Dear mom,
Maybe I don't understand respect. I've been thinking about it all last night and all this morning. It's been manifesting my mind like the westward expansion. Manifest destiny, right? Anyway, I will reflect on everything, and I will try to be less of a pain. But I will admit, I need space. I know I'm grounded, but I left. My room is absolutely suffocating. I'll be back in a few days. Don't worry about me, George is coming with me. Maybe then we'll finally "get along".
I'll see you when I get back,
Clay
The silence was violent, especially since it was between two people who never spent more than ten minutes at a time together. Their few encounters this week alone was the most they had spoken to one another in the three and a half months George had been there. And even then, their conversations were far from substantial. They were filled with snarky remarks and hurtful comebacks. Clay couldn't go a single conversation without somehow finding a way to refer to his host brother as "Bitch Boy". In the same way, George always had to seek a way of leverage over the younger boy's insults. And now that neither were in the mood for their normal conversation, they fell silent, and they had been that way since Clay had pressured George into the car and drove them away.
"Where are we going?" George asked as Clay played around with the GPS on his phone. He kept his eye on the red light before them.
"I was thinking a trip up the east coast."
"Why? And why in the middle of the school year? And why with me?" Now that George had spoken up, all the questions he had slipped out, and he forced himself to stop when Clay's green eyes met with his brown ones.
The light turned green, and Clay began driving. His eyes viewed every angle around them vigilantly, and George could still sense the tension in his driving. Clay said, "I need fifty hours, George. Fifty hours! What better way to complete my hours than with a road trip, right?"
"None of it will count, though. This is illegal. If we get caught, we're dead."
Clay rolled his eyes. "That's where you come in. You know the rules of the road, and I-well-I forget them. You have to make sure I don't do anything that'll get us pulled over. And look, how will they know? As long as you actually teach me how to drive correctly, it doesn't matter."
"An easier alternative would be to just not go on a stupid middle-of-the-school-year road trip without a license and just ask your mom. She said you can."
Clay scoffed. "I'm grounded, did you forget? She won't help me anyway, and I don't need her to. We'll only miss a week of school. We'll go up the east coast, and drive right back home."
"Your mom is going to kill you when we get back."
"Trust me, she won't." He sounded confident, so George left it alone.
The city around them slowly disappeared, leaving them surrounded by nothing but greens and trees. Looking at the bright side, George found that a roadtrip could be a decent experience. A foreign exchange student was supposed to learn about American culture, and so far all he knew was that all high schoolers did was play follow the leader and bully the exchange students. It was also flatter than he had expected. When George had looked up pictures of the United States, he had seen mountains and valleys as well as evergreen trees and pretty ponds. However, standing on the soil itself was entirely different. It was humid and hot. It rained so often it was difficult to find time to go out and explore. And when George looked out over the horizon, he found it to be flat, leaving the horizon to span to infinity.
Perhaps that was why he agreed to go. Back home, he always went exploring. He knew every crevice of his home town like the back of his hand. Every night, he and his group of friends would look for new, undiscovered places, and they ended up discovering small mini-woods and hidden tunnels as well as rundown stores that they'd have sleepovers in. And he was antsy. Bored of a life where every day was the same. He could recount everything he did today and what he was guaranteed to do tomorrow. After all, the list would be the same. He'd wake up, push Clay's buttons, go to school, help Drista practice, and come home, do his homework, and then sleep and repeat.
For the land of opportunity, he seemed to only be offered the same things every day.
"Put music on," Clay said, interrupting George's thoughts rather abruptly. "According to Google Maps, we're in for a long ride."
"No, it's just going to distract you."
"Oh, come on, that's stupid. It's not going to distract me."
"Yeah, sure, Clay. Keep your eyes on the road." George pointed ahead, and Clay rolled his eyes before glancing back in front of them. The next car was a decent distance away.
"Have I ever told you how boring you are?" Clay said.
"No, Clay. And I'm just dying to hear it," George said monotonously as he glanced out the window once again.
"Well, you are. Conversations with you are as dry as Antarctica."
"Antarctica? Are you calling me dry and white or something? What are you trying to say?"
"Antarctica is a desert, dumbshit. You're older. I thought seniors are supposed to be full of wisdom or something."
"Yeah, senior citizens. And I'm not dry. You just keep repeating the same conversations which lead to the same responses," George retorted. "Maybe be a bit more creative next time."
Clay didn't respond. Instead, he leaned over George and opened up the glove compartment. CDs filled the inside. George grabbed them, not recognizing any of the covers.
"Pick one," He said. "I like all the albums in there so I don't really care what you choose."
"They're probably all trash," George remarked.
"Oh, I'm sure yours is better. You look like you listen to my mom's Christian music."
George scoffed, though he felt his face heat up as he remembered the fact he knew all the words to the Christian music radio station. He grabbed a random album with a lady on the cover and inserted it into the car radio.
"Finally. Which did you choose?" He glanced over to George as he held up the album. Clay's eyes lit up.
"That's my favorite album! It has my favorite song on it." He turned the music up as the drums and bass guitar blasted through the radio. "Nice choice, Bitch Boy."
George reached over and turned the music down, and Clay gave him a sideways look and turned it back up. George turned it down again, and Clay turned it back up again. George reached to turn it down again.
"Stop! This is my favorite song," Clay said.
"You're going to make my ears bleed."
"Oh, my God, am I on a roadtrip with my mother?"
George lowered the music again simply to spite the younger boy to his left. When the boy stopped reacting, George turned the volume all the way down.
"Stop! You're so annoying." He turned the music back up. When George reached to turn it down again, Clay quickly interfered. "Wait, stop, seriously. The chorus is about to start." He grabbed George's wrist, and the latter didn't bother to use his other hand. He knew if he did, Clay wouldn't hesitate to take his hand off the wheel to grab it.
He sat back, and George finally decided to actually comprehend the music. The verse was mellow before building up into an explosion of colorful instruments as the vocals screamed out the lyrics. Clay sang along, seeming that he had listened to this song more times than George had been forced to endure Christian music.
"Please don't send me home
I'll be what you want me to
The stiffness in my bones
It subsides when given time to
Break. To stand
Too wrong, too slow, just let me go
So please don't send me home
I'll be what you want me to be..."
He glanced to George, immediately grimacing and letting go of his wrist. "Why are you staring, you creep?"
"I'm not," George replied, tearing his eyes away and towards the blur of trees passing by his window. He'd never admit, not even to himself, that he found Clay's voice to be rather alluring. It had a uniqueness to it, even in the small mumbling he was vaguely able to catch. The song itself was upbeat and energetic, yet Clay's version of singing was more somber with a more disheartened tone.
Clay continued to sing along, and George made an effort to avoid eye contact with him. His phone buzzed, and he checked to see it was a message from Wilbur.
Wilbur: GOGY
Wilbur: A WRONG NUMBER TEXTED ME
Wilbur: HOW SHOULD I REPLY
George: just say hi
Wilbur: Hi?
Wilbur: But that's so lame
George: im kind of busy right now. i'll help you later
Wilbur: But this is importanttttt
Wilbur: Tommy won't answer my texts
Wilbur: George stop leaving me on read
"Who's that?" Clay asked, glancing over to George's phone. George turned his phone off.
"Why do you care?"
"I didn't think you had actual friends."
"I have a life, you know."
Clay snickered. "Yeah, okay. And I have my driver's license."
"Whatever," George said as he messaged Wilbur back.
"Wilbur?" Clay said as he glimpsed over George's phone. "Tell him to send a picture of Wilbur Wright."
"Why?"
"Because it'd be funny. He can then send a picture of Orville Wright and say 'why are you flying into my dms? We're brothers!'"
George looked unimpressed. He didn't know who Wilbur or Orville Wright were and, frankly, he didn't care to know either. "That's stupid."
"You're stupid if you don't understand smart humor."
"More like dry humor."
Clay scowled and shook his head before leaning back and singing along to the music once again. The next song began to play. George enjoyed it more than the last one. It was upbeat and pleasant to the ears. He thought about what to tell Wilbur. Whenever he received a wrong number message, he either ignored the message or told the person they texted the wrong number.
The roadtrip drew quiet once again, except this time they weren't depending on the air conditioning to create white noise to balance the silence. Clay hummed along through the rest of the song and into the next one. His singing made the ride less unbearable, but only by a little bit. And, in the end, George did end up telling Wilbur to send a picture of the Wright Brothers just like his host brother had suggested.
***
The Welcome to Georgia sign passed by in a flash, and George had failed to catch it before it was gone. The only reason he knew they were in Georgia was because Clay pointed it out like a hyped up puppy who just watched his owner throw a tennis ball. The road and everything surrounding it looked the same as Florida with the endless road and the grass and trees on either side of them. And it had dawned on George how real this was. This wasn't one of Clay's tricks. They were actually going on a roadtrip, and now that they were in a new state, they couldn't simply go back anymore.
And Clay seemed to realize the same thing at the same time as he looked at the scenery around them. He acted as if he had never seen a tree before despite growing up surrounded by them.
"Wow, this is so cool!" He exclaimed.
"Have you never left Florida before?"
"No. I've hardly been out of Orlando." His eyes glossed over the trees. "Do you know anything about American history?"
"Not really. All I know is that you signed a divorce paper with Britain and left."
"Well my favorite event in American history is the Civil War. And my favorite campaign happened right in this state."
"Cool."
"Yeah. Wanna know what happened?"
"Not really."
Clay shot him a sideways glare before continuing anyway. "The March to the Sea. From Atlanta—which is the capital up north—to Savannah—which we're driving past soon—the general at the time, General Sherman, and 62,000 soldiers marched through Georgia and burned everything in their path."
"Why would they do that?" George asked.
"To scare the south! You gotta understand, George, the only thing the south had going for them was the support of their people. They had nothing but cotton! The union shut down any trading ports so they had nothing! That campaign, even though people now accept it as wrong, hurt the south's morale. Their people began to doubt them, and that would ultimately help lead to their downfall." He laughed, though George didn't understand why. He didn't know that much about America, but he knew they were in the south and Clay sounded a bit too happy about their defeat. Though his smile was quick to slip away, and he traced the gearshift with his finger.
"You know, Sapnap was the one who got me into history. The first event he told me about was the March to the Sea." He sighed. "He thought it fit us well because of our fire marks. He told me that nothing could get in our way. We'd burn it all to the ground if we had to."
"And then you dumped him."
"Don't say that."
"Why? That's exactly what happened."
"Because you don't get it. You might think you understand what happened, but you don't," Clay snapped.
"There's not a lot of reasons to break up with your soulmate, Clay. It's not like there's just another one waiting for you."
"I know. I'm not an idiot. I know how soulmates work."
"So why'd you do it?"
"Because—" He glanced at George and quickly stopped himself. "It's not fair to Sapnap. He deserves to be with someone who loves him."
George raised his eyebrows. He rendered himself surprised to hear it, but not surprised to find it happened. George had seen many disgustingly sweet soulmate couples before, and it was always as clear as the morning sky that they were in love. They didn't have to show it through kisses, many times it was simply through a look. Or the way they'd smile as they watched their significant other across the classroom. George didn't see Sapnap and Clay together often, but even he knew they weren't in love.
"And I know what you're going to say," The younger boy continued. "I should just wait it out and give it time. Or just stick with him because it's not like I have anyone else. And I tried, George, but then he—"
"No, I agree," George replied, and Clay shot him a look as he lowered the radio between them.
"You what?"
George shrugged. "I agree."
The younger boy broke into a soft smile and said, "No, you're lying."
George shook his head. "Why would I start lying to you now? And it makes sense anyway. You don't love him, so you don't want to be in a relationship with him. So don't."
Clay snickered. "You make it sound way too simple."
"Because it is. Anyway, I don't want to dive through your life before you start crying or something. Tell me more about the Civil War. Why did this Sherman guy feel like he needed to ruin the south's reputation or whatever?"
Clay's small smile grew. "Oh, you're going to regret asking me that. First, fun fact, Abraham Lincoln first ran as senator before later being elected as president! The chances of him winning were small, but the democratic republicans decided to put four candidates up and the votes split, leading to Lincoln's victory." The words streamed out of his mouth as if he rehearsed it many times before. George only wanted to know more about the March to the Sea, but Clay started by talking about elections and political parties he had barely any idea about. He treated George as if he had lived in the United States his entire life.
In the end, he didn't regret asking. It kept the boy busy, and the Civil War acted as a window to even more history that kept him talking until his voice had gone hoarse. And just as his ranting had come to an end, he had started all over again as they reached South Carolina and he had begun to talk about the battle of Fort Sumter, which had apparently taken place there. George had tuned him out the same way he always did back home, though he made it a point to remember how, for the first time since the two met, he had seen the boy smile in a way he never did before. And George was already evaluating history, thinking about the next period he'd ask about to see if he could get the boy to smile the same way all over again.
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The song in this chapter is Sophomore City by Archer Oh. Stream it because it slaps LOL
I'm not a history buff or anything, but ask me anything about the civil war or wwii and you'll hear me talking for houurrrsssss. Also, I finished the outline last night at like 3 in the morning and I'm very very excited to write it and show you guys LOL