Blood Bound

Chapter 37: The unforgettable beach

The scenery away from Seattle is completely different from the Alaskan landscape and the Yukon territory. The trees are still huge but they seem to cover everything. You can barely see the mountains for douglas firs, hemlocks and red cedars. It must be magnificent to go on a hike through these woods but I can't tell due to the darkness that follows us like a trailing shadow.

"Which beach are we going to?" I ask, squinting my eyes to try to see the towering wooden giants.

"I don't know," Sophie shrugs. "I'd love to go to Malibu but that's too fucking far. Check the map on the screen and see if it finds any nearby beaches."

I look at the screen and realise it's much more technical than the cars we've driven so far. I didn't even notice it through all the chaos in Seattle. I touch the screen and a keyboard appears with a disembodied female voice calling through the speakers: "Where to?"

I can't think of anything as I'm not familiar with any places in Washington State, so I just lamely type beach and push go. The screen lists a bunch of locations and I stare blankly at the screen. It just occurs to me that we are, of course, on the West Coast, so there must be a lot of places with beaches.

"Um . . . " I look through the list. "What about Long Beach?"

"How far is it?"

I press on the location and the computer calculates the distance. "About 3 hours."

"Sounds good to me," Sophie grins. "Maybe this time we can make it an actual road trip."

"What do you usually do on road trips?" I ask after I confirm the location and the screen displays the distance on the map but it decreases as we move along.

"You've been on road trips before, right?" Sophie asks, half amused, half exasperated.

I shake my head. "We went on hiking trips but I think that's not exactly the same."

"No, it's not," Sophie agrees, her mouth twitching like she's resisting the urge to laugh. She clears her throat again. "So, on road trips you sing to crappy songs, stay at motels, look at the stars at nights, eat disgusting junk food and other sappy shit."

I can't help grinning. "We can tick off the motels," I point out.

"Oh yeah," Sophie chuckles.

"No motels," we say in unison.

We look at each other and burst out laughing. For a minute, I'm blissfully ignorant of our current dilemma and I'm just enjoying a nice drive with my sister. Sister. It's still hard to digest but as I look at her, the more natural it feels. Maybe deep down, I already suspected something like that and my subconscious just chose to forget it. We already had this weird, disfunctional bond when we first met. I might be a terrible mess of a human being while she's a terrible mess of a sister.

An upbeat music rings in my ears and I realise that Sophie has turned up the volume of the radio. I don't recognise the song but Sophie is humming along with it. Then she starts singing and jerks her head at me, indicating that I should do the same. I scowl and concentrate on listening to the lyrics. The singer has a powerful voice and changes his tempo from slow to fast at intervals. It confuses me.

"I can't," I say loudly over the music.

"You don't have to follow the lyrics, silly," Sophie laughs and then starts making up new lyrics to the song. Most of the words are rude and I laugh at her enthusiasm and the looks of concentration as she tries to find the most vulgar words and add it to the lyrics.

I slide the window down and look up at the sky. The crescent moon greets me with a crooked smile, accompanied by a legion of twinkling stars. "The sky is amazing tonight," I gasp in wonderment. "Do you want to star gaze now?"