Note: This is a two part story. The second part will be submitted as soon as this part hits the site.
*****
"Oh Christ, are you kidding me with this? Another one?" the whiny voice of my youngest brother, Tyler, called from the backseat of my cramped, ancient Volkswagen Jetta. I smiled sadistically, but didn't turn around. Instead, I reached forward and pressed the 'volume up button' about fifteen times in quick succession. In a matter of seconds, the cab of the car was filled with the soulful harmonizing of those 90's pop gods, the Backstreet Boys. I could barely hear the groaning over the pounding chorus.
"Okay, it was funny the first time, but this is vicious," my other brother Brandon screamed from the shotgun seat. I shrugged my shoulders like I couldn't hear him.
"Can't we listen to like...One Direction or something," my younger sister Victoria called from the back seat, high voice barely carrying over the noise.
"First of all," Tyler screamed next to her, "You are 18 years old, you are way too old to be into One Direction. That is for middle school girls still learning about their bodies..."
"Gross!" I called back over the noise, but my smile grew wider. Tyler ignored me.
"Second, One Direction and N'Sync..."
"Backstreet Boys. They are saying 'Backstreet's Back' as you speak dumbass," I corrected and heard Brandon laugh. Still Tyler pushed on.
"One Direction and the Backstreet Boys are the same fucking thing!"
"No they are not!" My sister and I both yelled at the same time.
"Come on Nicole, turn it down!" Tyler whined again. I rolled my eyes and reached for the button, turning it down to a normal level. There was still a buzz in our ears from the loud noise and it felt like some of the oxygen had been sucked out of the cab. I clicked over to the radio. It came in crackling, a news report about some sort of liquor store robbery in some town I'd never heard of.
"Christ, thank you!" Tyler said finally.
"What would Dad say if he heard you talking like that?" I asked good-naturedly.
"Probably, 'hey, uh...Hey...Your...uh... Your mother... don't talk like that in front of your mother," Tyler said, doing a spot on impression of our father's halting attempts at discipline. We all shared a laugh over that and settled down more comfortably into the car. I could hear Tyler and Victoria bickering still but I was hardly paying attention. I returned my focus to the road.
I checked my mirrors and saw that no one was behind me. No one was in front of me either. It seemed that far off in every direction there was nothing but endless desert. It had been that way for nearly an hour now. Somehow I found that peaceful and I breathed in deeply, hunkering down in the seat. I sighed and soaked in the warm atmosphere, either from the desert or my family. Probably both.
"How's the gas looking?" Brandon asked, leaning over slightly to look at the gauge. I looked down and saw that there was a little less than a quarter of a tank left. My car had a tendency to say a quarter of a tank for hundred miles before it was suddenly empty, so I wasn't really sure what I was working with. I shrugged my shoulders and tried to look off into the distance. In the vast, flat expanse of the desert, you could see a long way, but there was still nothing around. I guess that some of it could have been that it was starting to get dark. I checked the clock, it was nearly 8 o'clock.
"I guess the next time we see a gas station we should stop," I said.
"The next time we see a restaurant we should stop," Tyler groaned from the back seat.
"You'll live," I shot back, but I felt a rumbling in my stomach as well. We hadn't stopped since we gassed up and ate at noon. No one ate in my car now. Not since the incident in Texas. I didn't want to think about that, the smell of chili was still everywhere.
"I don't think we are going to make it to LA tonight," Brandon said, "We aren't even in California yet." We were on Interstate 40 somewhere in the Arizona desert. We'd gone through Flagstaff...a little while earlier. I didn't really know where I was other than that it was somewhere around seven and a half hours between Flagstaff and L.A. I thought we were still several hours away and I knew Brandon was right. We had been driving for days from home in North Carolina and I didn't have the stomach for much more driving today. Nonetheless, I bit my lip a checked my fuel gauge again. Brandon was looking over at me, noticing my actions but I tried not to notice him.
"I can help you know," he said, "You don't have to pay for everything." It was like he was reading my mind.
I had volunteered to drive all of my siblings out to L.A. almost on a whim about a month earlier. It hadn't been a normally scheduled trip and the lack of planning was starting to show. In fact, my family's seams were starting to show. But, you have to understand, that was really, really not my fault. As any child would tell you, it was my parents' fault.
When my parents retired, my mother announced that she had always wanted to live in Southern California. She was a small-town, dinner theater actress and was as pretty as a movie star. I guess she wanted to pretend she was a Hollywood big shot in her retirement years. So the move might have been a relatively normal thing to do under some circumstances. But for my family, it had been a bit of a strain. My parents had put away a good deal of money and they'd sold their house at a profit, so they were able to retire young. My brothers and sister, still technically lived in the family home when my parents decided to split for the left coast. Both of my brothers were in college and my sister had just graduated high school (though she was already accepted to the college of her choice). My parents basically told them that they would help them rent small apartments near their various universities. My sister was supposed to live on campus if possible, even through the summer. Whether anyone said it or not, my studio apartment in Raleigh was going to become the de facto family home for an entire younger generation of the Wilson clan, just like that. In fact, Victoria had actually been forced to crash on my couch (with me) from about the time she graduated high school.
The whole move had occurred in a sort of whirlwind. It seemed like the instant my parents both decided they were ready to retire they were gone. They announced their plans in May and they were moving into a new place in June. Needless to say, the whole thing had been a bit traumatic for my younger siblings. I was 27 at the time, out of school and starting a nursing career. But the rest of them were young and felt a little like they'd been set adrift too early. Brandon at 22 was almost ready. But Tyler was only 20 and Victoria was 18, they felt like they were homeless.
So with my big heart and my small brain, I had decided that, as the eldest child and the closest thing to an adult left in North Carolina, that I would try to take care of things. With about as much foresight as my parents had shown in moving, I had suggested that in the two weeks before fall semester started, that we all drive out to California and check out my parents' new place. Maybe do a little sightseeing. It had seemed like a fun idea. Give everyone a chance to get over this little trauma in our lives and go out to visit. Make the move feel normal by seeing everyone in their place. More importantly, it would give us all a chance to be together for a while, do things as a family. We were all adults now, it seemed like it was important that we remain close (or, in some cases, get close). Our parents weren't there to ensure that we maintained our relationships anymore and I decided to take on that role as the oldest child.
And it had really worked. I mean we had had a blast on our trip across country. We'd seen the sights, we'd bullshitted about everything, and we'd had a bunch of laughs. It was everything I could have possibly hoped for, except that everything cost about twice as much as we figured. I had set aside a little bit of money but I had no real savings. My credit cards had very small limits and I was already having a hard time making the monthly payments. I was already cutting deep into my return trip money. I had really hoped when we started that morning that we could make a great pace and get to L.A. Then it was only a matter of tucking my tail between my legs and asking my parents for a little cash to get home. Now it looked like I would have to ask for a little bit more.
"No..." I said after a long pause, "You don't have to do that. This is my treat." I turned to my eldest brother and gave him a wan smile. I was in trouble, I knew that. But part of the motivation on this trip was to show everyone (including myself) that my parents being gone wasn't going to result in chaos. There was still a responsible adult who was totally on her feet and together. She would be able to take care of things, even if she had to do it alone. Brandon gave me a long look as though he were questioning whether I was telling the truth. Finally, he shrugged his shoulders and turned back towards the window, looking out into the fading desert light.
* * * * *
Half an hour later (and not a moment too soon the light on my dashboard had indicated) we flopped into a booth in a sweaty little diner that was buzzing with flies. The place had a sort of drab, old-fashionedness to it. There was a long, white counter, pastel orange tiles on the floors, big windows, and crumbling furniture. Maybe it was because of this that there was no one else in the place. But my stomach was rumbling and I didn't care.
Not that I really had a choice. This little one-stop oasis was pretty much my only option. There was an extremely expensive pair of gas pumps sitting up front that still used mechanical dials to tell you how much gas you pumped. Behind the diner, stretching off into the desert, was a dilapidated motel. Just a single story with doors opening up onto a baked concrete parking lot (that contained only four cars, including mine). The curtains looked dirty from outside and the whole complex had a strange smell. But surrounding the hotel in every direction as far as the eye could see was sand, dirt, and scrubby little plants. In fact, it even sat about three miles off of I-40, on some incredibly straight, incredibly dusty "county road." I hadn't even seen it, Brandon had noticed a fading sigh and we decided to try our luck. So, even if I was going to turn my nose up at this place, I didn't have an option. I was going to eat something greasy, I was going to overpay for gas, and I was going to sleep on top of the sheets, right here at the Budget-Safe Lodge.
"Hiya, welcome to the Budget Lodge Diner, I am Meredith can I take your order?" a pudgy, middle-aged waitress with (I swear to God) a cigarette dangling from her lip breathed in a single, droning stream. I looked around at my siblings. They were smiling sheepishly.
"Oh, uh...can we see the menus?" I asked, smiling. Meredith didn't speak. She just rolled her eyes and walked away. As soon as she turned, just like we were kids, we started laughing.
"Hiya, welcome to here, can we be done now..." Tyler said in a breathless haste, perfectly capturing Meredith's annoyed drawl.
"She is going to bring back the menu and it is just going to say "Food...$3.00, Drink $1.50," I said, laughing.
"Do you think she makes the food too? Is tobacco ash a serving of vegetables?" Victoria asked.
