that teacher got fired two weeks later. Huh- I wonder if that was why. My brain could do AP Calc, but it couldn't put two and two together.

"Anyway, just stop," I replied, putting a hand on his shoulder to let him know it was no big deal. Was I sending mixed messages? Because I was totally still mad at him about the kiss.

"All right," he replied, reclining his seat to Siena's dismay; she was sitting right behind him. "I'll stop. I just can't wait to be in Italy with you, babe. Something tells me you'd rock a bikini."

I could almost feel Siena, who was normally kind of annoyingly feminist about these things, quaking in her seat, but she didn't say anything. The girl must have finally been learning to shut up.

"Look! We're passing into Wyoming!" she opted to say instead.

"Yay. The state of open fields and buffalo. Exciting."

"Hey, you were excited when we were three-quarters of the way into Nevada, the state of deserts and gamblers. I wouldn't be talking if I were you," said Siena.

"Whatever, loser. Anyway, we need to find a place to sleep tonight. There's probably nowhere."

"I'm not sleeping in a Wal-Mart parking lot, if that's what you're suggesting!" Siena cried. It was weird. She'd gotten really used to the luxurious lifestyle in the six months she'd lived with us, and she wouldn't give that up. She even hated when it was threatened.

"Well, whatever. They probably don't have Wal-Marts here, anyway. They don't even have a million people in this huge state. And besides, we've got time. It's only, like, three o'clock."

"I'm sure there's a Wal-Mart SOMEWHERE in this state," she reasoned.

"Probably. Somewhere. But I doubt it," I replied, and we were both quiet for a while, trying to figure out where in Wyoming a Wal-Mart could exist. Or maybe it was just our normal awkward silence.

But no silence was normal on this road trip. Nothing was as it was back home. Everything had changed - and like the guy sitting next to me, not all change was good.