Dad clinks his spoon against his glass in attempts to get the family’s attention. This doesn’t have his desired effect, mainly due to the fact that his “glass” is a plastic cup of orange juice, resulting in an odd sort of clunking sound, which isn’t necessarily what you want to get people’s attention. This is especially so considering how rambunctious my siblings typically are. Quieting us down is a feat that would prove difficult with an air horn, let alone with a spoon and a plastic cup of juice.  

Picking up Dad’s intentions, Mom somehow manages to quiet my siblings down. “Your Mother and I, we have something important to tell you kiddos,” Dad begins. Before he can continue, Mom pulls him aside, an expression of confusion and slight frustration plastered on her face.

“What are you about to tell them? Because you haven’t told me yet,” Mom angrily whispers at Dad. Since my siblings and I are all dead silent, we can hear their every word.

“If Mom doesn’t know I guess they’re not pregnant,” my twin brother, Timmy, jokingly whispers to me.

“They better not be, cause I’m not sharing my room with another person,” I whisper back, my tone dead serious. Currently, I share a room with two of my younger sisters. Timmy luckily has his own room. Technically it’s a renovated laundry room, but I’d take that any day over sharing, especially considering my sisters are annoying, to say the least. Timmy isn’t forced to share because he’s the only boy, which I guess is “fair”, but it usually doesn’t feel that way.

After a brief conversation of angry whispers, Mom and Dad return to the table, Mom looking incredibly frustrated. “We’re going on vacation, so start packing!” Dad exclaims. We all sit at the table in shock. The first thing that comes to my mind is how we will be able to afford a vacation. As it is, we’re dirt poor. Otherwise, our family of eight wouldn’t be living in a two bedroom apartment in the sketchiest part of town.

“Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!” my eight-year-old sister, Nellie, snickers in excitement, seeming to have no care about the logistics of the trip. For an instant, she is silent, and then suddenly, she lets out an overly exaggerated gasp. “Papa, can we go fishing? Pretty pretty please with a cherry on top?” she pleads. She loves fishing, which is extremely odd for an eight-year-old girl, especially considering it’s illegal here. So technically, she should be in jail, but then again so should the rest of us. I mean we’ve all done something illegal at one point or another. Tax fraud, drug dealing, attempted kidnapping. Most of us (except maybe Nellie) are good at heart, just a bit misunderstood. Upon the realization that our fishing trip will most likely be pretty illegal, I groan at the thought of getting arrested again.

“Maybe,” Dad winks at Nellie, giving her hope of a fishing trip. At the possibility of this, Nellie gleefully squeals and skips off to our room to pack

“Go on now kids, start packing. I need a minute with your father,” Mom states sharply, motioning for the rest of us to do the same as Nellie. As we leave, she begins whisper yelling at Dad again. I follow Timmy to his room and sit on his bed as he begins to pack.

“What do you think Dad means by ‘vacation’?” I ask him. Something obviously felt wrong with the whole situation. Even when Dad makes stupid decisions, Mom is usually in the know about them.

“Knowing him, it could mean anything,” Timmy answers as he messily shoves an assortment of clothes into an old duffle bag. I had thought that he might know something about the trip because out of us kids, he spends the most time with Dad. Realizing that he is as clueless as the rest of us, I wander back to my room to start packing.

Nellie is babbling on and on about how fun the vacation will be and how many fish she will catch and how jealous her friends will be. “Nellie, do you ever stop?” I ask in annoyance. She makes a face at me, but luckily, shuts up. Not knowing what our “vacation” entails, I decided to pack heavy. I’d rather be over prepared than forget something.

“It’s time to go!” Dad yells enthusiastically only seconds after I finish packing. We carry our belongings outside, and to our surprise, a beat up RV is sitting in the middle of the driveway. For a moment, all we can do is stare.

“Is this ours?” I eventually manage to ask.

“Yup,” Dad says proudly, taking a second to stare in awe. “Now come on, it’s time to go,” he says as he rushes us into the RV. I glance at Mom, who shares a similar look of dumbfoundedness. Dad hops into the driver's seat, and we speed away from the apartment. Nellie sits up front with Dad, pestering him with questions about the trip. Layla, my six-year-old sister, decides to do the same. Mom begins to unpack some snacks after setting our baby sister, Lela, down for a nap. Timmy and I wander to the camper’s sad excuse of a living room and eventually sit down on it’s sagging green couch.

“Do you think he’s in trouble? Like with the law?” I whisper to Timmy, hoping that Mom wouldn’t hear.

“I hope not,” he answers worriedly. Dad is a good guy, but he doesn’t always think things through. If it were to be true, it wouldn’t be the first time Dad was running from the cops, and I honestly wouldn’t be that surprised. In wake of this possibility, Timmy and I sit in silence, hoping it not to be true.

“Does this thing even have beds or are we just gonna sleep on the floor?” I ask sarcastically, hoping to break the uncomfortable silence. When I don’t get a response, I wander to the back of the RV, and find a closet leading to a small loft equipped with a twin mattress. After much difficulty, I manage to drag my stuffed backpack up to the loft. I check my phone, something my parents don’t know I have. I decide to text my best friend, Kim, telling her how miserable my “vacation” is going to be. When she doesn’t answer, I head back downstairs with a deck of cards. I return to the couch where Timmy is still sitting, but now with a map and a pen.

“What are you doing?” I ask accusingly.

“Dad’s been talking about taking some weird ‘shortcut’, and I don’t trust him,” he explains. We turn on to a different street, and Timmy marks it on his map. Realizing he’s thoroughly occupied with his weird map thing, I go to see if Mom brought any decent snacks. Since the trip was on such short notice, Mom wouldn't have had time to pick stuff up at the store, but I decide to still see if she has anything good.

“What’s up?” Mom asks as I enter the kitchen.

“Are there any snacks?” I ask her.

“I packed a few, and whoever had this thing last left some stuff here, but I wouldn’t trust it if I were you,” she answers.

“Thanks Mom,” I smile as I grab a bag of chips, and bring it back to the couch. I sit down next to Timmy, who still appears to be marking his map. He reaches into the bag and takes a handful of chips.

“Hey!” I playfully snap as I move the bag away from him. He rolls his eyes at me, and I teasingly hit him on the shoulder. He attempts to grab a second handful of chips from the bag, so I retreat to the floor beside the couch, and I begin to set up a game of solitaire.

For a while, we sit in silence, managing to temporarily ignore our fear of persecution. This is until I hear the faint whirring of a siren from somewhere in the distance. “Uhm Timmy, do you hear that?” I ask with concern. I wouldn’t be worried except for the fact that we’re on a seldom traveled back road desert of people or even buildings.

“Yeah,” he responds fearfully as he stares out the window, trying to get a clearer view of the cop cars. “Dad! We’ve got company,” he yells up to the front of the RV. Dad doesn’t respond. I wonder if he had not heard Timmy, but I suddenly realize he heard him crystal clear. The RV begins racing down the road, moving at speeds I didn’t believe possible for something so old and junky. Police sirens, screeching tires, and screaming create a chaotic music as Dad flys the RV off of the road and onto the overgrown grass lining it.

For an instant, I’m in the air, playing cards and chips floating beside me. Time seems to freeze and then restart, slamming me against the floor. I lay limp on the ground, the wind knocked out of me. I manage to pull myself back to my feet, and I peer out the window, hoping to get a better view of what’s happening. I then realize that it’s not just the police chasing us. In fact, a minivan, adorned with a battery operated siren, is chasing us, with the police in hot pursuit of us both.

My thoughts of fear shift more towards confusion, especially so when the RV swerves back onto the road, and in the process, something crashes through the windshield. Instinctively, I run up to the front, needing to make sure Layla is ok.

“Where’d this gdamn potato come from!?” Dad hollers as glass shards lay scattered around him and my sisters. I look to the floor, and sure enough, a potato sits among the glass.

“Leave it to me!” Nellie giggles joyously as she picks up the potato. As she does, I catch a glimpse of what appears to be a bite missing from it. In my utter shock, all I can do is watch as Nellie winds back her arm, preparing to hurl the potato out the now nonexistent windshield.

“Papa! Swerve again so we’re facing the po po!” she confidently yells to Dad.

“A-ok!” he yells back, making nearly a three sixty with the RV. We’re facing the police, and Nellie hurls the potato back through the windshield. It misses the cops but smashes into the minivan sporting the fake siren. For an instant, the minivan continues to speed towards us, but then it begins to slow down, and eventually, stops. I stare at the slowing car and see that the driver is passed out in the front seat. A driver who looks strangely familiar…

“Papa! I did it!” Nellie exclaims, snapping me out of my thoughts. Dad turns the car away from the police and again begins speeding down the road. I glance out the window, checking to see if the cops are still after us. I see that the squad cars are stopped and have surrounded the minivan, leaving us the perfect opportunity to escape.

As we drove away, one thought stayed in my mind. Who was the driver of the other car?