American Vacanza

burning the bad memories • madison

The sun was halfway across the sky, and our spirits were unusually high as we cruised along the hilly two-lane highway in rural Pennsylvania, a true East Coast state. You know what else was an East Coast state? New York. We didn't have that far to go, and considering there was no one else on this road but us, we might even be able to make it to New York City by tonight if we didn't stop.

The positivity was infectious, and like any infectious disease worth its weight, it made me do crazy things. "Siena, you have your permit, right?"

She raised an eyebrow, pursing her lips. Siena knew where this conversation was going, and like so many other things in her life, she didn't like it. "I, uh, I do. But if you're asking me to drive, I--"

"Please." I smiled what I hoped was a goofy smile, a smile I hoped didn't tell her that I was super goddamned sick of driving and just wanted her to break the law so I could take a short break. "We're not gonna get pulled over, anyways. There aren't any people around, let alone cops. Unless those cows over there are undercover detectives, that is."

"Fine. But only for a little while."

I slowed down the car and pulled over to the shoulder of the tiny highway, then climbed over one another in order to switch seats instead of getting out of the car like normal people. Siena pulled down the visor in the front seat and adjusted her mirrors, and I took my first ride in the passenger seat since we'd dropped 180 pounds of deadbeat boyfriend.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then slowly put her hands in the wheel. "Summoning the gods of safe driving?"

She gave me a very Ethan-like smile -- extremely charming but even more confused-- and said, "Just saying a prayer in case we both die today. I hope heaven's as pretty as Capri."

I laughed nervously and then told her (jokingly, of course) to get her foot on the pedal and move the  goddamned car, so she did exactly that.

And by 'exactly that,' I mean that she floored it. "What the hell?!" Maybe she and Ethan were more similar than I thought.

"There's no one else on this road," she maniacally laughed, "so let's go as fast as possible."

"Great," I mumbled, rolling my eyes. "We'll get a speeding ticket and an arrest for underage driving."

"You said it yourself. There are no cops here--"

"I'm not worried about getting caught," I explained. "Little kids probably drive their parents' tractors around here. I'm more worried about our imminent death."

"Isn't that a thing, like in rural places?" Siena questioned. "I think I read that somewhere. People send, like, their thirteen year old kids to the store to pick up groceries, and the cops see and don't even care, because it's so regular and the cops' kids probably do the same thing."

I laughed. "Typical case of 'letting the troublemakers slide when it benefits you.' I'd be lying if I said I hadn't gotten out of some sticky legal situations using that trick."

Siena shook her head, her ragged blond hair falling like whitewater. "It probably wouldn't care. I'm telling you, these small towns are like their own countries. They all have big plots of land, homeschooled kids, extreme political views..."

"You can't argue with that," I continued. "And then those crazy homeschooled religious kids, grow up and do the exact same thing."

"Before we know it," she concluded, "there'll be a giant town of rednecks in eastern Pennsylvania. Each one has, like, twelve kids, too, so if you use your AP math skills and do some exponential multiplication--"

"Have you ever seen Children of the Corn? That exact thing happens. Except with little murderous cult children instead of just rednecks."

Siena shuddered. "You know how I hate horror movies. Slumber Party was enough for me, thanks."

"Ah, whatever," I told her. "We'll watch all the old classic ones in Italy. I'll make sure of it."

"If you're gonna keep talking about horror movies, I'm gonna invoke the argument that it's hard to talk and drive at NASCAR speeds at the same time, anyway," she replied, focusing on the road with her eyes narrowed like the hot female accomplice in every car-oriented action movie.

I shut my eyes for a while and just let the car's vibrations and sounds of the screeching tires lull me with their rhythm. But it didn't last for long, because the car came to an immediate halt tright as i was starting to drift into dreamland.

If you'd given me a hundred bucks to spend gambling, I'd bet it all on the fact that this ripped, shítty seatbelt wouldn't protect a pillow. But here it was, saving my perfect teeth from crashing onto the dashboard and condemning me to another four years of braces and headgear.

"Okay, why did you just do that?" I asked a shocked Siena once the cartoon stars had stopped spinning around my head.

"To make sure you were awake, genius," she replied sarcastically; the smug grin dropped from her face, however, as soon as it had arrived. "But for real, I don't know, actually. The car just stopped working."

"Oh my God," I said, my eyes widening once I caught sight of the fuel gauge, the first thing you'd think to check when your piece of shit car breaks down. "We're completely empty!"  How hadn't I noticed it? The warning light was on and everything, and I'd chosen to ignore it, being the big ignorant idiot that I was.

"I guess if you're going ninety miles per hour, you slow down quite a bit when you officially run out of gas." She shrugged like this was no big deal, when in reality, it was a huge setback. We were already pushing it when we'd stopped at the salon this morning, and now this?

I ran my fingers through my now-short and choppy hair, trying to diffuse some of my stress (it didn't work.) "Okay, okay. Maybe Mom and Dad left us a can in the trunk or something, and we can use it to get to a station and fill up."

Thinking of had just stuck gold, even if it was just a thought, we both ran over to the trunk and looked for a small red gas can, one with just enough to get us to the next station.

We had no such luck.

"Well, crap," Siena decided, slumping down in the front seat. "But at least we went fast, so maybe this this'll average out and we'll make it to New York fine."

"We'll make it to New York fine, all right," I replied, "but it might be extremely early in the morning and super annoying."

We could just sleep on the plane. Siena had been on the jet a few times, so she knew how the Sears could fold into beds and all that. I, for one, couldn't wait for the luxury of sleeping on something other than an itchy, creaky, probably lice-filled mattress at some cheap hotel.

"A week," Siena breathed. "Can you believe it's only been a week?"

"I know." It took a lot of strength to forget about the fact that we were, essentially, stuck, but Siena did it with such ease; it was almost impossible to not catch her attitude like a sickness.

"Ethan... the Ethan ditch was what, three days ago?"

I tested my head on the back of my seat, too tired to count the days. Something like that. Wow, what a week, am I right? What a mess."

"You're telling me. If someone doesn't come by in the next half hour and help us, I'm going to that farm and flagging someone down," she decided. "But let's finish what we started, shall we? It's time for this trip to end."

"Amen to that. As much as I'll cherish these memories, I kind of want to burn them all," I admitted, laughing.

"Cheers to that," she said, raising yesterday's Starbucks cup in a salute that belonged in a country music video and trying to suck up its nonexistent remains.

We might've been stuck, but at least we were creating a memory that I wouldn't want to burn.