A "vertical slice" of fiction.
Road Trip
Sara bounced in her seat, arms moving in the opposite direction to the rest of her. She flicked her hair back and forth and nodded her head forward and backward at the same time.
“Sweet Caroliiiiine!”
The box mix of salted almonds and popcorn in her hands spilled all over herself, and the front seat of the car, as she scream-sang the crescendo line of the song.
“Goddamnit, Sara,” Mills laughed. “You’ll be the end of us at this rate.”
“If I am it’s only because you won’t join in, and the pressure of singing alone will have reached breaking point. Where are we at anyway, have we made much progress?”
She pulled her phone out the top of her bag - now covered in a layer of salted snacks - and opened the GPS application.
Sara groaned a little. “Man, we’re only about 2 hours out of town. There’s still about 4 hours to go.”
There wasn’t much to see at this point. The highway was long and straight, the terrain was flat and dry. Typical Australian outback - dirt colored with a hint of rust, dried out flora distributed sparsely, a beating sun…
A few minutes passed while they sat in silence, the music has ended as the cassette tape had run its course. Sara stared out into the landscape around them while Mills focused on the road in front of him.
“Are you ready for this, Mills? You know we don’t have to do this, right? We can turn around right now and head on back, just get on with it like we always have.”
Mills chewed on his lower-right lip a moment, an anxious look on his face. “We’ve already started, we might as well keep going…”
Another moment.
“Sara, I never knew the man. I mean, yes, he’s my dad, but I never knew him. He left when I was very young, and all I hear from mum is about the huge blowouts they used to have. There was a while there where I was trying to connect with him, but he’d almost never return my calls. When he did he was usually drunk and incoherent.”
“I’m sorry, I think I have some idea of what this is like for you.” Sara was nothing if not empathetic.