It happened two miles from our house, six minutes into
our drive, moments before we’d even merged onto the highway. “Are we there yet?”
Oh, but I was ready. A decade and four children into my parenting career, I’d honed my car-trip tactics with exacting preparedness: individually packed snack tubs; new markers with ready-to-be-filled blank journals; puzzle books; a bribe bag of marshmallows; kid-sized neck pillows for comfortable napping. (No movies. Our one old-school road rule.)
“Are we there yet?”
The puzzles were boring, the markers lost their caps, the marshmallows underwhelmed and no one felt like napping. The minivan was restless, and we had 13 more hours to go.
I looked at my Kindle, desperately wishing I could disappear into the buzzy new YA bestseller I’d downloaded just before we left.
“Who wants to hear a story about aliens taking over the earth?”
It turns out, everyone did. I started reading aloud Rick Yancey’s The Fifth Wave, and before I’d finished the first page, the car had fallen silent. Even the 4-year-old was rapt. In the driver’s seat, so was my husband.
I’m a dedicated read-alouder, having attempted a British accent through all 4,100 pages of all seven Harry Potter books—twice, to my two oldest sons. I’ve read Charlotte’s Web in Starbucks, Ramona Quimby, Age 8 in line at the post office and Percy Jackson at the dentist’s office. But my favorite place to read aloud is in the car. Everyone’s captive.
Still, I hadn’t planned on reading this book. On page 10, the teenage heroine, Cassie, encounters a dying man and refuses to save him. “Blood dribbled over his bottom lip and hung quivering from his stubbly chin,” Yancey writes. “His teeth shone with blood.” I winced as I read it, watching my 5-year-old son’s eyes grow wide in the rearview mirror.
“Guys, this is creepy. Why don’t we stop?”
“Nooooooooooooooooooo!”
Continue reading.
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