Changing Course
Emily, a sixteen year old country girl yet again finds herself doing her family's yearly routine, packing, they always move. She's tried to confront her parents on the matter a number of times, but the answer was always the same. They would say "honey we'll find the right place eventually".
Emily packs while humming her favorite Billie Eilish album 'ocean eyes', when her six year old brother George dashes in. George didn't just dash in-he collided with the doorframe with a dull thud. "Mom said if you don't stop humming those weird songs and finish packing, she's gonna seize your phone for a week!". The fragile comfort of the music died instantly. Emily's voice trailed off, the lyrics to Ocean Eyes replaced by a sharp, cold silence. She turned, glaring at George with enough heat to melt his toys."Get out," she warned, her voice low, "before I make you regret ever having a tongue." George screeches as he dashes towards the door, off to tell their mom.
Emily finished taping up the last box and headed downstairs to join the rest of them for breakfast. The dining room was dead quiet, except for the obnoxious sound of a knife and fork clashing against a ceramic plate. George was sitting there, putting his whole body weight into trying to saw through a piece of beef. "George, seriously? Keep it down," Emily snapped. George didn't even look up; he just took it as a compliment. "Thank you!" he chirped, grinning like he'd just won an award for loudest eater.
Emily just stared at her plate, the silence returning as fast as it had left. Once everyone finished, they started the same old routine of dragging their lives out to the driveway. They began loading everything they owned into the back of her dad's 2001 Toyota, cramming the trunk until it barely latched.
The journey was long and uncomfortable. George wouldn't stop complaining about the most useless things, and we had to make a stop every five minutes because he suddenly 'needed to pee'. But the most annoying part wasn't even George. It was my parents. They kept trying to rope me into some stupid 'family bonding' games, acting like we were just a normal family on a fun vacation. It made me sick to my stomach. I just wanted to be left alone with my music, but they were making it impossible to even breathe.
I finally gave up and decided to join them. We played 'Guess the Animal,' and I won't lie-it was actually fun at first. That was until George started crying because he was losing. My parents immediately started coddling him, telling him it was okay and basically giving him "pity points" so he wouldn't melt down. I got bored of the game pretty fast after that. I put my headphones back on and just gazed out the window, watching the trees blur past. But then, I felt a sharp turn in my stomach. A wave of nausea hit me out of nowhere, and before I could even ask Dad to pull over-boom. I threw up all over George. I couldn't help it; the look on his face was so shocked that I actually started laughing through the grossness. George, on the other hand, was screaming his head off. Dad had to slam on the brakes so we could pull over and scrub the puke off George and the seats.
Cleaning up was a total nightmare. Dad was using half a roll of paper towels and Mom was trying to keep George from wiping his hands on the grass, but he wouldn't stop screaming. I just stood on the side of the road, trying to look anywhere else. It was gross, but I couldn't stop the small smirk on my face every time George let out a fresh wail."It's not funny, Emily," Mom snapped, though she looked more exhausted than mad."I didn't say it was," I mumbled, kicking a rock into the ditch. Once the car smelled more like lemon wipes than puke, we all piled back in. The "family bonding" vibe was officially dead. George was pouting in the corner of his seat, wrapped in a spare towel like a burrito, and my parents were back to being dead silent. I put my headphones back on and turned my volume all the way up, hoping the music would drown out the weird tension in the air. We drove for another three hours until the sun started to set. Finally, Dad pulled off onto a smooth, paved driveway that led to a house that actually looked... nice. It was a white farmhouse with a massive wrap-around porch and big windows that caught the orange glow of the sunset. It looked like something out of a magazine, not like the dusty places we usually ended up in."We're here," Dad said, sounding more relieved than I'd heard him in a long time. "Home sweet home."I looked at the perfectly mown lawn and the flower boxes under the windows and asked the question that probably everyone was dying to ask, "Dad are you sure we made the right stop?". Dad chuckled and said "welcome home everyone". For the first time in a while I actually felt happy and looked forward to our stay here. We were meant to start school the next week and I was dying from anxiety, a part of me wanted to go and the other part hated that Idea.
