Relying On Ben and Jerry (Waltham #1)

Chapter One: The Voyage Home

“Get your feet out of my face,” Felton snapped.

“Get your face away from my feet,” I countered, swinging my toes and hoping to connect with his eyes. When my big brother hissed sharply, I beamed at a direct hit. His hand grasped at my foot, his nails digging in, and I whined loudly, trying to kick him off.

My mother vaulted around, her big hair bigger than usual from the static of the roof of the car, making her look like she had just escaped from an insane asylum. “Children!” she shrieked. “Stop it, right now! Don’t make your father pull this car over!”

“I’ll make one of you assholes walk to Boston,” my father boomed from the driver’s side, his eyes peering at us in the rearview. “I mean it. Quit it.”

I puffed my bottom lip out and sunk back into the seat, putting my headphones securely back over my ears. Felton muttered something that couldn’t be heard over the hum of AC/DC from the car’s stereo and settled back into his upside-down position sitting in the car, his whole body lopsided and—did I mention?—upside down. I gave him the stink eye, leaning back in my seat.

It had been a tough morning, the morning we left. Between packing the rest of the van and making sure that the cooler was cold enough to house my unnecessary store of ice cream, and Aubrey laying down behind the back wheels of the van sobbing hysterically—snot and hiccups and all—we eventually got underway, and we had been on the road and packed into a small quarters ever since.

My parents I could handle. It was my brother I wanted to skin alive.

My brother was the typical Florida boy—his skin was tanned and his hair was bleached in the parts that were expertly stuck up in the air and dark brown at the roots, looking like a total surfer boy. He wore skinny jeans and plaid button ups unbuttoned so that the chicks can see how tightly his t-shirt clung to his abs. He worked all summer and into the winter for those abs. He housed protein shakes and chewed raw eggs for those abs. My brother was a little superficial, and a lot annoying, but even I had to reluctantly admit that he was easy on the eyes.

Aubrey sure thought so. When Felton had to duck under the car and yank her out from her armpits, she nearly swooned at his hands on her skin, and he had looked at me as if to say, Well that’s kind of gross.

That was the kind of person my brother was. Everyone was looking at him, and no one was looking at me unless they wanted to date him or know him or become his best friend. Okay, I mean, that wasn’t the only reason, but I could name people who had been petty enough to do that before.

He was still staring me, so I stuck my tongue out at him. He snorted and went back to reading some macho magazine upside down, mouthing the words as he read.

I rolled my eyes at him one more time for good measure before my head lulled to the side, hitting the window with a good thunking sound that I drowned out with my iPod, pressing my face against the cold window to get the full impact. We were somewhere in Massachusetts, but the heat was up too high in the car and the windows fogged and there wasn’t a clear way to see the signs lining the highway. I expelled a deep breath and watched it fog up the glass, crawling away and forward like precipitated ninjas.

Reality hadn’t quite hit me that we were gone and we weren’t coming back. I had been up north numerous times to visit family down at the Jersey shore, but I had never been to Boston since my birth, and certainly not to Waltham. It could have been a foreign country for all I knew, one that spoke Korean and ate nothing besides Campbell soup. It felt like going to this place would be like getting on a plane and stepping off at another planet, The Fifth Element style.

I had sanctioned off a couple of books for something to do, but I had finished them halfway through the second day. Leaning toward three o’clock in the afternoon on the third day, I was nearly to the point of gauging my eyes out for entertainment.