E.M. Chapter Six: "The Glove Compartment" or "Large Semicircles"

We were only minutes away from the zoo and already a strange and unfavorable odor had filled the entire car. Katy was trying vainly to roll down her window with the power switch on the door.

"Rachel!" She complained, "My window won’t roll down!"

"Oh, yeah, they don’t work." I commented back, concentrating on making the little needle on my display go as far to the right as possible.

Katy sighed and began fidgeting with the air conditioning instead.

"Rachel!" She said again moments later, "The air conditioning won’t turn on!"

"Yeah, that doesn’t work either." I commented, thoroughly enjoying watching as said little needle swung wildly back and forth when it reached the edge.

"Doesn’t anything in this car work?" Katy asked in exasperation.

"Yeah, the glove compartment’s fine, I think." I responded, barely able to swerve onto the sidewalk to avoid hitting one of those ‘Sunday drivers.’

Katy struggled momentarily to open the said glove compartment but gave up rather quickly. She turned in her seat to glare at the camel, leisurely chewing on something that I hoped wasn’t necessary to the operation of our motor vehicle.

Katy sighed, turning back around in time to see me ram into the side of another car, forcing it off the road.

"What are you doing?" She asked with that familiar half-crazed tone in her voice she usually used when I drove.

"You really shouldn’t go under 80 on these highways, it isn’t safe." I replied innocently.

"Maybe we should have just taken the bus." Katy grumbled quietly.

"Nah," I said, overhearing her, "They don’t let camels on, I’ve tried. Besides, I’m a good driver! I’ve never once lost on Destruction Derby!"

Katy went pale as a little old lady ran out of the road just as we crashed over a bag of groceries she had been carrying, "I suddenly remember why I don’t like driving." She commented miserably.

"I don’t know why, I think it’s fun." I said, reaching down and turning on my Lord of the Rings Soundtrack which was mandatory for any car ride.

The drive went on like this for an additional twenty minutes, "Katy, I don’t think we’re going the right way." I commented at last, "I’m pretty sure we didn’t want to be in Duluth."

"We’re in Duluth!?" Katy exclaimed in irritation, "Why are we in Duluth?"

"Because you never told me to turn." I told her calmly.

"Why would I have to tell you to turn?"

"You are holding the map." I said.

Looking down, she found this to be true, "Oh… Well in that case, turn around at the nearest exit."

I did so about fifteen minutes later. Now that we were getting further North we found that everything was even farther apart and had seen no trace of humanity since that deer we almost missed ten minutes back.

To make a long and very monotonous story short, we arrived home about four hours later. We were tired, smelly and in a foul mood due to the combined irritant of a certain camel chewing away half of our seats and a certain sidekick holding the map at odd angles thereby leading us in several large semicircles. I vowed never to let Ilga navigate again.

We forced ourselves out of the comparatively small doors in our zombie-like half-life, stiff and sore from sitting so long. Through a series of short, muddled statements that only the undead could understand, we came to a mutual consensus that the camel would stay in the car that night, the argument having lasted about two seconds as we were too tired to even argue much.

Struggling down the hall we collapsed in total exhaustion before even reaching my room—not that it would be too out of the ordinary to find people asleep in the middle of the hall, it was practically normal compared to the unusual sights where my brother could be found sleeping: curled up behind a bookcase, lying under the open dishwasher, perched on top of standing lamps. It was really quite disturbing.