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Amber Slater

Yosemite

Our van smells like stale beer, feet, and the vegetable
lasagna that has gone bad while crammed among the
duffel bags and stacks of books beneath our feet. We have
been driving for six hours, and our 14-person van is filled
to capacity with both bodies and malice.

We're two weeks into a Jan-term trip in California
with a focus on Beat poetry and counterculture, and we're
working our way north. While friendly conversation once
bubbled through the van, we're now at the point when
there are serious debates about leaving certain people
behind every time we stop for gas. Jenny, our professor,
just turns up the music whenever the volume rises above a
steady drone of snide comments and mumbled insults.

We bicker over which CDs to play, fight over the seats
that have the most leg room, and engage in stand-offs
with all of the passion and fire exhibited in old Western
films over which of us must cram into the fourth row
where the smell of rotting vegetables is most pungent.

My current escape is my sweatshirt. I'm wearing it
backwards, with the hood over my face, hoping that loss
of vision will help me forget that I am in the dreaded
fourth row and crammed between two hulking lacrosse
players. I'm wide awake and vaguely aware that we are
going uphill when my classmate Dan first jabs me in the
leg, trying to get my attention. I ignore it, figuring that
he'll think I'm asleep.

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