A Camping Trip With My New and Wonderful Family

I don’t know who in their right mind gave my stepbrother his driver’s license, but he sure as hell didn’t deserve it. I’m thinking that to pass a driver’s test in Modesto, you just need to show that you can start up a car and not ram it into a building immediately because when I think of a decent driver, I do not think of someone who manages to leave a part of his truck hanging off a mountain every time he turns a corner. Now, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt: this mountain road was narrow… and my sister was screaming her lungs out, but she was screaming because of his incompetence. The seven of us, packed tightly in the small truck, could only pray that my stepbrother, Kenneth, didn’t drive us off a mountain and let us end up as forgotten piles of human remains at the bottom of the valley. My stepsister repeatedly yelled at me to shut my sister up but with all the commotion reverberating in my eardrums, I was more focused on not puking all over the truck. Eventually, we reached a tunnel, and cool air rushed into the truck while Kenneth started honking his horn like crazy. Apparently, that’s a Californian tradition.

Apparently, it was also tradition for my stepdad and his family to go camping every year. However, my mother didn’t have to go. Instead, she shipped my sister and me off with a farewell hug, hoping we’d learn something worthwhile up in the mountains. I can’t speak for my sister, but I was in no shape ready for some learning, considering the fact that I was deathly afraid of heights and everyone in my stepfamily. I’d known them for less than a year and I was supposed to entrust my life to them out here in the wild? Please no. Their rough and tough demeanor terrified me. My stepdad frequently made fun of me for being weak and one of my stepsisters, Marquelle, always commented on my feminine eyelashes and how they were weird. I lived with six of them: three stepsisters, two stepbrothers, and one stepdad, but there were many family members on the trip that I didn’t know.

Day One of the camping trip started when my stepbrother put a bunch of people in the bed of a pickup truck and proceeded to drive very quickly to the top of the mountain in an attempt to scare us. After my sister’s little screaming fest earlier, she wasn’t invited, but since I was so quiet earlier, they thought I’d be fine with it. Here’s a little hint: I was not. What was I supposed to say to the guy who repeatedly called me out for being weak? “Yeah, I don’t want to take a drive up to the top of the mountain because I’m afraid your son is gonna throw me off”? Seemed like a great plan to me! So I stayed quiet and got in the back of the truck. The stepsister who talked about my feminine eyelashes a lot could tell that I didn’t want to be there, probably because I asked her numerous questions about where we were going and that I flinched every time the bed trembled slightly (I was flinching a lot). She kept trying to reassure me that everything was going to be fine by saying that they did this every year, but I was thinking that there was a first time for everything. They might take this little trip every year, but Kenneth was a new driver and could somehow slip off the narrow path and down to the rocky depths below. Anyway, we were driving up to the top of the mountain and the woods were so dense that I could hardly see three feet into them. It was at this point when my oldest stepsister, the only one old enough to drink, said that she had to take a piss. Kenneth slowed down and let her hop out of the back. A female family member I didn’t recognize went with her to make sure she was safe and the two walked down the path some way so they wouldn’t be seen. Beforehand, Kenneth was driving so fast that small pieces of bark and dirt were flying everywhere from under his wheels and I kept thinking that we were going to die.  Now, I was relieved: the peace and quiet were a welcome change. That is until Kenneth decided he had waited long enough and drove off without my stepsister and the other girl. You know, just casually leaving them in the woods. I told Marquelle that that was kind of rude and asked if we were going to go back for them. She said that they’d find their way back to the camp eventually. They did not. In fact, they were missing for six hours and no one went out to find them. When they finally made their way back, people just mumbled a “welcome back” and continued on with their camping activities.

So what were these camping activities my new family liked to partake in? Drinking. Really, that was all they did. Sure, we had a campfire and made smores, but I got the feeling that we were doing that especially for my sister and me so that we weren’t completely bored. That proved to be unsuccessful because most of the camping activities my sister and I partook in were sitting and watching other people do stupid things. My stepbrothers played beer pong until darkness enveloped the entire campsite. Larry, who was a bit older than Kenneth, got so drunk that he disappeared into a tent for most of the night. (The next day I learned that he was throwing up a lot of that time). When it was time for me to go to bed, I couldn’t sleep. I always had trouble sleeping in new places because of a fear of something bad would happen to me in my sleep. This fear was amplified by the fact that I didn’t have my dreamcatcher with me. I used that thing for everything and entrusted my life with it. I was just lying down, hoping that I would eventually fall asleep. I employed the old tactic of counting sheep, except I could only think about how cute sheep were and got distracted while counting to five. I then listened to all the strange noises the nighttime animals were making while my sister was sleeping soundly next to me. I could hear the familiar sounds of owls and crickets, but only God knows what else was living in those woods. Between all of nature’s racket and the occasional snoring fest, I never fell asleep.

Day two of the camping trip arrived and I was trying my very best not to fall asleep at this point. I’m pretty sure to complete this mission, I drank all the soda in the cooler and started eyeing that beer as a secondary source of energy. Mind you, I was only in 2nd grade, but I’ve got to start sometime, right? I didn’t end up drinking beer, but I did end up doing something kind of sketchy.

My stepdad wanted to teach my sister and me how to shoot a gun. In the past, when he told me that he was going to get me a BB gun for my birthday, I thought he was joking. Now, I realized that he was serious. I didn’t want anything to do with a gun; I thought they were evil and only caused death and destruction, but my stepdad’s words about me swam through my mind. I was a weak pushover who would surely get used in his life because of how soft I was. So when he handed me a gun, I took it. I was too scared not to. The entire family took turns shooting at empty beer bottles that were placed on tree branches. Immediately behind the trees was a vast lake that seemed to stretch for miles for its width. The length was different because if you squinted your eyes, you could make out the shore on the other side. There was another family camping there. However, my stepdad didn’t trust my sister or me with a gun so he took the gun back from me, did most of the holding part, and let me aim it. If I was way far off, he’d just correct me and everything would be fine. I missed the first two shots. Even though I wasn’t expecting to hit any of them, I was still competitive and wanted to at least hit one can so I could say that I did better than my sister. The recoil wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be since I wasn’t really holding the thing. Anyway, I was aiming the third shot when- “EVERYBODY GET ON THE GROUND. EVERYBODY GET ON THE FUCKING GROUND NOW!” My stepdad ripped the gun away from me, placed it on the ground, and harshly whispered at me to kneel down, which I did immediately. My heart started to beat quicker and quicker, but something told me to look at who was making that noise. So I stole a glimpse at the police officer behind me who had his weapon drawn. I couldn’t stop looking at him. This is the part of the story where you all will expect me to end it with some sort of tragedy. I mean, this is textbook: a bunch of black people, a couple of guns scattered about, against the police? Someone’s going to get shot, right? Well, someone did get shot at. But, it wasn’t us. The police asked something along the lines of “Who’s in charge here?” and my stepdad went up to talk to them. I feel like he tried to guilt trip because he stressed the point that there were kids here and the police were scaring them. Even though it seemed like guilt tripping, he wasn’t wrong. My sister was shivering on the ground about 10 feet away from me. The only good thing that came from my stepdad talking to the police is that we got to know why they were there in the first place. Apparently, it was the people across the lake. They called the police because they believed that some people on the other side were shooting at them. After figuring this all out, my stepdad decided that police presence kind of puts a damper on camping, so we packed up and left.

My mom greeted my sister and me with a friendly screech of “AHHHH MY LOVELIES ARE HOME. HOW WAS THE TRIP, LOVELIES???” My sister looked at me and I looked at her. “Fine” we replied in unison. My stepdad seemed to like that answer as he gave an affirmative grunt and walked towards his room. My mom’s enthusiasm was honestly quite off putting as no one really talked on the trip back. We were all thinking about what had just happened on our trip and if we should tell anyone. I felt that this was proof that my new family was dangerous and not to be trusted. Obviously, if they could not stop the police from showing up when a little kid was around, they could not take care of and account for a little kid’s feelings (You know, despite the fact that he had five other children). My mom would eventually find out what happened on the trip and I believe that was one of many things that led to the decision of moving away from my stepdad.