He Started It

by Samantha Downing

You can’t fight every battle. Otherwise you end up bloodied, drained of energy, and unable to go on. Sometimes it’s better to agree and keep your mouth shut.

If you’ve ever been on a long road trip, you know how it goes. On the first day, everyone is excited to get going, happy about leaving their everyday life behind. Everyone is nice to one another, even family members. That excitement flows into the second day. Not as intense, but still there. The third day, fatigue sets in. There’s a happiness hangover from the first day, plus the realization that you’re stuck with these people for a while. You’re too tired to pretend anymore, so you become who you really are because you can only hide it for so long.

Even Krista. You know her. She’s the one who’s happy to organize the office Christmas party, the one who circulates the get-well cards for signatures, and when homemade goodies show up in the break room, you know she brought them because she does it once a week.

There’s nothing like an old-fashioned road trip to make or break a relationship.

That’s the thing about siblings. There’s always a payback for something they did, no matter how old it may be.

Arguing about every little thing is what makes people hate you, especially when it comes to family. They’re the least forgiving of all.

Maybe that’s what Felix is. An alien. You think you’re married to a human only to find out he’s from another planet. That would change things up.

Sometimes we are a family of assholes. You can blame that on Grandpa, he started it.

“Only the best for my wife.” The best, but not always the truth. It’s important to know the difference. If my family hadn’t played Risk so often, it would have taken me a lot longer to learn that.

My morning gets even better when Felix takes a shower. I take the opportunity to steal his cigarettes and replace them with a different brand. Even though I’m tired of this, it’s like I have to stick with it. You’d think I’d have better things to do with my time right now, given all the weird things that have happened, but Felix deserves this. If he’s going to lose his job because of smoking, he might as well lose his mind along with it.

I just remember that he was kind and easygoing and different than everyone in my family. But maybe he had always been this annoying and I never noticed.

She starts telling a story about her last boyfriend, a guy named Jagger. They met “at work.”

his betrayal has always been in the back of my mind. It’s why I would never fully trust him.

“You don’t like him?” I say. “Oh, he’s fine, I guess. A little quirky, maybe.” Quirky. Yes, I would say he’s quirky. And he can be uptight, finicky, and completely overorganized. And when you least expect it, he’ll slam his fist on the dashboard.

We don’t use sticks for the marshmallows. Not this time, not with Felix around. He bought a set of metal spears made just for roasting marshmallows, because “I’m not eating anything off a stick because a bear could’ve peed on it.”

“Do boys ever get sick of playing games?” No one answers out loud, although Jonah shakes his head no.

Side note about driving across the country: It’s impossible to understand how big it is unless you see how much nothing there is.