Interchange

By the time they reached Yosemite the following morning, Liam had to admit that California wasn’t as bad as he thought it was. Granted most of what he’d seen of it was from inside a car or had been blurred with drunken bliss. Because of the hangover that came from that drunken bliss, he wasn’t exactly sure how Jenna had convinced him to stay the night in San Francisco. All he knew was that one moment they were driving into Sacramento and the next they were in the City by the Bay at some Jazz Bar drinking way more whiskey than they should have. He vaguely remembered Jenna going on about how he had to see the Golden Gate Bridge and absolutely had to see live Jazz. She probably had gotten her way by bribing him with booze and cigarettes.

He was going to have to quit smoking one of these days.

Yosemite was one of the few things that they had completely planned for and thus had camp site reservations. This made getting into the park only slightly easier. There was still a backup of cars at the entrance and in the parking lot of the visitor center due everyone having the exact same idea of beating the crowds all at once and thus creating one. They were to meet Jenna’s family at the campsite, since through some amount of luck or sheer coincide, their camp sites were more or less right next to each other.

Jenna had been sulking in the passenger seat since they left San Francisco. She received a call earlier that morning, the call that woke her up, from her parents informing her that her younger sister, Sydney, would be joining them. Liam didn’t understand why this was a big deal and had originally assumed that Jenna’s sister would be going with her parents. Apparently, the original plan was to let Sydney stay with one of her friend’s to ease the possibility for sibling tension. That plan, however, bit the dust the moment that Sydney and her friend were arrested while at a graduation house party. Both girls received MIPs and were grounded by their parents for what would seem like the rest of their lives. Jenna explained that since Sydney was the youngest of three, she was prone to rebellion to acquire attention. It was entirely possible that her sister would be a complete pain in the ass to be with after getting into what was probably the first bout of serious trouble she’d ever been in. Sydney was still apparently adjusting to being the only child in the household, even though it had been three years since Jenna left for college and six since their eldest sister, Sarah, left.

“Be careful though,” Jenna had warned him as they packed up their things in the hotel earlier that morning. “She’ll probably try to make a move on you.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because she always tries to take what’s mine.”

“But I’m not yours. I’m the hired help, remember?”

“She doesn’t know that, and even so, you’re still my friend, not just the chauffer.” She smiled at him. Apparently they had bonded quite a bit the night before and she still remembered it. He hoped he didn’t say anything too ridiculous or sappy. “Mine or not mine, she still will want you just because you’re standing in the same room as me.”

There was a sibling rivalry between Jenna and Sydney, even though they were at the point where they should have out grown it. Since Jenna’s sophomore year in high school, her younger sister had been extremely jealous of her. The exact reason why, she didn’t know.

“Maybe she just wants to be like you,” Liam suggested after Jenna listed all of the possible reasons she could think of for why her sister was jealous of her.

“I don’t understand why. I’m not that great. Sarah’s the one to aspire to be. She joined the Peace Corps.”

“Being a part of the Peace Corps isn’t what makes a person great, the person has to be great to begin with.”

“I feel like you just stole that like from an old President.”

Liam smiled at that. “Probably.”

Jenna asked her daily question once they were on the road. She made a short, cut-off laugh when she pulled it out of the stack. “Well, this is ironic.”

Liam looked over at her briefly before looking back at the road. “What? What is it?”

“Who is the moodiest in your family?”

“I’m going to take a guess and say your younger sister.”

“Well, I was going to say my Grandma, but now that you mention it…”

“Your Grandma?”

She looked at him. “What? She’s one sassy old lady.”

“I don’t know if sassy makes a person moody.”

“You’ve never seen her on Thanksgiving.” They both laughed at this. Liam tried to imagine what a Thanksgiving with a large family and grandparents would be like, let alone a Thanksgiving complete with a sassy grandma. “But if we’re going off the true definition of moody, you’re probably right about Sydney, and you haven’t even met her yet.”

“I only have what you’ve told me to go off.”

Jenna laughed. “True. Okay. How about you? Who’s the moodiest in your family?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know many people in my family. If I’m going to be honest, I would probably have to say my Grandma. And I’m not saying that to copy your joke. My mom wasn’t very expressive through my childhood. The only time I remember her getting upset about anything is when she was yelling at my Grandma after getting scolded about her parenting. Grandma was always scolding us about something. Sometimes she could be really awesome and then sometimes she wasn’t.”

Liam could tell that the matter-o-fact way he told Jenna this caught her off guard. There wasn’t a reason to hide it, but it was obviously not what she was expecting. She was just staring at him. He didn’t know why she was reacting this way. It wasn’t like he told her that his grandmother died while yelling at his mom or anything.

Jenna opened her mouth to say something, but then shut it not long after. She turned and looked out the window for the rest of the ride to Yosemite.

Liam couldn’t tell if Jenna’s current sulking was because of the news of her sister or because she was forced to come to terms with her princess like status once more. Either way, he hoped her mood would improve throughout the rest of the day. As they approached their campsite, they discovered that Jenna’s family hadn’t arrived yet. Either they were running behind schedule or trapped in the park’s Friday morning traffic.

“They’re probably late because Sydney threw a fit about them taking the pop-up camper instead of the RV. She tends to get upset when she faces first world problems.” Liam would had laughed at the comment if he felt like she was joking. From the look on Jenna’s face, she was being completely serious.

“How old is she anyway?”

“Almost 16,” Jenna sighed, “and she still acts like she is still twelve. She is the poster child for why children should not be spoiled.”

Liam grimaced at this and was suddenly glad to be an only child. He parked the car in their reserved spot and began looking for the tent in the pile of luggage and various other necessities in the back. Jenna joined him in the search and found it within seconds. By the time they had set up the tent and laid out their sleeping bags, Jenna’s parents still hadn’t arrived.

She checked her phone to see if they had texted her. “Nothing yet.”

“It’s barely even eleven now. They’re not even late. They told you they’d be here at twelve, right?”

“Yeah, but my parents usually run an hour early.”

“Or they’re exactly on time and you’re worrying about nothing.”
Jenna pressed her lips together and furrowed her brow. “Fine, I guess you’re right. But what do we do until they get here?”

“I don’t know. I’m going to walk around the campground and find a decent place to smoke. You could join me, if you don’t mind second hand smoke.”

She made a face. “I think I’ll pass. You smelling like cigarettes is one thing, actually inhaling the smoke is another.”

“Alright. I’ll be back in a few.”

While he searched for a good smoking spot, Liam tried to piece together the previous night. Maybe without the distraction of driving he could disentangle his blurred memories. He could remember dialogue without the scene that corresponded and images without sound, but nothing that actually went together. He probably would never know what he had told Jenna that night, because he certainly wasn’t going to admit to not remembering.

Eventually he found a decent spot to smoke in an empty picnic area off to the side of the campground. He sat on top of one of the tables and lit up a cigarette. He had been smoking for what seemed like only a few seconds before he heard a feminine voice ask, “Do you smoke to die or is it a metaphor?” He turned to find a teenage girl wearing a beanie and dark rimmed glasses standing a few feet away from him. She looked like she had gotten all of her fashion advice from Pinterest posts on her Facebook newsfeed with her high waisted acid wash shorts and white crop top.

“What?”

“Do you smoke to die or is it a metaphor?”

“I smoke to smoke. Nothing profound about it. I’m not a character from a John Green novel.”

The girl’s eyes widened. “You’ve read John Green?”

Liam rolled his eyes. “You don’t need to have read any of John Green’s books to know that the line ‘I smoke to die’ is in Looking for Alaska and ‘it’s a metaphor’ comes from The Fault in Our Stars. Anyone who’s ever been on the internet knows that.” He wasn’t about to tell some random girl that he’d read John Green’s books, especially one who looked like she only liked his books because everyone else did, not because she understood their literary value. “Also, since I’m smoking the cigarette, it’s not a metaphor.”

The girl continued to stare at him. He took another drag of his cigarette, closed his eyes, and hoped she’d go away. When he opened his eyes again, she was still there. “You’re really attractive,” she told him.

He had no idea where that came from. “Uh, thanks…”

“None of the guys at my school are attractive like you are.” She took a few steps closer to him and added, “And none of them look cool as you do when they smoke.” She was definitely trying to hitting on him, and it was kind of weirding him out. The girl had a terrible lack of tact. “Are you a senior?” she asked with a strange expression on her face. It was somewhere between a smolder and a grin. She looked like the Cheshire Cat trying to be alluring.

“Yeah,” he said and her eyes lit up. “In college,” he added. The girl shut her mouth. She had obviously assumed that he was in high school. “And I’m not interested in little girls” He got up and began walking back to his campsite hoping that the girl would take a hint and not follow him.

“How was your walk?” Jenna asked when he returned.

“Weird. I got hit on by some teenage girl.”

“Really?” she asked, trying not to laugh.

“She thought I was a senior in high school.”

She burst into laughter, “Oh my God. I –can’t.” Liam watched her laugh to the point of coughing.

He didn’t understand why she found it so funny. Eventually she caught her breath and explained, “It’s just that sometimes, usually when you don’t have the beginnings of a beard coming in and you’re sitting down, you kind of do look like you still could be in high school. That’s why the bartender at that bar in San Francisco thought you had a fake ID at first.”

“Shit, really?”

“You probably shouldn’t ever shave if you want to be seen as a man,” she suggested.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Anyway, my family arrived not long after you left. My parents are waiting at their campsite. I don’t know where Sydney ran off to, but you don’t have to worry about meeting her just yet.”

They walked a few campsites over to where a large pickup truck was parked next to a popup camper. Jenna’s parents were making the finishing adjustments with the setup of the camper when they arrived. Liam’s stomach was doing summersaults and he didn’t know why. He had nothing to hide and it wasn’t like he was meeting her parents as her boyfriend. He somehow go through Jenna’s awkward introductions without adding to the situation. Her parents insisted on being called by their first names, David and Elizabeth, rather than Mr. and Mrs. Thornton. Liam at least earned some points for manners.

“Jenna wasn’t exactly specific on how you two met,” David said after Jenna and her mom went into the camper to prepare lunch. “How did you get to know each other?”

“We met in a 19th Century lit class last semester. I caught a cold halfway through the semester and quarantined myself the best I could in the back of the class. Jenna assumed I was a loner and decided to become my friend before knowing that my anti-social behavior was actually due to not wanting to spread the plague.” Liam paused and tried to think of a way to not make it sound like his friendship with Jenna was created and maintained by Jenna and he had more or less no say in the matter. It was the truth, but not necessarily something he wanted to admit to her father. Especially since he was lead to believe that the relationship had existed more than four months. “We ended up working on a paper together and bonded over Charles Dickens.”

“So you’re a fan of Charles Dickens?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What is your favorite book by him?”

“A Tale of Two Cities.”

David raised his eye brows. “Why that one?”

“I like how Dickens emphasizes selflessness and sacrifice. Sydney Carton sacrifices himself to save the woman he loves and her family and thus ultimately redeems himself,” Liam explained. “Also, Dickens does a great job at representing the unrest of the people of France in the period of time before the Revolution.”

They discussed Dickens’s work until Jenna and Elizabeth came outside with sandwiches and potato salad. It wasn’t until they all sat down at the picnic table that they realized that Jenna’s sister was not present.

Jenna’s mom’s eyes widened when she realized that she had not been keeping track of her youngest daughter, who was supposed to be grounded. “She must have slipped away when we were setting up the camper.”

“It’s not like she could have gone anywhere far,” Jenna said. “And besides, you know she does this kind of stuff for attention, and she can’t get any if she doesn’t come back.”

“I don’t want attention,” a semi-familiar voice said from behind them. Liam turned to find the girl from earlier walking toward the table.

“See, the moment you mention her, she appears. It’s like magic,” Jenna pointed out dryly.

“Jenna,” her father warned.

Jenna rolled her eyes. “Liam, this is my younger sister, Sydney. Sydney, this is my-”

Sydney interrupted her sister’s introduction, “We’ve met.”

“Wha—Wait,” Jenna turned to Liam, “was she the girl from before?”

He sighed. “Unfortunately, yes.”

“Of course,” she groaned. “She hits on you before she even knows who you are.”