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    Alice's Summer Road Trip
    Alice's Summer Road Trip
    Alice's Summer Road Trip
    Ebook158 pages2 hours

    Alice's Summer Road Trip

    By Cameron Glenn

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Teen Alice deals with the death of her sister by going on a summer road trip with the college age friends of her sister.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCameron Glenn
    Release dateDec 29, 2015
    ISBN9781311222541
    Alice's Summer Road Trip
    Author

    Cameron Glenn

    Cameron Glenn grew up the third of seven children in Oregon. As a child he dedicated hours to the pursuits of basketball and cartooning, as well as waking up way too early for his paper route in order to earn money to buy toys, candy and comic books. He also loved to read and write, which he continues to do voraciously. He currently lives in Salt Lake City after having earned a BA in literature from Boise State.

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      Book preview

      Alice's Summer Road Trip - Cameron Glenn

      Alice’s Summer Road Trip

      By Cameron Glenn

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2016 Cameron Glenn

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Alice’s Summer Road Trip

      Chapter One

      Jan liked beatnik crap. This is for Jan. Here’s some beatnik crap: Catch me, I can’t, but I want to love you, your face there, see it, it’s the prettiest thing in the world, it makes me glad, I hope you’re happy somewhere. Rainbows fall and shatter into shadows and you’re still there, smiling, frozen in place, and what is this new place, where demons and angels dwell, fighting useless battles, I just want to be good, why can’t I, I just want to escape, why can’t I, and enter into some new paradise, god please yes, why didn’t you take me with you I would have liked to have seen it all also, why’d you have to go, now there’s a block blot in the sky, a black hole like an eye, peering down on me always, still the days shine away I want to shine with them before everything is gone for good forever; what’s the weather like now, and how could you, how?

      My big sister Jan killed herself in the winter; a cold blast night. Early February. Near Valentine’s day. I imagine her newly dead like this: soft snow as her bed, her ice white perfect face resting near a red stone; snow gently wafts down settling and melting into her still warm skin pours; each flake a tingling kiss over a body now impervious to touch; the snow melt on her cheek’s natures tears for a body now incapable of crying.

      I drape the death scene in poetic lace with Vogue Fashion Spread imagery because the reality of the images are too grisly to accept. Gore, glassy eyes, stink, insects; remarkable how soon the beauty of a young healthy human body becomes food for the grossest of insects. Blood and brain splatter at the side of her head.

      They used guns, her and her boyfriend, a dirty black leather jacket wearing drug nerd. She, they, wanted it to be a romantic gesture I think. Some Romeo and Juliet bull shit. Some feeling things too deep and nothing will ever be as beautiful again and humanity are shit and we are beyond it all melancholy drug fueled bull shit. I’ll die for you; I’d kill for you; I’d kill myself for you bull shit.

      I don’t really know why she did it; how she could do it, stab the final period on a book not even one forth finished. She was only twenty years old. It’s a riddle I know is without an answer yet one I know I’ll struggle with trying to answer for the rest of my life. Drugs clouding judgment must take some blame. Meeting and falling in love with some druggie rock n’ roll wanker boy has to take some blame (R.I.P. him as well; condolences to his friends and family). No, girls, getting that first serious boyfriend is not always an answer to all of your problems.

      Growing up under the shadow of Jan, two and a half years older than me, is an experience filled with idolization, envy, friendship, belittlement, jealously, squabbles, hand me downs, in both things material and mental. She tried to cool groom me; imprinting the music and movies and fashion she thought was cool onto to me, so that I’d be cool as well; or, could one day be cool. Ingest the seeds of cool anyways (what she thought was cool), to see if they might flower later. Lou Reed music, Stanly Kubrick movies and Beat generation writers, as well as mostly obscure modern stuff. Indie rock, The Cults.

      I can’t fully appreciate how annoying I must have been to her. Especially when I was fourteen and she was the age I am now, sixteen. I was a twerp, so badly wanting to enter into her Jan world. A bright world of high kicks and scandals, triumphs and tragedies, cars and kisses, dances, formal and informal, 7-11 Friday night snack runs, hot messes, cupcakes and pre-prom diets. Parties and bon fires, off-tune shout sing-along’s with fists in the air while reckless night driving, loud laughing, night swimming, owning the types of bodies that when covered by tight bikinis spring instant boners when seen by cute dimple checked shaggy haired boys with toned abs, and what awkward adventures and pleasures might come from all that; in short, real life living, in this bursting collision of beauty way. A life which occupied time and space, dared and did, rather than this stare down at the party unseen from the top of the dark banister, daydreaming that little girls do; daydreaming of putting on the strapless princess dress and sparkly tiara and walking down the stairwell into the light of the party greeted by astonished gasps and applause. You’ve arrived.

      Silly daydreams. Absent mindedly staring out windows on long rainy day drives daydreams; the types girls get while obtaining special feelings from being flooded with inspiration while swiping though fashion blog pictorials nostalgic over the 1970’s and horses, while listening to Taylor Swift; an inspiration that spills wastefully out of the universe producing nothing but half of a bad poem. Daydreaming, if only I could get that feeling back, that inspirational feeling back, then something great may come from me yet, something finished, and one day I really will be ready to live how I want; I’ll play guitar, join a band, make some cute boy adorably sexually awkward when seeing my body in a swimsuit while we night swim under a full moon and a warm breeze carrying the fragrance of flowers wafts by.

      Silly daydreams for silly girls like me who can, strangely, suddenly, start to cry, sometimes in a burst, sometimes in a trickle, sometimes in those dry-heave cries or cries like internal bleeding, during the deepest dives of one of my daydream spells, when I hadn’t even thought that I had been pondering anything sad. Girls like me who didn’t know at age twelve that her daydream disease wouldn’t become cured four years later. The daydream material leaps yearningly ever towards the future, into the great perhaps someday; if not in high school, then perhaps collage, will be where I find what I want, live how I want, get some of what I want.

      Life seems less elusive to all these others who posses all this confidence, brightness, beauty; some of my peers and Jan and her tight group of high school friends, not waiting for their turns but taking initiatives, no use for impeding patience, no taste for the distasteful, and so no dry mouths, hair or skin; everything wet and gushing, quenching, rushing in strong currents for these confident, strong willed, strong veined, strong minded, beautiful people who win these battles against thirst, against the dull, the dumb, the dry, the lame and the sad; winning battles; of course I have to describe this living that the beautiful strong ones do in this abstract way because I don’t really know what it is concretely or how it feels in any practical real way, never having really lived.

      Of course those outside looking in romanticize the lives of those they’re looking in on. Even the pretty, popular, smart ones whose lives seem full of friends and exciting activities, seemingly brimming with talent and confidence, deal with their hidden insecurities, have worries, and can be prone to boredoms and depressions. I know that. Jan did kill herself after all. I had thought of her as one of the brightest blazing examples of how the beautiful live; someone who knows how to harvest daydreams into reality; but no.

      The day before she killed herself if I had been told that one of us would end our own lives I would have bet on myself. An easy Vegas bet. If one of us had to die I would have volunteered. Jan had more brightness and potential. She made others in contact with her lighter and happier. She was prettier, smarter, had more energy. Had plans, it seemed. Now that light is snuffed out. I’m not totally without friends, but they would have gotten over me pretty quickly; I don’t mean that to be one of those self-pitying thoughts that are meant to illicit attention and sympathy; just a matter of truth.

      The last hand-me-down Jan gave me was this stigma, or maybe that’s not the right word; this new added aspect, or cut, of being the younger sister of a suicide victim. We’re born as crude rocks floating in a vanilla sky, and through experiences we are cut to be shaped a certain way which reflects and filters light (life, or the world) a certain way—never mind, I won’t try to explain my jumbled philosophical metaphor which probably only makes sense inside my head.

      Most of Jan’s high school friends, her tight circle came to her funeral. Some of them knew her better than I did. Each held unique and personal memories of her I was clueless about. Drunken nights, prom, dances, summer road trips, who knows what all else. So many specifics. These friends of hers took me on a summer road trip. It has changed me forever. Or it should. But maybe it won’t. I’ll get to all of that a little bit later.

      I recall my last substantial conversation I had with Jan. It was during Christmas break. She was home from Washington State College. The conversation often runs through my mind; what clues did I miss? What could I have said differently? We sat at the dining room table at night drinking hot chocolate. Mom and dad were in bed. A string of white lights strung over the banister.

      So how’s school? Jan asks.

      Fine, I say. Same old nothing.

      Do you think high school is the best time of your life? she asks.

      I don’t know.

      Do you think it’s supposed to be?

      "I don’t know. You hear people say it was the best time of their lives or the worst time of their lives. Maybe I’m just one of those meh, it was okay, type of people."

      Which do you think is sadder? Jan asks.

      Sadder?

      Yeah, those who say it was the best time of their lives or those who say it was the worst?

      Well… interesting question. Gut reaction is to say it’s sadder for those who hated it. But then, if your life peaked at high school, then I guess that’s sadder, I say. I mean, life goes on for so, so, so much longer.

      I know, right? she says. But life has to peak at some point I guess. She takes a sip. There’s little marshmallows in our mugs.

      Yeah I guess, I mumble.

      It’s an interesting time though. High school I mean, she says.

      Is it? I ask, not convinced.

      Yeah. Just that age more than anything. Everything is so immediate. So important in the moment. But with reflection you realize how silly you were to place such importance on trivial things. But reflection only comes later.

      Yeah, I say, agreeing. "That reflection thing is weird. Like, looking back at myself in middle school is like looking back at this whole other person who I sort of didn’t like, like, why was I so stupid, you know? But who I also, like, hold some nostalgia for, in this weird way. And I know with reflection my future self will probably feel that about myself now. But, like, even knowing this I… I don’t know."

      No, I get it, go on, Jan encourages.

      "But even knowing this, it’s not like I can’t help feel that whatever trivial thing, like I don’t know, not having a date or getting an invite to the party, isn’t important, you know? I can’t help, I guess, having feelings."

      "No, yeah, I totally get that and you’re totally right. Those feelings are important. Because we only live in the now, you know? And the feelings we have at any point in life are just as valuable and real as at any other point in life."

      Yeah, I say,

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