Drive Me Crazy (3 page)

“Since you can’t find your way around a map, I’m quite certain you’ll struggle to figure out how to put a tent together,” Kate said, and then smirked.

Alone with Adam, Kate was free to vent all of her frustrations toward him without her friends getting uncomfortable. Sierra and Alexis had set off in search of dinner food, and had left Kate and Adam to set up the tent. Kate wanted to do it herself, but Adam had insisted he needed to stay to help. As if.

“Well, now,” Adam muttered under his breath, but loud enough for Kate to hear. “Those are fighting words.”

Kate fixed him with an evil look and muttered right back, “What did you expect, loving glances and doting compliments?”

“Hey,” Adam shot back, “you don’t need to be snobby about it. We’re going to be together twenty-four-seven for the next few days, so maybe you could try to be just the tiniest bit civil, instead of an evil bitch from hell?”

“That doesn’t even deserve a response,” Kate retorted. “Are you going to help me put this tent together, or would you just like to sit on that log over there and enjoy a cool soda while I show you how to be useful?”

“You are feisty, aren’t you?” The look on Adam’s face suggested he was sort of enjoying their banter. “So you’re saying you need a gentleman’s help?”

“That would be great,” Kate stated calmly. “I’d love to have a gentleman’s help. Unfortunately, I have to use you instead. Can you please contribute for approximately thirty seconds?”

“Yeah,” Adam said, surrendering. “Of course I’ll help. It would have been easier if you’d asked nicely. Possibly a ‘pretty please’?”

Kate wanted to scream. Adam clearly thrived on pissing her off. Opting to ignore him, she pulled the pieces of the tent out of their nylon bag and started laying them on the ground in straight, orderly piles. Long stakes, short stakes, sections of tent fabric. Once everything was out of the bag, Kate stepped back to survey the project. Three neat stacks of tent parts, all straight and organized.

Adam was watching her with an amused smile. “All set?”

“Yes, thank you.” She looked at him suspiciously. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Would it bother you if I, say, did this?” Adam reached his leg out and pushed one of the tent stakes with the toe of his shoe. The stake was now lying at a ninety degree angle to the other stakes and looked completely out of order.

Kate reached her shoe out and pushed it back into place, neatly next to the others.

“It does bother you, doesn’t it?” Adam chuckled.

“No,” Kate insisted. She didn’t want to let Adam know that disorder bothered her immensely. “You bother me.”

Adam started laughing harder now. “That’s becoming clear.”

Kate pulled the tent’s assembly instructions out of the bag and squatted down to start to put the pieces of the tent together. “Step one…,” she muttered, grabbing a couple of pieces off the ground.

“Why are you doing it like that?” Adam asked, squatting down next to her. “These pieces go here.” He pushed two long poles together. “See? Like that.”

“You’re supposed to put this part together first.” Kate pulled the pole apart and adjusted it slightly. The way Adam had put them together would maybe have worked, but it wasn’t the way it was supposed to be done.
She
had the instruction booklet…not him. “
Then
you can push these two poles together.”

“Oh, I see.” Adam nodded. “So even though the end result is exactly the same, the way you’ve done it is right, because you’re incredibly bossy and stubborn and want to be difficult?”

“Or maybe it’s because I have the instruction booklet and don’t want you to assemble a tent that’s going to fall apart on us during the night? Fine, I’ll just let you put all of these poles together. Let me know when they’re done. Don’t screw it up.”

Kate stormed off and grabbed their tarp out of the trunk. She laid it down on a flat part of the campsite that looked like a good place to set up the tent. It was right next to the campfire pit, which seemed like it would help keep the tent nice and toasty if the air cooled off overnight. She could feel Adam watching her as he put the pieces of tubing together. “Do you have something else to say?”

He held his hands up in front of him defensively. “Nope. By all means, keep doing what you’re doing.”

“What’s wrong with the way I’m doing it?”

Adam surveyed the tarp and glanced around the rest of the campsite. “I guess I was just thinking we could put the tent up back there,” he said, and gestured to a tall stand of pine trees that had a gorgeous, soft-looking grassy space in the center. “But if you want to sleep right next to the fire and hope the wind doesn’t blow the fire onto the tent and burn us all up in the night, by all means…”

Huffily, Kate grabbed the tarp and pulled it across the campsite to the stand of pine trees. Adam had made his point, and she decided it was easier not to argue with him. Maybe if she ignored him, he’d just go away.

After a few glorious minutes of silence while they each worked independently, Adam had all of the tent poles assembled and Kate had the tarp laid out. She had put rocks on each corner of the tarp to keep it in place. Adam brought the long poles over, and Kate dragged the pieces of tent fabric.

“So next,” Kate said, pulling the instruction booklet out of her pocket, “we put these little stakes into the ground to hold the corners of the tent in place.”

Adam paused, then said simply, “Okay.”

“Do you have a different idea?” Kate could tell he was questioning her logic. It was the way he’d said “okay” with a totally non-okay tone.

“I think we need to put the long poles through the channels before we secure the corners—that way we know how big the tent will actually be.”

Kate was boiling with frustration. Adam was
so
bossy and couldn’t stop acting like a tent know-it-all. In truth she had never actually
been
in a tent before, but there was no way she was going to admit that. Instead she said simply, “I have the instruction booklet, Adam. So let’s do it the way it’s supposed to be done.” She hated the way he brought out this side of her. She knew she was being completely confrontational and argumentative, but the way he criticized her every move was infuriating.

After a few false starts the center of the tent eventually lifted into the air. It wobbled slightly in the evening breeze, but stayed upright. “That looks about right,” Kate declared, stepping back to admire her work.

“Nicely done,” Adam complimented. She realized he was being genuine, and swelled with pride. “Let’s get our gear inside,” Adam instructed. “It’s getting dark, and we should get things ready before Lex and Sierra get back with dinner.”

“Don’t we need to finish securing the tent first?” she asked, studying the instruction manual.

Adam shook his head. “No, we can do that afterward. As long as it’s up, we’re fine pulling our gear inside.” Kate shrugged and tossed the instruction manual outside the door of the tent. She’d let Adam have his way this time, since things seemed to be going okay.
No thanks to him.

They walked together back to the car. Kate popped open the trunk and pulled her big duffel bag out. “Do you want me to get that for you?” Adam offered.

“I can handle it,” Kate snapped back.
Now he’s trying to be helpful?
she mused. When they got back to the tent, Kate climbed in with her bag and Alexis’s sleeping bag. Once she’d finished arranging Alexis’s spot in the center of the tent—next to Adam, who was on the far wall—she unzipped her big bag and started to pull out her pillow.

She had just lifted her pillow to fluff it when suddenly the center of the tent made a snapping sound and the whole thing came billowing down around them. “Ayeeee!” Kate shrieked, buried in the mounds of tent fabric.

“You okay?” Adam cried from somewhere nearby, under the fallen fabric.

“I’m buried alive!” Kate declared, then burst out laughing. Adam cracked up too, and they both started flailing around in the tent trying to find an escape route.

“Stay still and I’ll try to get it back up again. There’s no sense in both of us risking our lives to dig out of here,” Adam joked. A few moments later he was standing in the center of the tent fabric with the posts back in place. Kate applauded from her seat on the ground. Adam shrugged. “I guess you were right…. We should have secured it a little better before we started to get our stuff inside.”

Thank you
, Kate mused silently.
Ha, ha! I was right!
Out loud she said, “No biggie. If you hold it up for a sec, I’ll get the final stakes in place and we should be back in business.” She went outside the tent and quickly read through the rest of the instructions. After she placed the stakes, she was confident that everything was in order. She ducked back inside the tent and started to get her bedding out.

“Did you bring a
duvet
?” Adam was rolling his thin sleeping bag out on the floor on the other side of the tent, but had stopped to watch what Kate was doing. “Please tell me that’s a duvet.”

“It is. Why is that funny?”
Here we go again
. Kate had started to consider that maybe Adam wasn’t as intolerable as she had thought, but now she suspected things were about to sour again.

“Princess, we’re in a tent. You don’t bring a duvet to go camping.” Adam was cracking himself up. “Did you bring your hair dryer and tanning oils as well? Do you need me to pick up your mattress from the front desk? Shall we call for room service?” Adam held his hand up to his ear like a phone and spoke in a fussy accent. “Yes, yes, I’ll take the lemon verbena hand massage and a salmon salad, thank you.”

Kate narrowed her eyes at him but kept her mouth shut. It wasn’t worth engaging with him further. Once she had her sleeping space in order, she turned to Adam and blurted out, “Can you get out of here? I need to change into my pajamas.”

“Are you going to bed? What about dinner?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Don’t you need to brush your teeth or anything?”

“Is that any of your business?” Kate wanted him to scram. She just wanted to change and go through her nighttime routine in silence and privacy. She hadn’t even thought about how they would get ready for bed and change and all the other things you just
do
in front of your girlfriends but that seem especially private and embarrassing when there’s a guy nearby. She noticed that her retainer case had fallen out of her pajama pants pocket, and she quickly shoved it deep inside her pillowcase away from Adam’s prying eyes.

“Brushing your teeth is not my business,” Adam responded, just sitting there, completely disrespectful of her wish that he leave her alone. “But it will be my business when you’re breathing dragon breath all over the car tomorrow.”

“Ugh, you’re such a pig!” Kate cried out.

Adam grinned, the way he always did when Kate started getting loud and angry. “Sorry.”

“If you’re really sorry, you’ll get the hell out of this tent immediately. I just want to go to sleep, and I want to do that without you staring at me like some sort of creep. Tell Lex and Sierra good night. I’m sure I’ll be up first in the morning, so I can drive first shift.”

Kate zipped the tent shut after Adam crawled out, closing the door on her terrible day. It couldn’t be over soon enough.

By noon the next day everyone was in a foul mood and ready to stop for lunch. They’d been driving since before eight that morning, and they were all tired and at one another’s throats.

Alexis and Sierra had apparently gotten lost on their way to find a grocery store the night before, and hadn’t gotten back to the campground until almost eleven. Adam had sat up waiting for them next to a crackling fire—Kate had been able to hear his banjo strumming quietly as she’d tried to fall asleep. As annoying as Adam was, he had a beautiful voice, and his singing had helped her drift off into slumber. Of course, the thought of seeing Lucas in a few days had kept her tossing and turning. Her imagination was running wild and kept her up far longer than she would have liked.

“Lucas texted me this morning and said we should go to this huge amusement park that’s about thirty miles off the next exit, if anyone’s up for it,” Kate offered hopefully. They were a full day and a half into their trip, and so far, they weren’t having a lot of fun. A roller coaster could put a smile on anyone’s face, she figured.

“Well.” Adam slapped his knee. “If
Lucas
suggests we all go there, then by all means we should!”

“What does that mean?” Kate whipped around from her front seat to glare at Adam in the back. Adam and Lucas knew each other from summers at the lake, but they’d never really been friends. Lucas hung out with his brothers and a couple other guys whose families owned cabins near the Cattail Cottages Resort. Adam had always been buddy-buddy with the guys who worked at the resort during the summer. Totally different crowds.

“I think an amusement park sounds fun,” Sierra cut in.

Alexis nodded her agreement. “Let’s do it. We’re ahead of schedule, anyway, so we have some time to kill. Adam’s interview isn’t until tomorrow afternoon, and we’re only a few hours’ drive away from Ann Arbor.”

“But Kevin awaits you in Michigan, Alexis. Don’t you want to keep on truckin’?” Adam pulled a twine of licorice from the bag that was resting between Kate and Sierra. “Thanks.”

“Kevin is at some sort of orientation training session thing this weekend. He’s not getting back until late tonight, and I want to make sure he’s there. So no rush. Tomorrow’s good.” Something in her voice sounded strained, and Kate made a mental note to ask her what was going on later. Later, when they could get rid of Adam.

Half an hour and no further conversation later, they pulled into the amusement park parking lot. “Fifteen dollars for parking?” Kate exclaimed. “That’s insane.” She was tight on cash for the road trip, and couldn’t stomach spending that much to park. They still had to pay the entrance fee!

“I can cover it,” Alexis said quickly, and Kate knew it wasn’t worth further discussion. Alexis was in a different financial position from Kate, and it was stupid to pretend otherwise. Kate didn’t have a lot of money to spare, unlike Alexis, whose family seemed to be made of money. Alexis got to pick a car for her sixteenth birthday; Kate got dinner out at the steak and sushi place near her house.

The difference in financial status sometimes caused tension in their friendship, but usually Alexis was pretty good about not treating Kate like a charity case. Kate was pretty frugal all year long, since she gave up the chance to get a summer job in order to spend every June and July at the lake. During the school year they usually just hung out at someone’s house, and it helped avoid uncomfortable money situations.

As Sierra eased Alexis’s car through the line toward the parking lot booth, Adam announced, out of the blue, “I just realized I forgot a shirt for my interview. Why don’t I just drop you off here, and I’ll hit that mall we passed a few miles up the road. Pick you up in a few hours?”

Kate couldn’t hide her enthusiasm at the idea of getting a few hours alone with her girlfriends. “Sounds great.”
Dumbass
, she thought.
What kind of loser forgets his shirt for such an important interview?

“You’re going to the mall instead of a roller coaster?” Alexis chided. “Pick us up by that big elephant over there, okay?” She pointed to a giant green elephant near the entrance to the park. “Say, four o’clock?”

“Right.” Adam saluted at Alexis. The girls hopped out of the car, and Adam jumped into the driver’s seat. He did a quick U-turn and sped off, as though he couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

“He seems to be having a lovely time on our road trip,” Sierra joked as Adam drove off.

“Hmm,” Alexis mused. “Maybe not so much. But
we
didn’t invite him to ride across the country with us, so I’m not too worried about it.” She pulled several twenty-dollar bills out of her wallet and hastily paid the entrance fee for all three of them. “My treat…. Please accept this as my apology for us getting stuck with my cousin on our road trip.”

Kate smiled appreciatively.
Count on Alexis to find a way to pay without making me feel like a total mooch.
“Thanks. You don’t have to do that, though.”

“It’s the least I can do. But he’s not all bad, is he?” Alexis looked at her friends hopefully, clearly feeling guilty about their trip going awry.

Sierra replied, “Not at all. Adam cracks me up.”

At exactly the same time Kate declared, “Ugh. He’s so annoying!”

Alexis laughed. “Two very different opinions.”

“I’m sorry,” Kate said, and she meant it. She didn’t mean to complain about Adam, but he was just so obnoxious and rude. She continued, “He wasn’t even willing to read the instruction booklet about how to put the tent together last night, so it collapsed on top of us. And he totally mocked my duvet, which was just childish. It’s not
that
funny that I brought a duvet, is it? Just because he has a ratty old sleeping bag, somehow he’s, like, Captain Camping, granted full liberty to criticize the way I packed for a road trip or something?” Kate stopped for a breath, and both of her friends cracked up laughing.

“Why is that funny?” Kate asked, starting to laugh herself. “Okay, so he irritates the hell out of me. I guess you get it? Plus, what an idiot…. Who forgets to pack their shirt for a scholarship interview? It’s the whole point of him being here.”

“He’s afraid of heights,” Alexis said, shrugging. “I think he used the shirt as a less-embarrassing excuse to avoid the roller coasters.”

Sierra laughed. “He couldn’t get out of here fast enough. I was wondering what was going on. Aww…It’s Adam’s sweet, vulnerable side. Poor guy.”

Just then Kate’s phone beeped, signaling a new text message. From Lucas.

“Ooh!” Alexis declared. “Is that from Prince Charming, who will greet you at the end of the road with a big fat smoochy kiss?” She grabbed Kate’s phone and flipped it open, reading the message aloud: “‘Just got to Love. How long till you get here? It’s not as fun without you.’ Aww! He’s so sweet.” She rolled her eyes and tossed the phone back to Kate, who reread the message and melted a little.

“Okay. Now I want to skip the rest of the road trip and just get there already,” Kate confessed.

“Hey, now!” Sierra scolded. “Y’all need to remember that this summer is just as much about the road to Love as it is about Love itself. This is
our
adventure.”

Alexis lifted her eyebrows. “With all that Love in there, you sound like Kate, Sierra.”

“What’s wrong with being a romantic?” Kate protested.

“All right, all right,” Sierra mediated, as she often did when both Kate and Alexis started to show their stubborn streaks. “Do you guys want to get a picture?” They were just inside the entrance to the park, and people were stopping in little groups to have their pictures taken as a souvenir of their trip to the amusement park.

“Oh, yeah!” Alexis grabbed both of her friends around their waists and grinned at the greasy guy behind the camera. The photographer complimented Alexis on her smile, which cracked them all up. Kate looked at Sierra, and they both stuck their tongues out at the same time.

The photographer checked his work and gave them a thumbs-up. “Perfect!” he cried, then kissed his fingertips at them.

“Icky,” Sierra observed quietly. They made their way over to the printing station, where all the recent pictures were displayed on a big screen. Their picture wasn’t posted yet, so they scanned the other pictures that had been taken. There was a funny shot of a bunch of white-haired old ladies, all making faces at the camera. One of the ladies was doubled-up with laughter because another was tickling her side as the photographer captured the shot. “That’s priceless,” Sierra declared, pointing at the photo.

“Of course, I peed my pants a little when she tickled me,” said a voice behind them. One of the old ladies from the picture was standing behind Sierra. She chuckled, then pointed at the picture screen. “Now, that’s a cute one. You girls look like you’re having fun.”

The picture of Alexis, Sierra, and Kate had just been posted on the screen. Sierra and Kate were grinning at each other with their tongues out, but their bodies were only half in the picture. Apparently, the photographer had been a little too excited about Alexis’s smile. It was a great shot nonetheless. “Yeah,” Kate agreed. “We
are
having fun.”

“Good,” the lady responded, then rubbed Kate’s shoulder. “Girlfriends are the spice of life. Even when they torture your weak bladder.” She chuckled, then sashayed off with the picture of her and her friends, waving the photo in the air for them all to see.

Kate watched as the group of old ladies giggled about the picture and teased one another about the way they looked. As she stared at them walking off into the amusement park, having a great time, Alexis dangled a photo key chain in front of her face. “I bought one!” she announced. “We’ll share it.”

An hour later they had gone on the big roller coaster three times. Every time they got in line, they found themselves behind the same group of old ladies. They’d discovered the women were on a bus tour around the Midwest. There were forty of them in total, and they were louder than a high school volleyball team on their way to an away game. Kate, Alexis, and Sierra could hardly talk while they waited in line, since the tour bus gang was so chatty.

Kate felt the buzz of a text message in her pocket during their third ride on the roller coaster. After they piled out, she pulled her phone out and checked it. Lucas again.

“What did he say?” Sierra prodded.

“He just said he’s getting ready for the barbecue, and wishes we were there tonight.” Kate blushed, thrilled that Lucas seemed to be on exactly the same wavelength that she was on about their summer together. She was glad she had the road trip to hang out with Alexis and Sierra, since she was getting the impression that Lucas wanted her all to himself when she got there.

Alexis rolled her eyes, prompting Kate to ask, “What’s your deal, Lex?”

“You’re so delusional about your so-called relationship with Lucas.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means, you’re bound to be disappointed.” Alexis said this harshly, clearly intending to hurt Kate’s feelings. “I wish you would just live in the present and not fantasize about some perfect relationship with a fantasy guy you barely even hooked up with a year ago.”

“Lex,” Sierra warned, “don’t bring your own relationship issues into Kate’s romance.”

Alexis narrowed her eyes at her friends. Then tears sprung to her eyes, and she quickly turned away from them. Kate reached out to grab her arm, and Alexis pulled away. “What’s going on?” Kate asked gently. “Lex, are you okay?”

“I’m just being stupid,” Alexis grumbled bitterly. “Let’s get cotton candy, okay?”

Sierra laughed. “Air-spun sugar is not going to distract us. We
need
to know what’s eating you.”

“Fine,” Alexis relented. “But I still want cotton candy.”

Kate bought a bag of blue, purple, and pink cotton candy, and they all settled on a bench overlooking the water ride. It was oppressively hot, and the periodic splash of the water at the bottom of the track was refreshing.

Alexis dipped her hand into the bag of sugar and said, “I guess I’m just angry at Kevin for not coming home at all this summer. I’m at the lake for the first part of summer anyway, but then I’m stuck in Jersey without a boyfriend the entire month of August. I feel like he should want to be with me, but he’s doing this whole internship thing instead.” Alexis paused to let a piece of cotton candy melt on her tongue. She rolled her tank top up at the bottom, exposing her flat stomach to get some sun. “I know it sounds selfish, and I guess I should have known this was coming, but I’m not sure I’m ready to deal with whatever it is we have to deal with now that he’s all into his college life and I’m, well, not.”

“Lex, that’s not selfish,” Kate said seriously. “It’s fine to want to see your boyfriend. You’re soul mates, right? So it’s important to spend time together.”

Alexis laughed loudly. “Soul mates? I don’t know about that. It’s more like we hook up and have a good time.”

“Come on,” Kate insisted. “There has to be more to it than that. You’re in a
relationship
. If he’s not giving you the attention and respect you deserve, you need to find someone who will. You owe it to yourself.” Kate knew Kevin would never treat Alexis the way a boyfriend should. He was a jerk with his own agenda, and she wished Alexis could see that. But she also wanted to be supportive of Alexis’s choices.

Sierra had been sitting quietly, biting off bits of blue cotton candy. Finally she broke in, “You two have to realize that you’re looking for totally different things with relationships.” She let the sugar melt on her tongue, then continued. “Kate, you’re looking for storybook romance and a guy who treats you like the leading lady in a romance movie. Lex, you’re looking for, um…”

“Are you trying to politely say that Kate is a hopeless romantic and I’m just hopeless?” Alexis offered this suggestion jokingly, but Sierra clearly felt bad.

“No! I’m just saying that Kate’s fantasy of what it is to be a girlfriend is very different from your reality.”