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Two hours later, the Nissan finally made the extended roundabout trip to the sole exit to Menifee. For any other normal person and normal automobile, the trip would have taken an average of twenty-five minutes, however, this was Allison and the infamous Nissan, so something was bound to happen. As it would go, something did happen. Something involving more than five miles of extensive roadwork followed by a three car pile-up in the middle of the road.
Cops were positioned all around the perimeter, and normally Allison would have been paranoid just at the site of one of the men in blue. However, her car did not contain any open containers or friends who thought smoking a joint made long trips more enjoyable, so she felt a little more at ease whenever she heard the sirens and saw the flashing red and blue lights spinning wildly on top of the cop cars.
“I wish these people would crack up on their own time,” Allison sighed as she sat amidst a long line of cars with equally pissed off drivers trapped inside their confining cabins.
After the sickness of boredom started to take over her mind, she suddenly wished that she would have taken some of her college friends with her. Jamie, her roommate for the last two years, had begged her to let her come along for the ride. Jeff and Priscilla also had shown an immense interest in wanting to go to see if Menifee was as small as Allison had described it to them. However, Allison had thought it wouldn’t be a good idea to mix both worlds of friends together for an entire summer. Her college friends were completely different than her hometown gang, and she suspected that mixing the two worlds together would result in some sort of cosmic explosion.
After the two trucks had carried the demolished vehicles away to wherever their finally destination was fated to be, the long line of cars finally proceeded to go on their own predetermined routes. Allison put the gas pedal to the floor in frustration as the Nissan’s engine sputtered and coughed from the dead start. She could already feel the cuss words bubbling to the front of her mouth, but she tried to suppress them by taking three deep breaths. Once the Nissan got its act together and they were on their way, however, Allison quickly slammed her foot on the brake and almost caused another three car pile-up.
She could hardly believe who she saw standing on the side of the highway with a placid look plastered on his beaming face. It was her older brother, Paul, calmly standing on the side of the road in a pair of gray slacks and a wrinkled white button up long-sleeved shirt. His light brown hair was slightly frazzled to the point where it flipped out at the ends where his hair met his shoulders, but the rest of his appearance looked completely normal.
He looked exactly as she had last remembered him. Complacent and without a single care in the whole world.
The Nissan came to a slow stop on the side of the road where he stood. Without even giving any indication of recognition he continued to stare straight ahead at a line of pine trees on the opposite side of the highway. Allison waited for him to say something, but he never made any sign that he even realized a car was directly in front of him.
“Hey!” Allison yelled when she realized that her brother was nowhere near to acknowledging her presence.
His eyes dropped to where the Nissan sat with Allison hanging halfway out of the window. Another light mist of rain was beginning to fall, and Allison could already sense her hair beginning to form into natural waves of coarse brown strands. She considered retreating back into the safe confines of the Nissan, but she knew that her brother would never have noticed her presence if she hadn’t attempted to clarify who was driving the beat-up heap.
“What do you want?” Paul asked, clearly oblivious to who he was talking to.
“Paul,” Allison started off in an almost maternal tone.
“What the hell?” he panicked. “How do you know who I am?”
“Paul, this is your sister,” Allison quietly said, doubting whether he would know who she was after her obvious statement.
“Dude, Jane can’t even drive yet, alright? So unless this is like some sort of futuristic time machine, you can’t be her.” He seemed impressed with his rationalization of the current situation.
“No, Paul, your other sister.”
He continued to stay rooted to the same shameless spot on the side of the road staring at both Allison and the Nissan. Neither of his dark brown eyes seemed to register any sort of sign of recognition, and Allison narrowed her eyes in frustration. He raised his hand up to scratch the top of his head and push the bushy mess out of his face, but the procedures didn’t seem to help jog his memory into action.
“Come on, Paul! You’re not that stupid! I’m your other sister!” Allison yelled, losing every last bit of her patience.
He immediately stopped messing with his hair and dropped his hand back to rest at his side. Finally a spark of recollection popped into his eyes as his jaw slowly dropped and his mouth formed into a large O.
“Allison! What the hell happened to you?” he yelled, walking towards the car with both arms in the air raised to the heavens.
“What do you mean what happened. Nothing happened.”
“Something happened,” he replied, offering nothing further to support his statement.
“I’m not even going to delve into whatever thoughts happen to be floating in your head that caused you to say all the crap,” Allison firmly stated still leaning out of the open window. “Just get in the damn car so that I can take you home.”
Paul heeded his sister’s strict command as he ran around the front of the Nissan to the passenger door. Allison slumped back into her seat and clicked the button to roll her window back up. Adjusting the rear view mirror, she looked at her reflection yet again to try and discover what had made her so unrecognizable to her own brother. As before, she saw nothing except for the extreme haircut that would make her so unrecognizable.
Her speedy inspection was quickly interrupted when she heard a loud roar and a high-pitched scream as her brother narrowly missed getting run over by a huge Pepsi truck. Horns blared, tires squealed, and Paul danced his way out of the middle of the road and wrenched open the car door. Launching himself into the black leather car seat, he managed to close the door and strap his seatbelt on in less than five seconds.
“It’s my hair, isn’t it?” Allison said, after a few brief moments passed as Paul tried to catch his breath.
“What?” he asked, his hair wild and his eyes bugged out.
“It’s the new haircut. That’s why you didn’t recognize me, right?”
“Allison, I just almost got run over by a freaking truck, and you are asking me how I like your hair? What the hell is wrong with you?”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Allison screamed back at him. “Maybe if you didn’t saunter out into the middle of the highway, you would have completely skipped your little death scare!”
“Well, yeah, but what does that have to do with your hair?”
“Nothing. I was just trying to figure out why the hell you didn’t even recognize me. You’re my damn brother for crying out loud. Don’t tell me that your brain is so fried that you can’t even recognize family anymore.”
“I guess I just forgot what you looked like. It’s been two years, you know?”
“I haven’t changed that much in two years,” Allison softly muttered, looking once again into the mirror.
After harshly jerking the Nissan into drive, Allison slowly pulled back into the midst of traffic and continued on her way to the nearest off ramp. Unbuckling his seat belt, Paul struggled to situate himself comfortably in the leather seat as his pants continually slid on the material. His shirt was soaked in a large amount of sweat causing the material to uncomfortably bond to his skin, and he struggled to reach a point of contentment. As he was fidgeting, Allison noticed that the left shoulder of his shirt had a huge gaping hole in it and his arm was bleeding profusely.
“What the holy hell?” Allison screamed, her blue eyes wide and questioning.
“Huh?” Paul muttered obliviously.
“Your arm!” Allison said, pointing at the wound with her right index finger. “It’s bleeding, you dumbass.”
Paul looked down at the cut and hardly seemed upset by the terrible laceration on his arm. Gently, he pulled his sleeve up to cover the wound and went back to adjusting himself in his seat. Allison glanced back and forth from the road to her brother with her mouth hanging open in shock.
“How the hell did you get that, man?” she asked after seeing that he wasn’t going to supply her with any information.
“Oh, I guess I must have picked that up from the wreck.”
“Wreck! You mean you were in that pile-up?”
“In it? Man, I started that bastard!”
Sharply turning the steering wheel to the right, Allison steered the Nissan to the side of the highway and slammed on the brakes launching Paul headfirst into the windshield. Hardly seeming to notice her ailing brother, she threw the car into park and swiveled in her seat to look at Paul.
“You got in another wreck? What does that make? Number eight?”
“No, I think it’s seven. That deal in New Mexico doesn’t count. It was out of state, you know?”
“I have no idea how the hell you do it,” Allison said, shaking her head and trying to repress a laugh. “You wreck cars like some women wreck homes.”
“I know, I think it’s like a world record or something. Seven cars in a span of three years. That’s slightly better than an average of two cars a year.”
“Paul, seriously, what the hell are you doing?”
“You don‘t have any right to ask me that question. You’re gone for two years, and now you’re trying to tell me how to live my life. Just leave me alone. The shock’s starting to wear off, so I don’t need to hear it right now.”
Allison started to say something, but she fought her mouth and decided to keep it shut. Paul finally settled in his seat next to her and continued to stare directly ahead of him. The lapse of conversation infected the car, and Allison found herself itching to say something just to get some sort of communication going. She certainly didn’t like the feeling of not even being able to talk to her own brother.
“So, how tall has Jane gotten?” Allison asked, hoping that the topic of their younger sister would be the right subject to bridge their silence.
“She hasn’t. She’s as short as when you left. Except her face is a little different. She’s finally gained some weight.”
“It’s about time. I’m just waiting for some fatty acids to finally stick to me.”
“What do you mean? It looks like you’ve gained about twenty pounds.”
“Whatever! I haven’t gained any weight at all. If anything, I’ve lost twenty pounds.”
“Don’t get all upset. I was just kidding. You still have the body of a two-by-four.”
“Thanks,” Allison said, sarcastically.
For what felt like the millionth time, the Nissan pulled out into traffic and continued on its way to the nearest exit to turn around. The rain continued to fall lightly, and the sky was full of dark, foreboding clouds. Paul began to nod off to sleep after a few minutes of driving on the highway, and Allison turned the radio back on to give her some sort of company. After a brief moment of exceptional music on one station, the radio turned into a fritz of static due to the approaching storm, and Allison was forced to spend the rest of her trip in boring silence.
