Valentia

Kevin cut the engine to our beastly 8-passenger van and turned towards me from the drivers seat.1

"Oz, do you see my parka?" He asked, twisting backwards and digging around on the floor under cases, magazines, and water bottles. As he did, his striped thermal shirt came up from his belt just a bit so that a patch of white skin over his hip bone jutted out from beneath. Kevin is always the driver because he's, self-proclaimedly, the most organized. And it's true. Though his clothing has never seemed to match his personality in my opinion...but then again, none of ours really did.2

It was more or less his brainchild to get the group together after college in our small midwestern town, and so naturally, his decisions ruled our missions. He's a designer, and successfully fit the part with his compulsive attention to detail and black-framed, Armani glasses. He was amazingly attentive and responsive to work with and in conversation, but could be completely overbearing and controlling if you didn't stick to his plan. He did keep everything together though, and never missed a beat. Many times I've felt a certain jealousy at the composure that people found so attractive in him, but we all have our talents.3

"Parka, right. Here." I handed him the brown, down-feather coat from the seat between Ashley and me. She slept soundly, the usual black headphones covering her ears as her red hair spilled around them and down her shoulders. As our sound engineer, Ashley had quite possibly worn those things for months straight. I was amazed she could still actually hear.4

Kevin opened and closed the door with a flourish of snowflakes as he went to fill up the tank. Adrian lifted his blond head from a makeshift pillow and he shivered in the passenger seat. Cursing under his breath at the falling thermometer on the dash, he pulled his pale sweater tighter around him. He always wore these natural colors that, with his light, wavy hair and skin dotted with freckles, made the colors of his face stand out with brilliance.5

Javier and Eric were in the back seat with the contents of their bags strewn between them and on the floor under their seat. They'd only just graduated high school while the rest of us had been ground through the cogs of college life. We'd all been through that stage; always trying to get a rise out of someone, blaring obnoxious music, dying our hair dramatic colors, and trying to outdo each other with crass humor. It just so happened to be that they were pretty powerful mediums as well, though you wouldn't be able to tell it by the way they looked or interacted. I turned disinterestedly at the noise coming from Eric behind me.6

"Javi, know how I know you're gay?" He asked, lowering his headphones, and casting his strangely-colored eyes towards the tanner of the two. The sly smirk on his lips quivered as he prepared to destroy him with wit. His voice was lower than one might expect from his slight, anemic looking frame, and he tossed his head of indie black hair to the side so he could actually see beyond his bangs. He waited. I couldn't help the involuntary roll of my eyes. Here we go with the know-how-I-know game.7

"How." Javier invited, looking over his magazine at Eric, equally amused. He was sitting with his back against the window with his feet on the seat as Kevin stood outside behind him, watching the numbers climb the display with a little frown on his face.8

"Your bare feet are touching my ass." Eric shot back with a manic grin. I wondered if the ring in his lip scraped his teeth if he smiled too widely. Javier narrowed his impressively long, Spanish eyelashes towards his seat mate and wiggled his toes.9

"Know how I know you're gay?" Javier countered with a barely intelligible Spanish lilt to his words.10

"How." Eric fed him, looking complacent.11

"You sit with your ass on my feet." Javier looked at him squarely, clearly with an air of vindication about him. Whatever a full-blooded Spaniard says just seems more absolute, no matter how naive he might appear. Points for ethnicity.12

Myself, I was Swedish. Two Europeans out of six was not a bad ratio I'd reasoned.13

Eric scoffed, and bounced up and down on his feet a few times making Javier cry out with horrified laughter and swat at him with his magazine. His dark, shoulder length hair swung over his shoulders as he lunged forward.14

"Get off me, fairy!" He cried, pushing Eric away.15

At this, Eric elbowed and crawled onto the much less scrawny Javier, catching his hair in a fist and pretended to pull while pushing his hand into his face. Javi put the wrestling moves on, and pinned his legs to the seat causing Eric to yelp in prepubescent peals of laughter.16

"Uh, know how I know you're both gay?" I asked evenly with sarcasm, raising my brows at the entangled position of their quarreling. With barely a batted eyelash from either of them, I felt a hand hit my leg from the front. I turned to Adrian's cherubic green eyes looking back at me with condescension. I knew that look.17

"What?" I threw my hands up with a helpless grin, motioning towards their precariously suggestive position in the backseat.18

He looked at me wordlessly and then turned back towards the front. Kevin climbed back up in to the drivers seat just then, his cheeks reddened and with snow clinging to his dark hair and fur-covered hood. In typical Kevin fashion, he was all business though he looked like young starlet avoiding paparazzi with his designer shades.19

"Successfully fueled and ready to rock, guys and doll. We're almost in Ely." He informed us of this like Ely was some sort of college-aged mecca of entertainment. Hardly that, it was no more than a Minnesotan village of under 4,000 inhabitants, and we weren't going for any sort of festival. He was probably sensing the strange dynamics of the jokes that had just preceded his entrance.20

"Hey Kevin," Eric's voice reverberated once more, not waiting for a response, "Know how I know you're gay? You're pulling in to highway one sixty-nine."21

At this, the two erupted in a fit of laughter in the backseat. Kevin raised the middle finger of his right hand, and merged sharply into traffic. Ashley's head dipped lower in her slumber, I glanced towards Adrian, and Adrian had no response other than to turn his head to look out at the blizzard picking up momentum around us. It was going to be a long and strange two weeks.