See You Soon

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

Bump!! Crack!!! Pain exploded in the side of my head bringing me to consciousness.

“Shit!!!!”  I yelled as I rubbed the side of my head and mentally cursed the idiot who decided to put a handle right above the door. Didn’t they take into account the fact that someone could be sleeping in the passenger seat while driving on a very rough highway. My mom whipped her head to the side and said a sentence I knew well.

“Leslie, please don’t curse I don’t want your sister to. . .” she looked in the back and watched my 6 year old sister sleep. I mentally filled in the unspoken “. . . end up like you”. Instead my mom did as she always did. She sighed then said “. . . pick up any bad habits.” I normally don’t cuss in front of my sister anyway. I don’t want her to end up like me either.

“Maybe if we didn’t have to move so much I wouldn’t do so much sleeping in the car on shitty roads. Imagine what would happen if the idiots who made these roads made them flat? My God! Someone might actually get a decent night’s sleep!” I bitched.

“Leslie. . . You know why we have to move.” My mom sighed. We had this conversation so many times that enough was enough.

“Yeah, I get it, mom. But you’ve been working for Mr. Howell for six years now. You can stand on your own two feet by now.” At least I hoped so.

“Mr. Howell has been very kind to us. You owe him some respect.” She said in that I’m-so-tired-I-don't-want-to-have-this-conversation voice. Yes, we had this conversation many times.

“You should at least ask him for a raise. I mean you're still working for minimum wage.” I said irritated.

“We can’t just ask him for things like that. And no I'm not working for minimum wage.” Mom sounded really tired but I wanted to know why she won’t just get another job.

“Damn near close, I mean at this point most other employees would have both done that and gotten it and if they didn’t get it they would have quit.” I said making a very obvious point.

“Well I'm not most employees.” My mom said matter of fact. And she was right. “Besides, we don’t even need the money. What would we do with it?” Right then we just happened to hit a bump in the road and the glove compartment fell open and came down on my outstretched legs with a loud Crack!! Then promptly fell right off and landed on the floor.

“Shit!!!!” I yelled again. “Well,” I said as I rubbed my legs “a new car might be nice.” My mom tossed me an annoyed look and I wasn’t sure if it was about the language or the comment about the car. I offered to drive for a bit and she pulled over and we switched seats. Mom promptly conked out but I sat awake for hours driving and thinking. What do you do in a situation like this?

A couple hours later I heard a moan from the backseat followed by a sleepy “Are we there yet?” I smiled at the little voice of Sami. “No, not yet, we should get in by about 11:30am if Mr. Howell calculated it correctly.” But we both knew his calculations were probably way off; if he did any at all.

“Okay, well what time will we actually get there?” Going 80m/h we would probably get there at 8 pm. Who knew travelling across the country would be such a pain in the ass. I promptly told her that, not the pain in the ass part but the 8 pm thing. Sami yawned and drifted back off to sleep after giving me some more Spitz and another NOS. I thanked her, chugged the NOS, and made a good dent in the Dill Pickle Spitz. Most people that I knew hated dill pickle but it was my favorite. I kept a stash of them under the backseat along with some NOS for all the road trips. Not that my mom approved. She believed in coffee. Me, I would rather eat dog shit, not that it would taste much different. I mean who wants to drink ugly brown liquid that burns your tongue then leaves behind its trademark bitter taste. I’ll tell you who. Not me.

 At around 10:30pm I woke my mom up and we switched again. I slept for several hours until I was awakened by a squeal of brakes, the smell of burning rubber and the snap!! of a sound I didn’t know until my upper body went flying forward thanks to Newton’s first law and smashed my head against the dashboard where aforementioned idiot put an AC vent. Burning pain sizzled through my head and I waited for my brain to stop rattling around in my skull before I said it. My mom didn’t even offer a comment. She just slouched and put a hand to her head where it looked like she had a sizable headache coming thanks to the steering wheel. I held my hand against my forehead where a large gash on my forehead was seeping blood through my hand. I looked to the back to see my sister still attached to the seat by three seatbelts around her legs, middle and chest. Thank God she was so safety obsessed. I look at my mom and ask, “What the hell happened?”

“There was a deer, a big one, and I didn’t want to hit it so I braked but the brakes went out and I swerved and hit a patch of gravel which pulled me into the ditch as you can see.” I did see. She looked at me and asked me the same question. It was only then that I noticed the end of the seatbelt that was supposed to be attached to the side of the car was in my lap. This was why it never stopped me when the dashboard hit me in the head. Instead of stopping me it snapped. I told her this and added a “New car, Mom. We need a new car.” She just sighed.

“Fuck.” I muttered under my breath as we were now stuck in the ditch and most likely unable to get out.

“Excuse me!” My mom looked at me with wide eyes. “I said buck because you said it was a big deer. It was most likely a male deer and they are called bucks.” I lied for the sake of not getting into another argument.

“God, why must bad things happen to me?” She cried out in frustration to no one in particular. I learned that in these situations it’s better not to say anything in case it makes it worse. For example I could have pointed out that if she had asked for a raise she could have gotten the brakes fixed the first time they started slipping we would have been able to stop in time and wouldn’t be in this situation.

No one really knew what to do and my sister was a deep sleeper. Finally we just decided to sleep until morning when we could call a tow truck or something because alas all towing companies were closed in this area for the night. Unfortunately, I had a small injury sitting on my forehead that wouldn’t stop bleeding. I rummaged around my bag but no bandages were to be found. I pulled out the map and tried my best to figure out where exactly we were. From what I could tell we were about 6 miles from the nearest town which looked pretty small but was worth a shot. I quietly opened the door and started walking in the direction of this miniscule town that would get us back on the road to our new home and new lives, again.