Chapter 3

I got up and sat by myself at another table in the restaurant. However, the girls came by after I started sulking and apologized. They said they were just trying to see how far they could tease me, and they found out.

“I really do get teased and called autistic. I can tell you wouldn’t do that after what you said. A lot of people think I am weird,” Hope offered an olive branch.

“That’s because you are fucking weird,” Jen snickered.

I wasn’t sure if this was yet another game they were playing to see if they could get me to forgive them, only to screw with my head again. All I can tell you is that I wanted nothing to do with them.

When their mother returned, she smiled and said nothing about what happened with the guy she walked out of the restaurant with. It wasn’t really my business, although it seemed odd.

She asked me if the girls had been rude and wondered why I was sitting alone. I wanted to tell her the truth, but at the same time, I felt like it wouldn’t serve any purpose if I told them. My Aunt Pat was just as rude and brazen as they were and would probably take their side.

“No, it’s fine. I felt I was making the girls uncomfortable, and I sat over here,” I said.

Patty looked at her girls skeptically and with disappointment. “If we were in South Dakota, this shit would not fly,” she said.

“Why don’t we just go straight there, Mommy?” Hope asked enthusiastically.

“You are going to like Panama City. It’s on the beach. We are going to do everything we said we would. I just need a little cash first. Let’s roll,” my Aunt insisted and walked us back to the RV.

“We aren’t doing everything we said we would,” Jen reminded her mother as we took our seats. I didn’t bother to snag one of the chairs because I felt I wasn’t entitled. I was the interloper, and the girls had the seniority to me from my perspective.

“Just hold your horses, Princess. You will get your wish soon enough. There are just some things that will have to wait. That’s all,” she shrugged. I knew they were talking about a problem caused by my presence, but I didn’t know what it was. It only reinforced the feeling that I didn’t belong on the Winnebago with them.

“Do you want my seat?” Hope offered to let me take the chair she had been sitting in. I was so angry and ashamed about our confrontation that I didn’t think the offer was genuine. I felt she was just going to offer it to me only to accuse me of being a misogynist that would steal her seat.

“I don’t want you to have to stand,” I replied curtly. I intended to be polite, but I came across sounding a little bit passive-aggressive (entirely my fault).

“I won’t. I am a cat. I just go to four-leg mode, and we are all good,” she crouched down into a cat-like position. She stuck her pretty little butt out. I could see the outline of her ass crack in the velvet style onesie she was wearing.

I am a huge anime nerd. One of my favorite anime is called All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku. In many ways, Hope’s often childish cat-like behavior reminded me of Nuku Nuku. She’s an alley-cat that was turned into an indestructible through some pretty far-out science.

The reason I bring this up is that I was trying not to get a boner, just thinking about some of the Japanese Hentai that I normally beat off too.

I was tempted to tell Hope about those movies because she might actually like them. However, they also often depict cat girls as hypersexual, and she would probably think I was an even bigger pervert for bringing it up.

She was a strange girl. The word “quirky” definitely applied to Hope. I thanked her and sat down but kept my eyes cast down so that I wasn’t accused of watching Misty or Jen’s boobs.

I think they noticed and felt bad about it. Their mother played around with the radio station. “It’s all Mexican shit,” she lamented.

“MOM!” Jen’s eyes flashed with anger, and she seethed a little over her mother’s response.

“What? Just saying you do not like Mexican music doesn’t make you a racist. I do not speak Spanish. I do not like the music,” my Aunt shrugged off the accusation.

“Mexican SHIT?” Misty agreed with her sister that the response was inappropriate.

“Fine, what do you want me to do? Pull over so you can make me do a Mexican hat dance?” Aunt Patty laughed. She chuckled while humming a traditional Mexican song and saying “Arriba! Arriba!”.

“Yeah, I really think you should!” Jen sounded like she was kidding.

“Really?” Patty smiled wickedly as if she was hoping her daughter was serious. Patty looked over her shoulder at me and glanced back at Jen. “In here or on the side of the road?”

“Side of the road where everyone can see your fat ass dance!”

“You wish!” Patty laughed but pulled the RV off to the side of the road after we had only driven a few hundred feet away from the restaurant.

“I used to be racist, Hunter,” my Aunt said. “You see all these tattoos?” she pointed to the Ace of Spades tattoo on her leg and said that they used to be white power tattoos. She said she had them all covered with new tattoos. I was shocked. “They were old tattoos and bad choices. That isn’t me anymore. Whenever one of us says something racist, we kind of, well, punish each other. Is that going to flip you out?”

I said no.

However, it really did shock me.

Imagine this. My Aunt is in denim shorts and a tank top with no bra. She stood in front of the RV on the side of the road facing the cars. Her daughters gathered around and held up their cell phones with the volume all the way up to play Mexican Hat Dance for their mother “Dunna-Dunna-Dunna du-dunna! Da-dunna-nuh-nunna!” as she did a traditional jig dancing around in a circle, waving her arms, smiling and waving at cars and acting like a total fool.

She was laughing all the way through it. The song only lasted a few minutes, but the girls told her to dance more and played it again. They laughed and teased their mother while she made a public spectacle of herself.

A few cars honked at her, and people slowed down to try to figure out what she was doing. I didn’t understand the concept of public humiliation. I assumed that she might cause a wreck as someone craned their neck to see what she was doing. I didn’t see why she was doing it.

The public spectacle seemed embarrassing, but I hardly saw the dance as a punishment since my Aunt laughed like a fool.

“Enough?”

“One more time, for the Jew, comment earlier,” Hope insisted with a pout. It shocked me that Hope would talk like that to her mom or even say “the Jew comment” – which in and of itself seemed offensive to me for some reason.

“For that, we need Hava Nagila,” Aunt Patty told them what to play. It was a traditional Hassidic song, and she danced around to that.

“I know we are weird,” my Aunt Patty explained as we reboarded the RV. “We like to do silly things, okay, Hunter?”

I nodded. It was not all that surprising Hope was so quirky if her mother was too.

It took us about seven hours to make Panama City from Arab, Alabama. The Winnebago held a lot of gas, but it also used a lot of gas, and we made frequent stops at gas stations.

True to her word, she indulged her daughter’s every whim. She bought them energy drinks, candy, snacks, and any souvenir they wanted. There was nothing she told them no on – pixie sticks, pizza, whatever they asked for.

One thing about rural Alabama is that there are still tons of cotton fields. There is a church every few miles as well. We were passing by a cotton field, and I saw a kid younger than me driving a big green tractor. I wondered why his parents would allow him to operate such a dangerous-looking machine.

I wondered about how sheltered my life had been. That kid’s reality was that over the summer he operated a big C770 Cotton Harvester (I looked it up online). I didn’t even know how to drive a car and had not thought about learning.

However, Misty and Jen did. They switched off with their mother in the driver’s seat. The Winnie sat up high, and I couldn’t imagine how intimidating it must be to drive one. The girls looked forward to it enthusiastically.

Misty laughed a few times when she almost put us in a drainage ditch, but she managed to keep us on the road.

We pulled into an Exxon right at the Florida-Alabama line in a city called Esto on the Florida side. It was getting late.

“Fuck, I do not think we can make Panama tonight,” my Aunt lamented as she pumped gas.

“We have like an hour left to drive,” Jen shrugged that it would be no big deal.

“Yeah, but I think you and your sisters need a little practice!”

“But ... what about...” Jen said.

Her mother demanded that she wanted to see her, Misty, and Hope right now. “You lazy butts have been lying around the house all day. Hope, are you in two-legged mode?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Hope snapped to attention and saluted.

“Good, high steps now! Bring your legs up in place! Now face each other,” she said. The three girls got close enough that they were almost banging their knees together as they high stepped at the gas station.

I was confused. What had they done wrong? Nothing, it seemed.

“Is this really necessary?” Jen asked. She was athletic looking, but it looked like it took effort to lift her knees as high as she could before lifting the other one repeatedly and sort of jog in place.

“Yes! You goofy goobers! March! March!” Patty teased them. I noticed Misty’s boobs bouncing in her shirt because she was braless. Jen’s boobs didn’t bounce, and Hope didn’t have much for boobs in the first place.

“Payback is a bitch!” Jen promised.

“You had all day!” Patty snickered as if there was a timer for payback, and it had almost run out.

“You said we couldn’t,” Jen seemed betrayed. I really wished I knew what was going on.

They didn’t explain, and I wasn’t the only confused person. Customers walked past and shook their heads in disgust. If the goal was to embarrass them by making them march while scantily clad – it didn’t seem to work. Jen, Hope, and Misty played along with big goofy grins on their faces. Tits bounced under breezy t-shirts, and I tried to pretend I wasn’t completely engrossed in this over-the-top display of silliness and teen flesh. They didn’t lift their legs high enough that you could see panties or ass crack but they came really close to flashing in public.

I didn’t understand the point, but I kind of enjoyed watching.

That night we stayed at a nearby rinky-dink campground called the Grove. It was just off of 79 and had maybe 16 campers – most of which seemed permanently fixed in place. They had the full awnings and barbecue grills set up as they lived there year-round.

My Aunt went outside and began pulling and banging around the outside of the camper. It sounded like a lot of pointless rackets to me.

I later learned that she was hooking up the septic and electric. I remained inside because she didn’t ask me to help. I felt a little bad because my mom had told me I was supposed to be helpful, and it sounded like something a guy should do – but I had no clue how to hook up any of that stuff.

“Did you hook up the water, Patty?” Jen asked her mom. It was the first time I heard her call her mother by her first name. It sounded completely disrespectful and out of place.

“Yes, Ma’am,” Patty joked. She didn’t correct her daughter for using her first name. I found it strange that Patty would allow them to do that.

“Good, there is a pink ice cream shop that is still open. You saw it when we pulled in?” Jen said sternly.

“Uh-huh,” Patty seemed a little concerned about where her daughter was going with this.

“Jog down there and bring us each a chocolate ice cream cone. Drop one, take your time, and let one melt, and you’ll wear it. Do you understand?”

Patty seemed slightly amused by her daughter’s audacity. “Would you like one too, Hunter?” she asked me.

“Uh, no,” I didn’t feel entitled to an ice cream.

Patty sprinted out of the RV quickly and went to get her daughters some ice cream. It seemed beyond weird but no more unusual than any of the other strange games they played. This trip had perplexed me, and I didn’t think to ask why Patty was suddenly being so accommodating.

When she returned, she had four ice cream cones, and she looked exhausted.

“Who said you could have one, Patty?” Jen asked sourly.

“It’s my money,” Patty mumbled.

“Hand us ours,” Jen insisted. My Aunt politely distributed the ice cream cones. She looked a little nervous as she caught her breath. The ice cream cones were still frozen but starting to melt a little. “You’ll wear yours,” Jen took the fourth cone, flipped it upside down and pushed it down on my Aunt’s head – right in her hair. I was flummoxed! I assumed the shit would really hit the fan now.

I thought that was too far. Patty stood there dumbfounded. “May I sit down?” she blinked without taking the cone off of her head. I saw her start to blush a little.

“No, you can stand and think about what you did,” Jen sounded like she had turned the tables on her mother and become the disciplinarian of the house. I was baffled. Patty had been barking orders, making threats about leaving them behind or spanking them previously. Why would she tolerate this behavior?

The girls ate their ice cream like it was no big deal that their mother stood before us with her hands behind her back while chocolate ice cream melted down the side of her face. Hope licked her ice cream like a cat might with short little slurps.

Patty kept her eyes straight ahead and never looked down at me. I suppose if she had, then the ice cream would have fallen off. I could not fathom what possible motivation my Aunt had to behave like that.

“What is the shower situation going to be?” Misty asked Jen instead of her mother. I wasn’t sure if Patty and Jen had suddenly shifted roles and Jen had been promoted to adult.