A Vacation

My family and I are crammed into a car for over eight hours. This isn't so bad. I'm in the back right seat. My little brother is beside me, on the left, and my mother in front of me, in the passenger's seat (my usual seat of choice). My father is in the driver's--driving, obviously.

I occupy my time with my old limited edition DS Lite (my brother the same, with his... what, DSiXL? Something). I'm playing Pokemon. It's a Nuzlocke challenge on Pokemon Black. Everything dies; I have a trainer's touch of death, apparently. I become upset. I write everything down in a notebook so that I can make it into a comic later.

That becomes boring. It's dark outside now. We pass through Atlanta, Georgia. I marvel at the city. It's so alive. Cities fascinate me, having never lived in one. On the road I live on, a car goes by about every two minutes at most. We're in the deep country, our house. But Atlanta breathes. I think about going to college here. There's an art college. Does it have sciences, video game design? I doubt it. I'll look into it.

I fall asleep. When I wake up, our family has found a cheap motel off the side of the road. We park our car by the door and go into our room. It's standard. A bathroom next to a refrigerator (the "kitchen" in these places), and two full-sized beds in front of a television. It's gross, a little too bright; the paint on the wall is a yellow-cream, and is directly over a brick pattern that is fairly obvious. I take a restroom break, brush my teeth, and collapse in bed. The place is fine, except for a permeating smell of... must, but something about it make me wary. I sleep on top of the covers, that is, until I wake up in the middle of the night freezing my ass off.

We set out immediately. I've barely even changed from my unattractive-but-comfortable garb yesterday: from a t-shirt and cotton pants, to the same t-shirt and pajama shorts. We eat at a little hub called the Huddle House. I can't help but compare it to Waffle House (which we've seen tons of on the way down to Florida); worse food, less business, and with an understated sort of fifties theme that doesn't seem to come together just right.

We continue on our voyage. We've crossed the Florida-Georgia border now, and we're closer to Orlando, closer, closer. We can't check in until three, my dad reminds us, so we take a detour to Daytona. We drive by the racetrack (my family are fans; I don't particularly like it, but some of it is mildly interesting) and then down to the beach, where we park, run into the ocean, get our feet wet, and laugh until we have to run back. It wasn't worth it. My shorts are wet thanks to waves of varying size and my legs are covered with sand. "Maybe we can come back sometime this week," my dad suggests. My mom has a stomachache. My brother has gotten carsick twice on this trip today.

When we check in, there are a lot of maids going in and out of our rooms. "We're sorry," they say in Mexican and Korean accents. Why don't any white Americans work here? Is it that kind of job, the kind we don't have in our northern, mostly-white state, the kind that only immigrants do? "This room hasn't been rented out for a while. We're cleaning it now." This room is owned by my grandmother's boss, who lent it to us for a week for free. If he hadn't, it would have cost us over six hundred a night. It's a suite. I've stayed in it once before, with my grandmother.

My family is surprised at the size. When we enter, there's a den to the left, with a futon and a TV. To the right, a kitchen, with a counter, a microwave, an electric stove with four places, a refrigerator and freezer with ice/water dispensers, a pantry. In front of us, a dining room with a chandelier; beyond that, a living room, and a door to the balcony. Off to the right side, a master bedroom with a huge bathroom, which has a large bath and a shower, and a separate room for the toilet, as if to show off how much the owner was spending for this place. Off to the left, the room I'm staying in: a hotel room inside a hotel, the two full-sized beds and the television. I make my brother sleep on the futon. A room to myself is wonderful.

We go to the grocery and stock our kitchen, that first day.

The next day, we just lazed around. We went to the hotel pool and laughed and pushed each other. I tried to teach my brother to swim. It rained.

After that we spent a day at Sea World. "We've done Disney," my mom reasons. "Let's do everything else this time." I agree. Disney was boring. But Sea World is more boring, with all the aquariums that I've seen before, last year with my grandmother, for my birthday. The Kraken is a good roller-coaster, but just a roller-coaster, the kind you find everywhere. The Manta is better, with cool aquariums in the waiting line and a novelty: lying on your stomach, feeling like you're going to fly into everything. Journey to Atlantis is good, but I almost pass out in line because of the heat. I am miserable.

We go home. The next day we go to Universal Studios. That's my favorite. I'm so excited. "It's my third favorite place in the world," I declare to my brother, smiling. "What's the first?" he asks, and I say, "My room." "What's the second?" he says, and I reply, "The internet." He protests. I have to explain how the internet is a place (all of that data has to be somewhere).

Islands of Adventure makes me sigh with glee. The Dr. Suess place is whimsical, but not particularly entrancing. My brother wants to ride something... a "High-in-the-Sky Suess Trolley Train Ride," I believe. Boring, but I humor him. We go to the Lost Continent next. Harry Potter is better at night and we can't get in now anyway, so we go around to the Marvel area... my favorite in the park (maybe tied with Harry Potter). I look in the comic store, do the sky-drop (Dr. Doom's... something) with my brother, take a picture with Cyclops. I miss Rogue, when she's out. It makes me upset.

We leave to actual Universal and do all sorts of things there. We watch shows, ride rides, whatever. Lunch/dinner is at the Nascar restaurant in Citywalk. It's surprisingly good. I have pot roast that's better than what we make at home. I can't fit all of it into my stomach. My dad eats the rest. I laugh a lot. My mom gets another stomachache. She's been picking fights the whole trip; I don't think she's used to all of us being together all of the time.

We go back to Harry Potter. I ride Dragon Challenge with my dad. We wait for the front line, but get pulled to the very front of that line because we're a party of two. Afterwards my dad laughs and high fives me and says, "That's my favorite ride this whole trip."

Our feet hurt so much that I'm hopping from heel to heel and they're starting to go numb, but we still but two Butterbeers and I drink mine. It's sweet, like liquid ice cream, so good, maybe too sugary--my brother can't even finish his, because he gets a stomachache. We go into a Hogsmeade shop. It's great. But I soon find that everything is... expensive. My mother humors me and purchases a Gryffindor scarf for me. I debate between Gryffindor and Slytherin for a long time, holding each one up. "I'm really a Slytherin, according to, you know, the internet," I sigh. But I've been proclaiming myself a Gryffindor my whole life before those online tests, and, well, red and gold look better on me than green and silver, and I decide one test can't change who I've been for my whole fandom career. This is a big decision to me. I get the Gryffindor.

On the way out, our feet hurt so much, so god-fucking-damn much, but I get a poster from the comic shop anyway. It's Spider-Woman. I'm a nerd. It's over twenty dollars less than the scarf.

We go to Daytona Beach and I get a sunburn. I put on so much sunscreen that I look eight shades paler than I really am, but I burn anyway. But I'm naturally dark, so it goes away by the time we go home. We spend one day at the beach before I decide I'm done.

That night, we go crab hunting on the shore. We find one. It makes me smile, and freak out, squealing like the girl I am, when it scuttles toward me. We laugh and go back to the hotel. I eat a Milky Way. That night my mom and dad stay out on the balcony. In the morning, when I drop my wrapper into the trash can, I see nothing but Diet Coke cans and beer bottles. I realize that I never want to drink as much as they do.

We spend one day just relaxing before we go home. I spend all day watching a Let's Play of Silent Hill and looking up the plot on the wiki. I stay up until four in the morning doing this.

The next day, I'm tired. We're in the car. I play Pokemon Black, continue my challenge. Everyone sleeps for two hours then wakes up, not at the same time. I get tired of Pokemon. I try to sleep. I wake up. We go to Starbucks. Wendy's. Over the course of the day, we eat at two gas stations. I drink a melon-berry smoothie and half of my brother's frappe when we go to Starbucks again for my dad, the driver, who needs a pick-me-up. I'm not supposed to drink much caffeine, but I drink half of his. It's a mocha-coconut. Too much coffee for him. He was expecting more chocolate.

On the way back we stop at an outlet mall. "We should do some back to school shopping, maybe," my mom suggests. I end up with more than all of my other family members combined. Since it's an outlet mall, everything's cheaper than a regular store. My mom asks if I like Charlotte Russe. I wouldn't know, I say; I've never been. I get a dress and a belt and a pair of skinny jeans. My mom takes me to the next store and the next. And I see an outlet Fossil store. I freak out so very much that she actually takes me in. I find a purse that I saw in our mall for two hundred bucks... for forty-five. I'm so excited that my mother actually buys it for me. I spend the rest of the trip putting things in it. There's an outlet Rue 21, too; I get a minidress and some leggings and some shoes that I've wanted forever. It's sad, but this was one of my favorite parts of the trip, this side stop at an outdoor outlet mall.

We go home. We sleep on the way. My mom and my brother are asleep, my dad is driving; it's too dark to read my school book by, so I turn on my DS to the main screen, the white one, and hold it to my chest. I need to sleep but I can't put down the book. It's "A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier" by Ishmael Beah. I usually don't like nonfiction, but this is pretty okay. When I finally finish it, I stretch out and sleep on my brother's pillow, which I steal from under his head. My dad's decided to push through the night and go all the way home in one day. I only sleep for an hour before I wake up in the driveway.

Everyone pulls their luggage from the trunk and carries it in. I don't remember much, and when I woke up this morning all of my stuff was still in the car's trunk. But I went to my room that night and collapsed in my bed, my clothes still on, and had the best sleep I'd had in a week.