Counting the Miles

“Bells, we have been over this so many times there are no other ways I can go about this,” the teenager frowned and followed her mother through the house and stopped in the kitchen. Crossing her arms over her chest she huffed.
“But how is it fair that I’m the one who is going to be stuck in a car with Ace while everyone else is sitting comfortably in a five hour plane ride?”
“First of all, Jake offered. Second you’re the one that wants your car so you need to drive it.”
“Yeah but I have to share it with Michael!”

-> My name is Isabella McCrery and I am eighteen years old, and every summer my family spent the three months at their house in New Jersey at the beach, and this summer I am going to be moving to school in Philadelphia.
My brother, Michael, is twenty-one, going into his senior year at school in Connecticut and the two of us decided he would take my car to school if I could have it for the summer. But plans suddenly changed for me and now I have to share it with my brother all summer and to top it all off, drive it to New Jersey.
The worst part of it was now I have to share the car journey with my brother’s friend, Ace. Well, actually his name is Jake but everyone calls him Ace. I couldn’t tell you why, but that was his name ever since I could remember, and I’ve known him since I six years old.

“Michael, you ruined everything!” I said flopping on his unmade bed. His room was painted a navy blue with rock band posters all over the walls. On his ceiling he had a half naked girl and I rolled my eyes at her. I sat up and noticed most of his stuff was still packed up. He had just come home from school.
He turned on his computer chair, in my direction and smiled. “Why Bells, I have no idea what you are referring to.”
“Please! You’re making me drive the car across the county so you can steal it everyday when Ace is around. Then you leave for school taking the vehicle with you.”
Michael rolled his blue eyes at his sister. “You’re so dramatic I don’t know why you weren’t the lead in the school plays.”
“Mike, you know it’s going to happen.”
“Whatever Isabella.” She slammed his door shut and walked into her own. The yellow walls were filled with photos of her high school. She smiled, just a week ago she graduated with her class and was now leaving across the country for school.
Mike was the one who showed her the school in Philadelphia. It was an art school for interior designing. She loved it; she was always redecorating her room and plenty of spaces in the house. She was excited, but now it seemed like her and her brother was even further apart.

“It’s so weird that this is our goodbye, not in two months,” Kara, my best friend said as she sat on her bed while I packed up my room.
“I know, but you’re coming to visit the last week before school starts.” Kara nodded and flipped through the photos that I had already taken down.
“Remember freshmen year when Ace kissed you?”