it happened to a friend of a friend of mine
Aide sat horizontal across the back seat, with her legs stretched out and resting on the top of Yog's cage, as her family's volvo rattled down the narrow woodland road. Head resting on the pillow her mom had packed with unusual foresight, she watched the trees flash by out the window. It was comforting to know that she wasn't going too far away from home, but at the same time, Aide had never been separated from her family for more than a school day.
During the summer it had always been family vacations, together, driving across the country to some dumb gathering with her parent's internet friends. They'd sit around, barefoot, on grassy hills outside of little villages, and peer up into the skies with telescopes, chat with each other on subjects Aide didn't care to understand, and were too difficult for her to try and bother. Then sometimes there'd be a bonfire. And cooking hotdogs. And sometimes she'd be coaxed, moaning and rolling her eyes, into dancing around it, dad on one side, mom on the other. Then after a few days of sleeping out in tents, they'd return home, sunburnt and covered in bug bites, and smelling of deet and wood smoke. And like nothing ever happened, her parents would put on their shoes and button up their coats and go back to being quiet and introverted and sit quietly in the big dark house that, for Aide, was reassuring and comfortable.
That was what vacations were like for her. Not going off and listening to a bunch of teenagers boss you around, singing dumb songs about friendship, showing you how to glue one popsicle stick to another popsicle stick, and making you sit next to the weird kid who wet themselves. From what Aide had read and seen in books and on tv, she imagined Whispering Pines to be pretty much that. Only with people levitating or bending forks with their mind, or something. She wasn't sure if what she felt was a thrill of excitement, or the cold fingers of anxiety and dread. Either way, she gave a small shiver and shifted around on her seat, closing her eyes.
Dad had promised, each time she had asked, that if it was really, really bad then she could come home, but she still had been plagued with dreams of downed phone lines and blocked roads, cutting off any chance of retreat. It had been the same before starting school, and like then she had been relying on a mixture of fear, bullheadedness, and determination to drive her forward. If she was nervous, or uncomfortable, or scared at camp, she'd do the same thing she always did, and turned those feelings on the people around her and beat both the fear and the people down until she could cope with both. Plus, she had Yog. So she wouldn't really be alone. Opening one eye a crack, she looked down at the cage to reassure herself that it wasn't empty. Calm and reassuring, Yog stared back at her, tongue flickering. She remembered arguing with her mom, who had tried to explain that there was no way her camp councillor would be willing to refrigerate two month's worth of mice in the camp freezer. But she had insisted that they at least phone and ask, and in the end had won as they had explained to her surprised parents that yes, they would accommodate a snake.
Shifting in her seat again, she stretched as far as she could, her toes touching the other side of the car. "I'm thirsty!" In the front of the car the rustle of a map being lowered drowned out the gentle humming and chiming coming out of the car speakers. Soul and Mind Inner Harmony Music, or whatever it was, was her mom's way of making Aide regret she was ever alive, in her opinion. Turning slightly, all Aide could see of her mother was bits of frizzy hair poking around the side of her headrest as she turned to her daughter's voice. "The cooler is right beside you Adeliade." Aide made a face and reached down with one hand, weakly dragging it along the lid. She knew that she had just finished the last carton of store-brand juice an hour ago, and all that remained was her parent's homemade green sludge, which tasted like wet grass and nutrition. "Can't we stop somewhere? I can get something healthy, like apple juice?" If they did stop, Aide was running to the soft drinks fridge and grabbing something out of it before anyone could stop her. She could see the tall glistening container in her mind's eye, full of sparkling sugar and absolutely no nutritional benefit whatsoever.
"No need to stop Lady, we're almost there! Honey - could you check to see the name of the turn off again?" Her father's voice cut into her fantasy as her mother went back to fumbling with the map. If they both upgraded to the current century, they could have a gps telling them where to go, but Aide had long ago given up on pointing this out. Instead, she sat up a little. "Are we really really almost there? Or almost there like we were almost there a bazillion hours ago." The reproach in her voice was clear, and her father's guilty smile was visible from where she sat. They had driven almost two hours out of their way, in all, when you counted all the wrong turns and dead ends, and the one time her mother had seen a horse ranch on the map and they had taken a detour to stare at two smelly, cross eyed creatures for ten minutes. "Really, really almost there. You'll see the lake in five minutes, cross my heart." He turned to give her a loving smile, and Aide turned away with a huff, trying to hide the smile that came in return. Instead, she swung her legs off Yog's cage and sat up, pressing her face against the window. "Ok, I'm going to start counting. If we don't get there by the time I'm done, we have to stop at the next gas station! One hundred and fifty! One hundred and fourty nine ... one hundred and fourty eight...."
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