Gwen’s latest prompt:  ‘Write a scene in third person p.o.v. in which your character is taking a journey via a favorite mode (car, plane, train, horseback, etc.) that s/he has long anticipated. A fellow traveler disrupts the trip.’  I’m a tad over 500, as usual…

“Sandy, pick up the water bottles.  Sandy!  Shit, they’ll end up under the driver’s seat again.  I’m not getting ‘em.”  Nan shook her head and stuck out her bottom lip.   Her eyes rolled around in her head as she tried to avoid looking at the bottles.

Riley wasn’t sure why Nan was in the van at all.  Nan was unstable at the best of times.  Two days of weed, drinking and acid in a sweltering van was making life surreal for all of them, but for Nan…  she was just trying to hold onto the little thread of sanity she maybe had at the beginning of the trip.  And it wasn’t looking good.

“Nanny, it’s cool,” said Riley.  She stood and scooped up the Aquafina bottles, cradling them in her sweater.  She sat back down in the bean bag and spread her legs out in front of her.  Sandy was sleeping in a pile of blankets before her, a clear trail of drool seeping out of the corner of her mouth.  She ran her toe over Sandy’s calf.  God, could she use some sleep, to curl up next to Sandy and close her eyes for a bit…  But not with Nan awake.  Riley didn’t trust her to not do something really nuts.  She couldn’t even imagine what, but her energy was tense, brought to mind a mangy squirrel or a tortured cat.  Even now, with her eyes closed like she was maybe trying to rest, her hands were twitchy.  Her toes were curled.

Riley yawned and went up to talk to Brian.  She kissed his cheek and he took one hand off the steering wheel to pat her shoulder.  Curled up in the passenger seat she watched Arizona pass, the Black Mountains an unmoving backdrop for the desert.  She’d been looking forward to this trip across the country for months, had mapped out the trip county by county.  From Boston to San Fran there were 12 monuments she wanted to see; she’d even bought a sweet new Cannon digital to record every belligerent moment in order to scrapbook the hell out of it later.

The trip was almost over and she had only 15 images stored on the SD.  They were of rest stop signs and Brian and Sandy making faces at each other.  No hot springs, no mountain ranges, no saguaro cacti.  Nan freaked out every time they had to pay money to see something, or eat non-organic, or walk more than 100 feet away from the van.  Or get out of the van, for that matter.  Or breathe.

Brian flipped his dreadlocks over his shoulder and raised his eyebrows at her.  ‘Nan,’ she mouthed.  He sighed and nodded.  ‘Freaking out,’ she whispered.  He cleared his throat and nodded again.  He squeezed her knee with a knotty hand.

“Sandy!!  You’re drooling all over the goddamn blankets!”  barked Nan from the back.  “Swear to God, I ain’t washing ‘em!  We all have to share those, you know.”  Sandy snorted a little snore.  At least she could sleep through it.

“Need me to drive?” Riley asked Brian.  Driving would at least keep her occupied, give her something to focus on.  He shrugged.  No way either of them would fall asleep with Nan in the van.