“We could have stayed in the city another week,” I remind her, with a stab of bitterness. “I barely had time to say goodbye to everyone. I’m missing the big graduation party. And Carina gets to stay…”
“Your sister has classes,” mom reminds me. “She’ll drive down with your father next week.”
I sigh. My older sister is twenty-two, finishing up college at UNC. She’s majoring in publicity and marketing, and from what I can tell, that just means she spends most of her time strutting the bars of Raleigh on the lookout for an eligible bachelor. And by eligible, she means a future lawyer or investment banker from the right kind of family, earning six figures with another seven in trust somewhere. I don’t want to call her a shallow bitch, but she earns it.
“We could have waited for them,” I murmur. “I mean, isn’t the whole point of this summer—to be one big happy family?” My voice is full of sarcasm.
I see my mom flinch out of the corner of my eye, but she doesn’t rise to my bait. “Another few days would have turned into another week or more,” she says briskly, instead. “And then summer would be half-way done before we even arrived.”
I don’t reply. One week is nothing when I’m staring down three months of my f**ked-up family pretending like everything’s OK.
I turn back to the rain-soaked view outside the window, lifting my beloved camera to peer through the viewfinder lens. It’s a manual Pentax SLR, a bulky old antique that my grandpa gave to me, years ago, back before he died. Everyone uses their cellphones now, snapping digital pictures to post online and pass around, but I like the weight of the old camera in my hand, and the hours I have to spend in the dark-room, gently coaxing each photograph into life.
I carefully twist the focus, bringing the view clearer. The sea foams, restless beyond the strip of brush-land and sand dividing the highway from the shore. I press my finger on the shutter and click, praying I make it through the summer without losing my mind.
“You’ll be coming here with your own kids soon,” mom adds brightly. “A tradition. You know, I came here with your grandparents, every summer since I was—“
A loud bang sounds, drowning out her voice. The car swerves wildly, suddenly out of control. My chest slams against my seatbelt, painful and my camera slips from my hands. I grab for it, desperate, as we careen across the wet highway.
“Mom!” I yell, terrified. I see a flash of red through the window—the truck behind us in lane. It heads straight for us, then swerves past at the last second.
“It’s OK!” Mom’s knuckles are white, gripping the steering wheel as she wrestles to regain control. “Just hold on!”I cling on to the sides of my seat, thrown to the side as the car keeps spinning. We’re weightless, drifting in the road. Then, at last, I feel the tires get traction again. The car slows, until finally, we come to a stop along the side of the highway.
I gasp for breath, my heart pounding. The red truck we nearly hit has gone off the road further up the highway, front wheels buried up to the bumper in mud and sand.
My mom is still gripping onto the wheel, staring straight ahead, her face chalk-white. “Are you OK?” I ask in a quiet voice. She doesn’t reply.
“Mom?” I ask again, reaching out to touch her arm. She flinches back.
“What? Oh, yes, honey, I’m fine.” She swallows. “The tire went out, I think. I don’t know what happened. A lucky miss.” Mom gives me a trembling smile, but I feel a tide of anger rise up.
“Lucky?” I exclaim, furious. “We shouldn’t even be here! None of us wanted to come this summer, and now we nearly just died. And for what?!”
Suddenly, it’s like a mack truck is crushing down on my chest. I can’t breathe, I can’t even think straight. I fumble at my seatbelt with shaking hands and then fling the car door open, stumbling out onto the road.
“Juliet?” She calls after me, but I don’t stop. I don’t care that it’s raining, wet and cold against my thin T-shirt and cutoff shorts, I just need to get out. I need to breathe.
I stride away from the car, gasping for air.
None of this was my idea. We haven’t been back to the beach house in years, not since I was a kid. We haven’t been much of a family in years either, but mom got it in her head that we had to spend one last summer there together—before I went off to college, and Carina graduated, and we could all finally stop acting we were anything more than distant strangers living under the same roof, trying like hell to pretend to the world that everything was OK.
Not that we don’t have practice. After all, pretending is what my family does best. Dad pretends he’s not a washed-up academic with one failed book to his name, and a taste for vodka martinis at four PM. My sister pretends she cares about more than landing herself a rich lawyer husband with a country club membership and a six-figure bonus. My mom pretends she doesn’t regret throwing her life away on a charming British writer, or notice his late nights ‘advising’ students at the office, and the disdain in his voice whenever he does remember to stumble home.
And me? I pretend it doesn’t hurt me to keep pretending. That it doesn’t eat away at me to see how much she still loves him, meek and cowering for the slightest bit of his attention. That I don’t get these awful panic attacks, every time I think about leaving her behind when I head off to college this fall.
That’s why I agreed to this joke of a happily family vacation in the end, to try and numb this sense I’m abandoning her. She wants one last summer to pretend? I’ll give it to her. But look where all that pretending has gotten us now: nearly winding up dead in a car wreck before her precious summer even begins.