Breaking Away

“What the heck! Who opened the curtains? Doesn’t anybody know what time it is?” I screamed, but the pillow smothering my face muffled it.

I heard one of my roommates Kourtney give off an evil laugh when she saw that she had woken me from my very deep sleep. I wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction of letting her win so I burrowed deeper into my sheets. I soon regretted this. She immediately turned my bed into a moon bounce and went to town. There was no way that I was ever going to get back to sleep so I quickly sat up, which knocked her off the bed. She looked up at me and, when she saw that my face was contorted into one of anger, she gave me a sheepish smile.

“Why on God’s green earth did you wake me up?”

“…well…I was bored. I needed someone to entertain me.” She mumbled.

I let out a big sigh and slowly got out of my nest of sheets, which earned me an excited squeal from Kourtney. I made my way into the small kitchen to find that my other roommate, Liz, was making a batch of pancakes. The sweet aroma filled my nose and instantly my stomach started growling.

“Christ,” Liz laughed, “I’m not sure if I can handle feeding the beast inside you this time.”

“Well, I’m starving and this can be an apology meal because of what Kourt just pulled.” I retorted.

Liz passed out the plates to Kourt and me and we ate in silence. Five minutes into the meal we hear cop cars go off in the distance. None of us were surprised by this because we lived in New York City, and not in a very good part as well. I’m not sure if it was a good or bad thing that we had gotten used to noises like those. Kourt and Liz grew up here, so it was only natural. But I had been raised on the other side of the country in Huntington Beach. I moved out here about ten years ago to live with my dad when my mom had passed away. When going to school, I met Kourt and Liz and since then we haven’t been separated. I swallowed the mouthful of food to make a comment on what I was thinking.

“I’ve been thinking lately and I think that we need a break from NYC. To be more specific, I want to go on a little vacation.”

Liz and Kourt looked at each other and smirked.

“ROAD TRIP!” They yelled in unison.

Kourt’s smile fell when she asked, “Wait a second, when, where, and how?”

“Well,” Liz answered, “I’ve still got all that scholarship money since I dropped outta school. We’ll have plenty of money to cover the expenses. We also have plenty of time due to the fact that Kourt lost us our jobs at Guitar Center.”

“Sorry! How was I supposed to know that we didn’t loan out the instruments? I thought those people would definitely return them.” Kourt defended.

“KOURTNEY! They were obviously going to steal them you tard!”

“Hey, don’t call me a tard you little whore!”

While those two continued their little fight, I was thinking of a nice place that we could go. Far away because I needed a major break from the east coast. All of a sudden it came to me.

“Hey, stop fighting for a second and listen to me!”

Their yelling stopped and they patiently waited for what I had to say.

“Whenever my aunt calls from California she always tells me that I have to visit. Well, she mentioned that my cousin Matt owns a cabin out at Big Bear. I don’t think he would mind if we took it over for a week or two…hell, why not a whole month?”

Liz and Kourt made a mad dash for their rooms and all I could hear were drawers being pulled out and closet doors swinging open.

“I’ll take that as a yes. On to Big Bear!”