What Happens on the Fourth

DAY 1: FRIDAY

FRIDAY

I despised camping- truly, deeply, despised it.

There are so many other things I'd rather do than sit in a lawn chair around a fire for every hour of the day while swatting away bugs pestering me from every direction. On top of that, I got to spend a week and a half in the woods, in the middle of the summer heat, without the simple necessity of a shower or air conditioning. The only way to cool down is to jump in the nearby lake- but even then, with no option to shower afterwards... it's not ideal.

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't the outdoors that I hated. I liked nature. I would go so far to say I might even love waking up to the sun rising over the lake and taking a walk through the woods, actually. I just didn't like sleeping in it- didn't particularly like spending the day sweating, just to spend the night freezing my ass off regardless of how many layers of blankets I have.

Yet, I got dragged out here for a week and a half every year- the week and a half that spanned the Fourth of July to be specific. We drove up on the Friday before the fourth and went back home the Sunday after- spending the days not doing much past quite literally sitting around a campfire or on a boat on the lake and the nights around that same fire drinking. If we were lucky with weather, we would sometimes get to go on a hike or for a ride on the four-wheelers. Either way, at the end of the day we always retreated to a camper- which was only a step above a trailer, honestly- parked in the middle of a field that laid in the middle of nowhere to sleep before waking and doing it all again the next day... for ten days straight. You couldn't even get a proper cell signal- and if anything about that sounds shady, that's because it is.

Every year- the same thing. Boat- if weather was kind enough to permit it, campfire, trailer- usually in that order.

This year, however, I had brought a tent for myself- and that is primarily because the trailer usually consisted of three queen beds and a twin.

Three couples and a single person.

Every year that single person was me.

I refused to do it again for a fourth consecutive year- even if the camper was heated at night, and my tent would not be.

I was two hours into a new podcast series on horribly gruesome crimes when my attention was abruptly pulled from dazing out the car window at passing trees by a sudden burst of pain through my forehead.

"What the hell?" My hand raised to rub at the small hurt- a lump already forming where I had been hit by... a bar of chocolate. I narrowed my eyes in a glare at the culprit and pulled my headphones off my head. "What was that for?"

Kate, my annoying road trip companion- and best friend- smirked at me from the passenger seat, her blonde hair pulled back in a messy bun that lay sprawling across the top of her head. I picked up the candy bar that she had tossed at me and threw it right back at her with a bit more force than she had used. She, unfortunately, dodged it effectively. "We're stopping at the gas station in two minutes. I just figured you'd like to take that opportunity to get out of the car for a little while."

"There were about a million better ways you could have gotten my attention," I grumbled and pulled the headphones from my neck, tossing them onto the seat next to me. They bounced off of one of the many duffel bags there and fell to the floor with a small thud. I groaned loudly but wasn't bothered enough to lean forward and pick them back up.

"You can't hear me- so, logically, my next best option was throwing something at you."

"How was that your next best option?"