We had been on the road for six hours when Dad said the dreaded words, “We’re lost.”

I removed my headphones to listen to the catastrophe about to unfold.

Mom gaped at Dad’s sheepish grin. “What do you mean we’re lost? There’s a GPS on your phone.”

“Uh, I was using this actually—” He held up an atlas, which was not a good idea.

“You weren’t using the GPS?!”

“I thought we agreed to sight see, I was avoiding the toll roads.”

“There’s an option on your phone to avoid toll roads.”

“I know that, but it still didn’t take us past anything we wanted to see, like here—” Dad waved to the small town we were currently meandering our way through. The thin streets were surprisingly crowded with cars parked on the edges. The speed limit was pretty damn slow. Being so far from home, Dad was obeying the law to the T.

“We wouldn’t have come here if we listened to the GPS,” Dad reiterated in hopes to save himself from Mom’s growing wrath.

“He’s right, Chelsea,” said Aunt Zoey with a comforting smile. “Besides, it’s lunch time. The boys are probably hungry. Let’s stop somewhere to eat and we’ll look over the GPS and the map.”

Always the one with a plan. I guess I understood where Beau got his smarts from, but only that. The rest of him was shit. Dad’s plan wasn’t though, shit I mean, seeing as the scenic route from our southern corner of PA to Maine was much better than expected. Typically PA scenery consisted of two things, depending on whether you were close to the Appalachian mountains or not. There was either an ocean of rolling hills or cow pastures for days. Scratch that, there were cow pastures for days either way. We even had one next to our high school. No one ever really got used to the smell.

In our case though, we were purposefully making detours through small towns that would have been booming back in the day. Stone and brick houses were huddled together. Shops sat side by side with old striped awnings and iron lamp posts stood tall. Trees lined the road, sitting in their own square cut outs from the sidewalks. Said sidewalks were thin, some made of red brick faded with age. Old shops, possibly even passed down from generation to generation, still ran while appearing to have the original moldings and signage. Some shops were discolored while others were likely refurbished. But the towns were actually fascinating, as if we were thrown into the past.

Uncle David spotted a family owned diner (or so the sign claimed) with iron patio furniture and wide glass windows revealing a dark brick interior and delicious looking pork sandwiches. After the van was parked, we found ourselves seated at a place called Marriner’s Grill that smelled strongly of barbeque sauce and grilled meat. I was salivating the moment we got out of the van.

There was one seemingly not as starving as the rest of us though. My icy counterpart was MIA. The seat he once occupied was vacant. Aunt Zoey, as if she freakishly read my mind, called out, “Beau, don’t go too far! We’re going to order in a minute!”

“Ok!”

I took a chance to peek around Aunt Zoey, raising a confused brow at the sight of Beau kneeling down the street with a giant ass camera. I couldn’t deny that it was odd to see the soft smile playing on his damn near permanently scowling lips. He normally had two settings; resting bitch face and actual bitch face. Right then though, he was neither.

Slowly, he observed the town through the lens, steady hands snapping pictures of the scenery. That shouldn’t have been surprising though. He was in the yearbook club since middle school and was about to attend college to get a Bachelor of Arts with a focus in photography. Really had no idea what that all entailed, like, what the hell kind of classes would he have? Never asked since I was more focused on the “living in the dorms that were about 10 hours away” portion, y’know, the important bit.

I smiled at the thought.

Like Aunt Zoey warned though, the server returned to receive our orders. Beau wasn’t paying us any mind, but he always got the same damn thing. He had the taste palette of a child. So when the server got to me, I ordered for us because that bitch wasn’t making me wait for food.

Beau eventually graced us with his presence after the server at least got our drinks. He happily chugged half his pop in a single gulp. When our orders were brought out not long afterwards, it was only then that he put the pieces together; he never ordered, except the chicken salad with no tomatoes and italian dressing on the side was sitting in front of him anyways.

“Thanks, Mom,” he said, earning a confused stare.

“Huh?”

“Ordering for me.”

Aunt Zoey pointed to the boy with half a pulled pork sandwich already in his mouth; hi, that was me, and said, “Devin ordered for you, sweetie.”

Beau glared then grimaced. I wasn’t certain if it had to do with my stuffed cheeks and dirty mouth of barbeque sauce or the fact that I correctly ordered his meal. I was quick to explain, “Don’t act shocked. You always get some stupid chicken salad.”

Although I didn’t get why. Who the hell ate that little? I would be starving in less than thirty minutes! And it wasn’t like Beau was a small guy. Sure, I had about four inches on him height wise (which he continued to argue would change one day), but the dude had shoulders for days and ran every damn morning. I would know because we ran together. Why? Because we lived on the same street and he refused to take another route and I sure as hell wasn’t giving up mine. I had it first! So we ran together, bickering all the while.

“Even your taste in food is disappointing,” I added with a few fries sticking out of my mouth.

“You like chicken salads.”

“Sometimes, not always, besides, we’re on vacation.” I waved a few fries in the direction of his scrunched up face. “You pig out on vacation. It’s a rule.”

“Whose rule?”

“Everybody’s rule.”

Beau rested an elbow on the table, head atop his hand with a bored stare. “You’re a dumb ass.”

“At least I’m going to be a full dumb ass.” My eyes squinted when he smirked. “That didn’t sound as taunting after I said it.”

“You had to say it to figure that out?”

There were times where I contemplated murder in my life. I could say with absolute confidence that 99% of those times had to do with Beau. The other 1% were my so-called friends that had teased me the last few months of the school year about the upcoming vacation and whether or not I would be dead or in jail by the end of it (for murdering Beau or being murdered by Beau, either was an understandable outcome.)

The good thing about being with our parents though was that we didn’t have to interact so much. They kept talking, dragging us in from time to time but direct communication was little. I made sure to catch Beau’s gaze when I took the next bite from my sandwich though. He crunched his salad happily between his teeth in retaliation. I think Dad shook his head at us, but that was about it. They were used to our antics by that point.

“I bet the salad would be better with fries,” I mentioned.

“Why? Getting full, dumb ass?”

I would have thrown a fry at him, but that would have been an insult to fries everywhere.

We ate the remainder of our meal in silence. Beau scurried off to take more photographs afterwards while our parents went over the route. Once I caught the camera pointed my way. Beau’s green gaze locked with mine, peering over the device with a distant stare. I eagerly flipped him off. He still snapped the picture.

Twenty minutes later, we were back on the road.

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