Drive Me Crazy (2 page)

Chapter Two
Cassie

U
nfair
would be one word for it.
Mortifying. Disgusting. Cruel and Unusual Punishment.
The list could go on, believe me.

Not only do I have to spend a week in the car with my Nono, whom I love but come on—she’s my
grandmother
—but on top of that, instead of touring along the coast of California together, just she and I, stopping where we please to take in art, and pedicures, and the occasional great meal or view, we have to go with—ugh—her new husband, Howard “Howie” Howe, which isn’t even a name. I mean, did his parents have a stutter? The whole thing is too weird to get used to. My whole life I’ve had a grandma but never a normal grandpa to match, and that’s part of what made
Nono so interesting. She didn’t
need
a husband. She didn’t
want
a traditional life. And now? That she does? With some hick from Atlanta of all places? A transplant out here who’s all
gee-golly
about the weather?

I shudder.

That isn’t even the beginning of my troubles, though. Because this isn’t simply a trip—it’s their
honeymoon
. Who brings their granddaughters along on their honeymoon? It is beyond ick. And why, of all the people I could be stuck with on an old-people honeymoon, does it have to be
her
?

By
her
, I mean Lana. As in, Blah-na. Sure, for about five seconds when I heard about her, when I learned there was for once a cousin my age, I was excited. Maybe I was interested. But the minute we got to the bed-and-breakfast where the wedding was being held, and Mom stopped messing up all my hard work with the straightening iron, I walked around to take in the situation. And saw Lana
in the same dress as me
. Right away, I knew there were going to be problems. Not the least of which being that she was so nerdily excited about it.

“Oh gosh,” she said, practically trembling. “I’ve heard so much about you from Grandma Tess! I’ve just pictured this moment, and then here we are, standing here, and we have the same outfit!”

Yeah,
I thought.
Lucky you.

I’d picked out the dress on a very bad day. At lunch, Kendra Mack and Cheyenne Taylor had been making fun of the way people laugh, and though they went around the table and did everyone, including themselves, something about the donkey way Kendra Mack made me sound was still sticking in my mind. It made me almost miss Fiona, even though we’ll never be friends again after what she did. So that afternoon, when Mom and I went shopping and she badgered me to finally
choose
something already, I grabbed the first dress I saw—all yellows and butterflies. It’s way more cutesy than my normal clothes, but it also felt happy in a way I needed, to help make Kendra Mack and her sense of humor bother me less. Don’t get me wrong—Kendra Mack is one of my closest friends, and hanging out with her group is a huge step up from being friends with Fiona. I just needed something cheerful that day.

And then, a week later, there’s Lana in the same dress. Her hair was in this limp little ponytail, and she was wearing the absolute wrong sandals, gushing away about how crazy it was that her mom had randomly picked this dress out for her—going on about how her mom has no sense of style and never buys her anything cool—and that this obviously meant we were destined to not only be family, but also best friends.

Of course, I was horrified. I told her it was just some
dumb thing my mom made me wear, and that was the end of it. But the rest of the day, Lana kept chattering at my shoulder and would not stop asking me questions. She’d obviously peppered Nono with questions about me too, since she knew
everything
, including embarrassing stories about when I was a baby and visiting some of Nono’s commune friends at their hot tub.

She went on and on about my life, my friends, and how much she just loves our grandmother’s wild adventures.
My
grandmother, I wanted to correct. Instead I made sure to tell her about the time Nono took me on a special trip to San Francisco when I was nine, just us, to see a ballet and meet her friend who was the choreographer. The way Lana’s eyes went wide, and how she started gushing questions again, made it seem even more fabulous than it had felt at the time.

So when, during one of the gross slow dances when the grown-ups were all hanging on each other—Nono and her new husband were practically making out on the dance floor—and Lana asked me if I’d ever been kissed, I smiled in a shy way I’d practiced in the mirror. I told her I’d recently had my first one, with Cory Baxter, at the end-of-the-year dance. I said I’d had a crush on him for a long time and finally got the nerve to tell him about it, even though he’s a whole year older. I told her he said he’d always liked
me too, and then, under the lights, our lips came together and the whole room swirled and—

It sounded so good it almost felt true.

It wouldn’t have been such a big deal if she hadn’t kept asking questions, and then swooned about it in front of
Tom
, of all people, as if talking about kissing in front of someone’s older brother is ever, ever okay. For the rest of the night, Tom was making kissy faces at me over the shoulders of the aunts and friends of Nono’s that his super-charming self had asked to dance. It made me sick, because I knew that wasn’t going to be the end of it. Sure enough, soon Dad heard about it. He went straight to Mom, and they both came and informed me I was grounded. Of course I couldn’t explain, because then I’d have to confess my lie. That in truth I had never even talked to Cory Baxter for more than three minutes made it even more unbearable. After that I didn’t want to
look
at Lana anymore, though everyone kept making us stand together in our matching dresses for pictures.

Ugh. And now I have to be in the car with her. For a week. A whole week away from all my friends, and anything cool that’s happening. Luckily, I’ll be home in time for Kendra Mack’s big end-of-summer pool party, and at least I have my phone with me, so I won’t be disastrously out of touch.

Right as I’m tossing the charger into my bag, my brother’s nosy face pushes into my room.

“Can’t you knock?”

“Mom says to bring your suitcases down. They’re almost here. You’ll—” He stops short and raises an eyebrow. “Pack enough, Sass? What’re they going to do? Strap all that to the roof?” He gawks at the pile by my bed: two suitcases, a cute tote, my purse, and my backpack, which I’m still filling with more shoes, some magazines, and my ceramic-plate hair straightener. “It’s only a week. You could dress four people with all this.”

“Some people like to wear more than the same nasty T-shirt and shorts for six days in a row,” I sneer at him.

“Some people are normal, unlike you,” he mutters, taking my heaviest bags, always having to be Mr. Gentleman.

I stick my tongue out like I’m gagging on his smell. It doesn’t really take that much imagination. Tom just turned fifteen, and ever since his birthday he coats himself with so much body spray it’s like he’s a perfume counter saleslady, an image that almost makes me giggle. Maybe Kendra Mack would think that was funny, too. I grab my purse and start digging for my phone to text her about it, but then Mom hollers to say they’re here.

“Coming,” I groan.

On the stairs, going slow because of both my suitcases,
Tom turns back and gives me one of his evil little grins. “At least you’ll come back with lots of great kissing stories from watching Nono and Grandpa Howie.”

“Shut up,” I grumble, feeling heat rising up in my cheeks. I’m not going to call Nono’s husband
grandpa
either, no matter what Tom does or my parents say. But then we’re at the landing, and there they all are, standing at the bottom of the stairs in our foyer, looking up at us, beaming.

“Well, you sure are prepared for this,” Howie says, trying to be funny. I smile as unenthusiastically as possible without being rude.

“Cassie’s favorite way to express herself is through her wardrobe,” Nono says admiringly. “It’s one of her finest traits.”

And that makes me feel good. Nono always understands my enthusiasm for a cute pair of earrings or the perfect scarf. Most of the good accessories I have actually came from her. The pride I feel under her compliment doesn’t last long, though, because then Nono says, “And one of Lana’s favorite ways of expressing herself is through singing. You should have heard us in the car earlier. It’s going to be a great week, joined by such artistic girls.”

My eyes meet with Lana’s. She’s clearly embarrassed, and I’m embarrassed for her. I raise my eyebrows just
slightly in
Oh gosh, here we go
sympathy, and the corner of her mouth lifts in enough of a smile to make one of her dimples show. I raise the edge of my own lips back—some kind of pact, maybe, between us. It is, after all, going to be the two of us dealing with the two of them all week.

But then of course she ruins it.

“Your house is so beautiful,” she gushes. “You must feel like a princess living here every day.”

Ugh. Who wishes they were a princess anymore? Is she five?

“Yeah,” I snort, jutting my chin toward my brother, “a princess trapped in a tower with an evil toad.”

“Oh, I can’t wait for a week without these two at each other,” Mom says, coming over to give me a hug. She strokes my hair, which I hate because she always messes it up when she does that. “Have a good time. And listen to your grandparents, okay?”

I nod, turning to Dad and hugging him around the waist. “Don’t spend the whole time on your phone, got it?” he says.

“Oh,” Howie laughs. “These girls are going to be too busy having real-life fun.”

“Good luck with that,” Tom mutters, heading out the door to put my suitcases in the car.

And though I hate my brother sometimes for being so
perfect in everyone’s eyes and such a jerk when no one sees, this time he’s absolutely right. Mom and Dad can make me go on this trip, and they can even make me pretend to like Lana, but there’s no way anybody’s going to make me have fun.

Chapter Three
Lana

G
randma Tess, Cassie’s brother, and her dad arrange and rearrange the bags in the trunk several times, but it’s soon clear there’s no way everything’s going to fit. Mr. Parker tells Cassie she’s just going to have to cut her suitcases down to one, and the way she stomps her foot and glares at him before lugging them both back inside is a little alarming. I try to shake off my surprise and listen politely while the grown-ups talk on the lawn, but I really want us to get going. Narrowing things down to a few essential outfits can’t be that hard. I’m about to offer to go in and help Cassie when she bangs out of the house again, struggling with her one bulging suitcase even though her brother’s trailing behind her, stretching out his hand to help. Her
cheeks are flushed and her mouth’s set tight, and I think the whole neighborhood must know how mad she is.

Finally, we get in the car and wave to her family. I’m hoping that picking up where we left off at the wedding, only better, will help lift Cassie’s mood, but before I can even open my mouth, Grandma Tess asks Cassie how plans are going for her family’s Labor Day picnic.

“Fine,” is all Cassie says, staring out the window.

I can see our grandmother’s brief surprise at such a terse response, but Grandma Tess takes it in stride and breezes on to the next question.

“And tennis camp last week? You enjoyed that coach last year so much. Was she there again?”

“Nope.” Cassie’s eyes are still fixed on the window, watching the last bits of Monterey disappear behind us. “It was a new coach. I didn’t really learn that much.”

I want to know more about all this, like how many games has she played and does she win a lot? I wonder if she could teach me, so that we could play together. We have yoga and dance classes at my school, but most of my exercise I get from riding my bike around—I’ve never taken any kind of sports class or joined any sort of team. Doing something physical that’s also a competition sounds like it could be kind of fun. Especially with Cassie.

But what Grandma Tess can’t see from the driver’s seat,
and I can, is that Cassie doesn’t only look uninterested in talking—she looks like she’s about to cry. I want to reach out and pat her in some comforting way, but since we didn’t even hug at her house, I’m not sure that’s a good idea. Right now she clearly needs whatever privacy she can have in a car with three other people.

“So, Grandma Tess,” I say, to take the attention off Cassie. “Have you ever gone camping in any of these parks we’ll be seeing?”

Grandpa Howe and I have been working together on the plans for this trip, so I know we’re going through several incredible national parks and nature reserves in the next eight days. Tonight we’re staying at a gorgeous old Spanish ranch that’s been converted to a resort-y place with a hotel, spa, and a couple of restaurants—as far from camping as we can get for our first night. Tomorrow we’ll go on a tour of a real castle before driving to our next city, where we’re taking a class from a famous TV chef who has a fancy bakery there. At least, that’s what we’re planning, though Grandpa Howe warned me Grandma Tess may get some other last-minute ideas.

“Not down here, Lana.” Grandma Tess looks at me through the rearview mirror. “It’s part of why I wanted this trip for my honeymoon. Somehow in all my travels, and after living here in California for so long, I’ve managed
not to see much of the country between San Francisco and L.A.—just bopped between them. There was this one time, though, camping in North Carolina—I had joined a few friends during their hike on the Appalachian Trail, taking a break from my dissertation work—”

“There were a lot of those breaks, if I’ve got the story right,” Grandpa Howe says over his shoulder, laughing gently.

Grandma Tess swipes at his leg before going on to tell us about sitting around the campfire with her friends, drinking wine they’d made and singing songs, when they all heard a terrible crashing in the woods that scared them to death.

“You should’ve seen everyone’s faces,” she laughs. “Absolutely paralyzed, ears all cocked to the sound. The whole mood went from revelry to sheer terror in two seconds.”

I grip Grandpa Howe’s headrest to lean forward. “Was it a bear?”

“We thought so. We’d tied up our food the way you’re supposed to, but we hadn’t been all that careful. None of us could remember what you were supposed to do in a bear attack either. We argued about this for at least an hour the next day on the trail. Were you supposed to get big and loud? Play dead?”

“It’s run zigzag downhill, right?” Grandpa Howe says, grinning at Grandma Tess in a way that I know he’s teasing. I’m pretty sure big and loud is right, because my best friend, Tamika, knows tons about the wilderness, and I think she’s said that before.

Grandma Tess keeps going with the story, mimicking how they all sat there in fear, until her friend jumped up and said she’d rather face whatever it was out there standing.

“We’re all about to pee ourselves, with Sally shining her light into the trees. She steps out of the circle—we practically scream for her not to—when she lets out a surprised sound and doubles over in laughter. When she finally pulls herself together, she aims the light back out into the woods to show us what we were all so scared of.”

“Jimmy Fallon in a cowgirl costume, right?” Grandpa Howe jokes.

“One of those awful possums!” Grandma Tess says, smacking the steering wheel with the heel of her hand. “We were all quite sure we were about to meet our makers, because of one of those oversized rats.” She cracks up.

“Well, that reminds me of a good End of the Road story, actually,” Grandpa Howe says. That gets him going on a tale about him and his cousins at their old summer house in Maine, scaring one of Grandpa Howe’s big uncles with a
mouse. I’ve heard the story before—Grandpa Howe talks about the End of the Road a lot—but it’s a good one. Confident there’ll be storytelling for a while now, I sneak a glance at Cassie. When she looks back, she gives me what might be a smile, but then she reaches into her backpack and takes out earbuds. She plugs them in, taps a few times on her phone, and gazes back out the window in her own world with music that she won’t share with the rest of us.

This is going to be a very long trip.