by Nora Maloney

“Tallulah! Grandma is here!” my mom called up to my room. 

Sighing to myself, I clicked off my phone and slid it into the back pocket of my jeans.

 “Coming!” I shouted back, knowing she probably couldn’t hear me. 

I stumbled off my bed, grabbed my duffle and backpack, took one last look at my beloved bedroom, and slammed the door behind me. Every step I took down the stairs filled the hallway with high pitched creaking noises. Each groan in the floorboards was just one step closer to doom. Before I stepped off the staircase, I unzipped my backpack to triple check I had my mask. 

“Do you have everything you need?” my mom asked.

“Yes, I know how to pack for a trip, mother.” 

“I know you do, but this is longer than a week-long vacation,” she tucked my hair behind my ear.

I flicked her hand away with annoyance, “I know, and I have everything I need.”

“Okay honey. I’ll see you at the end of the summer. Feel free to text or call me whenever you want, okay? It’ll be pretty lonely without you here,” she smiled at me. 

I was probably supposed to give her a hug or something, but I wasn’t feeling it. I wasn’t really feeling anything other than annoyance. The fact that she was sending me away for the entire summer was absurd. I mean come on. I’m sixteen. Why the hell am I spending my summer with my conservative grandparents in some small, worn-out town? 

Here’s her answer;

She thinks if I stay here I’ll get sick because she’s a doctor. That’s the only reasoning she has. As if living with my grandparents is safer? I don’t even think they own masks, and I know for a fact they haven’t been quarantining. My grandma posts pictures of her at the bar every week on FaceBook. 

Mom and I had had countless arguments on the matter in the weeks leading up to that day, but I don’t think she really listened to my side of it. Well obviously she didn’t listen, or if she did she didn’t care, because I was stepping out of the house and throwing my bags into my grandma’s fancy 2019 Mazda. 

I heard the car door open and shuddered. I didn’t have enough time beforehand to mentally prepare myself for her. A few seconds later, grandma comes waddling over to help me load my bags in. She didn’t bother to turn off the engine. 

“Oh Tallulah! You’ve grown so much!” she exclaimed, wrapping me in a hug. 

I hadn’t grown even a centimeter since seventh grade (trust me, I’ve checked) but I just smiled and said, “hey grandma.”

She pulled away and beamed, “are you excited for grandma camp?”

I forced a laugh and nodded. All I could think was, God, this was gonna be hard. I didn’t know if I could handle faking an interest in what they had to say for the entire summer. What on earth is “grandma camp”? I was way too old for this. 

“And you have everything you need? We can always stop at the store if you realized you forgot something after we leave,” she said as I closed the back hatch. 

“I should have everything,” I said before adding, “thank you, though,”

We stood there, stiff and without anything else to talk about for a few seconds before silently agreeing to walk to the front of the car and get in. As we reached to put our seatbelts on, my grandma turned the volume dial up. Right away, Christian rock began to play from the speakers. Her car slowly pulled out of our driveway and we were off. 

To “grandma camp.”