The Van Pact

2: Valerie

Ahh yes. The van. A 1996 Dodge Ram Conversion. White body, with one blue and one purple stripe along both sides. I forgot about the van. It spent most of the past decade in the three-car garage, which is more of a two-car garage, now, when it's in there. That's why Dad's Camry and my Jeep are always parked on the driveway. My parents bought it used back when the twins were born, when Mom was finishing her residency and Dad had taken time off school-teaching to get his masters (and parent- mostly parent). The twins are seniors in college now. John at Penn State for computer science, Jimmy at U Maryland for industrial engineering. I've been the only progeny still at home for the past four years. The van is bulky, guzzles gas, and is something that pediatricians and curriculum specialists don't drive, I guess, now that we're solidly into the twenty-first century. Dad likes to say he's kept it this long because it'll be useful if we ever need to move a large quantity of our stuff, but I think it's because of some psychological thing. Like a bad bout of nostalgia or one of those attachment disorders the hoarders have. The funny thing, though, is that my mom seemed to think I would find driving the van embarrassing. Like it was a punishment. She kept saying "there's no getting out of this, missy."

"You're going to have clean the inside," she added, as she handed me the car keys, "vacuum and dust. And if you find any candy wrappers, you toss them."

Candy wrappers? That took me way back. I remember John and Jimmy surreptitiously stuffing Reese's wrappers in the crevices between the car seats. Where they even got the candy, I wasn't ever sure. They certainly weren't going to share any with me. They already thought I was spoiled by everyone enough (I mean what six year old is lucky enough to become pen-pals with Betty White, the woman, the myth, the legend?). I guess the twins thought they were being cool and sneaky with the candy wrappers. Evidently not. Mom knew. She always knew.

"I'll know if you do a half-assed job," she lifted up her left index and middle fingers, held them in front of her eyes and pointed them back at me.

So that's how I found myself vacuuming the blue fuzzy carpet on the floor of our old van at six-thirty on a Sunday morning. As I was cleaning, I started thinking that the van was sort of an improvement over my Jeep. For one, it could accommodate seven, so that means I could fit even the periphery members of my friend group inside. We wouldn't have to carpool places (though carpooling could be fun, especially if somebody called a Chinese fire drill). The all-powder-blue interior was kinda pretty. The seats were padded and comfy and there was even these little curtains over the back passenger windows, which I thought were kitschy and hilarious. I mean, curtains?

I sprayed Windex on the windows, and wiped down the dashboard. I decided to be all thorough, because if I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna do it all the way. Maybe a little past the way, for good measure. That's one of my chief policies. Also, I thought my mom might actually check the crevices between the car seats, because she was in such a pissy mood. In the very last row, between the cushions on which my brothers used to sit, I uncovered a petrified Fruit Rollup, two used tissues, and a crumpled-up piece of yellowed notebook paper. I almost tossed the paper out with the rest of the junk, but it was notebook paper. This itchy part of my brain kept thinking that maybe the name of one of the twin's fourth grade crushes was written in code on it or something, so I un-crumbled it. In smudged black ink was written:

THE AUGUSTUS VAN PACT:

A NON-AGGRESSION TREATY

JIMMY WILL NOT GIVE JOHN NOOGIES. JOHN WILL REFRAIN FROM HUMMING or SINGING "WOMANIZER" BY BRITNEY SPEARS or ANY of THE VARIOUS COVER VERISONS, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE ALL AMERICAN REJECT's, FALL-OUT BOY's, or FRANZ FERDINAND's.