American Vacanza

i think i'm smarter than ethan • siena

In a normal car, the back seat was bad enough, but in this old, rusty, red museum piece, it was worse. Like, as horrific as you could imagine, times six million or so. Give or take a few.

The seatbelts were frayed around the edges, even worn down to an inch-thick ribbon in some places. I couldn't seem to find a comfortable position on the cracked leather seats; I should have worn pants to keep my legs from rubbing against them - but then again, I probably would have been sweating to death in pants, considering the AC was most likely broken.

As this was an old car, we guessed from sometime in the 1980's, it didn't have an electrical outlet for me to plug my phone into. Had my mom and stepdad picked this car just so it would accidentally force Madison and I to spend time together? I wouldn't put it past them, especially my stepdad. If he was brilliant enough to start his own tech company, he was smart enough to engineer every part of this trip so we would HAVE to talk to each other.

"Hey, can we stop at a McDonald's or something? I'm starving," I complained, hoping it wouldn't completely piss Madison off. She'd been talking to Ethan for the past hour, but he'd only been half-listening; he was mostly just absorbed in the music he was listening to. Not that Madison seemed to notice.

Last time nobody listened to Madison, she freaked out, dyed her hair pink, adopted a brand-new attitude, and caught herself a deadbeat boyfriend.

She looked at Ethan with a pout. "What do you think, babe? You hungry?"

"Kind of. But not McDonald's. I read an article online that said their burgers are made of cow shit," he explained. I almost burst out laughing, hearing his griff voice saying something so idiotic. Half the girls at our school wanted to date this guy. I maintained the view that if they got to know him like I had, they'd all run screaming.

It was a proven fact (he proved it himself) that Ethan was the stupidest boy in the world. I once overheard him telling Madison that the only reason he hadn't dropped out of high school yet was because his rich dad would disinherit him if he didn't graduate. What did Madison see in him?

Then again, she was Madison. Somehow, I wasn't surprised.

"Ethan, that's really not true," I piped up, making him turn around.

"Oh yeah? Well, I'm pretty sure newsdog.com doesn't lie," he replied matter-of-factly.

"Ethan, you know you can't trust everything you read on-"

"Let's wait until Naomi gets here. This is her street, right?" Madison asked, disregarding everything I just said.

I looked out my window at the familiar white picket fences, smiling faces, and palm trees on every corner. I used to call this neighborhood home.

Now, I lived in a cold, empty house with a moody stepsister, an absent stepfather and a mother whose only purpose seemed to be making Madison mad and making my life more stressful. If I sided with my mom, Madison freaked. And if I sided with Madison, I'd be disrespecting the woman who stuck with me my entire life. In our house, there was no way of winning.

But rolling down Mason Boulevard, Naomi's street, I was reminded of a happier time. Before my parents divorced. Before my mom remarried. Before I had to leave all my friends to move into the cold, unforgiving house I lived in now.

"That's her house!" I exclaimed. "Stop! It's her house!" The car, whose brakes squeaked like a dying rat, slowed to a stop. It was true - I was so excited to see my best friend that I didn't really wait for the car to come to a complete stop - and I fell on my ankle, right as I ran up to her lawn.

Because what else could possibly go wrong on this trip? We were three hours in, and we were already stuck with a beefy pothead and a broken ankle.