American Vacanza

the moment we've all been waiting for • madison

I stood, frozen, perched on the top step as I stated back at my stepsister. "Get the suitcases," I whispered, scared that even my silent speech would wake the beast. "He's asleep."

"All right," she replied, throwing my duffel somewhat in my direction and hoisting her clunky square suitcase onto her shoulders. We snuck up the stairs, careful to not put too much weight on our feet, terrified the old floors would creeeeeeak and expose us. And God, did they. It would take a ballerina not to make a noise on those stairs.

"This isn't working," I sighed, blowing a strand of pink hair from my face. "If we keep this up, he's gonna wake up. On the count of three, we're abandoning all hopes of being quiet and just making a run for it. Got it?"

"I most certainly got it," Siena barked, nodding dutifully.

"One, two, three!" I exclaimed quickly and giddily, gleefully making a run to the door with my duffel bag. Ethan was slowly in the process of waking up- his blond head had now become detached from the pillow - and I screamed for Siena to catch up.

Ethan's eyes burst open and he immediately sat up. "What the hell, guys? I just fell asleep!"

'Um," I stuttered, "we just wanted to, uh, get my phonefromthecarrightSiena?"

She got up from the cracked floor and nodded, her eyes wide, not in obedience, but in fear. I was afraid, too; what if this didn't work? What if Ethan didn't buy it?

Then again, it was Ethan we were talking about here. "Oh, okay. Try to be a little quieter," he said, turning his head over, and closing his eyes.

We were in the clear; we walked out the door, then dashed across the dry, patchy lawn to the car. "We made it!" Siena exclaimed. "We did it!"

"Don't jinx it yet," I snarled, jamming the key into the ignition and waiting for the infamously slow engine to sputter into gear. For someone who gets impatient waiting for her morning coffee, this felt like millennia. 

And then the blond oaf came outside.

"Wait! What are you guys doing?" Ethan boomed, his shaggy hair illuminated in the moonlight. My heart somersaulted with every syllable he spoke, and not in the normal, romantic way. In the this-car-better-start-or-we're-dead way.

"Just turning the lights on in the car so we can find her phone," Siena yelled back. You know, I really didn't give Siena enough credit for being so clev- oh, fuck it, there wasn't time for a musing on my sister's personality. This was too stressful a situation.

I punched the steering wheel and silently swore at the car for not turning on fast enough. "Come on, come on, work!"

A few seconds later, as Ethan stood pathetically on Aunt Eleanor's porch, the engine kicked in and I hit the gas. "Sorry, Ethan!" Siena shouted, rolling down the window. "We're gonna miss ya!"

We pulled out of Aunt Eleanor's driveway and sped away from that neighborhood as fast as we possibly could. "I can't believe we just did that!" I exclaimed, not sure if it was out of exhilaration or misery. "We just ditched my boyfriend!"

"Oh my gosh, we did!" Siena exclaimed. "You finally got rid of that douche! Of the many times I imagined this moment, you were coming home angry, screaming and running up to your room, not giggling and speeding away from his aunt's house in Nebraska."

"I did it. Oh my god, I broke up with Ethan. Oh my god. Should we go back?" I gripped the steering wheel as hard as I could, rushes of regret (or was it adrenaline?) coursing through my body.

His face entered my mind, taunting me. Baaabe, he seemed to sing, in that way he did when he said "babe," don't doooo this to me. It always seemed like those were used to exaggerate a person's feelings, but maybe they really depicted guilt the way it was.

A deafening  roar startled me out of my guilty trance. I was gripping the steering wheel so hard that the horn had go on, and I hadn't noticed!

"Dude!" Siena shouted from the back seat.

"Sorry, sorry," I mumbled. "Hey, wait a minute. You can come sit in the front seat." It was true , the front seat wasn't in the best condition. There were seven stains of various hues and textures; three rips, including one giant gash that penetrated deep into the seat's foam; and the seat was missing a headrest, which I was pretty sure was against the law. 

Still, it got lonely up here without a buddy.

"I'll get up there once we stop," she said, absentmindedly putting on her headphones. Those headphones! I scolded myself for not leaving them at Aunt Eleanor's when we had the chance.

"Oh, you're fine. Hop up here right now! We're stopped, anyway." Traffic was backed up for who knows how long, but at least we were blocked on all sides so Ethan and his crazy aunt couldn't track us down.

"No thanks." I noticed her shudder in the rearview mirror. "That seat is such a safety hazard."

"What else is new? This whole car is a goddamn safety hazard." I was pretty sure we could get a ticket for the broken headlight. The back windows didn't roll down, even though we couldn't tell if they were supposed to because the car was, like, thirty years old. Let's see, there was the aforementioned missing headrest; I didn't k ow if that was illegal or not, but I sure didn't want to find out.

It seemed like she was right, and I didn't feel like arguing. After all, the only thing I'd get after winning the argument was a blonde brat in the seat next to me. "Good point."

The thought of Siena's headphones returned to me. They were just headphones, but they symbolized a giant wall between my stepsister and I.

"Siena?" I asked. "Did you notice Ethan bring his bag with him, or is it still in the trunk?"

She took her headphones off and shouted the most obnoxious "What!?" that I'd ever heard. She must have had the volume way up, which was completely unnecessary because I wasn't saying anything.

"I said, did Ethan bring his bag inside with him?"

"NI wasn't really paying attention, to be honest. Why?"

"I wanna burn it." 

Her headphones were completely off by now. She was talking to me. This was an improvement. Of course, I had to propose arson to get it this way, but who hasn't?

All jokes aside, now that Ethan was gone, I wanted to talk to my stepsister. I was sick of the headphones, I was sick of the excuses. There were 1300 more miles to go, so I needed someone to stick by my side. Otherwise, things would get out of hand fast. 

Siena and I were sisters, and damn it, we were going to act like it.