Marissa Cardenas

Cousins: The Next Closest Thing to Siblings 

For many years my family and I haven't been all that close, especially my family from my mom's side of the family. The summer of 2026 I went on a trip with a few cousins and their grandparents. My cousins and I weren't that close… we had sleepovers with my siblings and regular stuff cousins do, but never anything big. After one sleepover, my cousins Jakoby and Kira asked me if I wanted to go on their family's yearly trip, and of course I said yes because who wouldn't want to go on a trip? So, my cousins went home and the next day they were all at my door at 8 in the morning to pick me up. Then we were off. First we had to stop in Redding to pick up two more people, William and Jackson. Everyone was tired, slept, were on their phones, but we went to Costco for food on the road and at the hotel. In the store, my cousins Regina, William, Kira and I all walked around getting all the free samples there were to get, and after that our grandma got us smoothies and ice cream. I copied Kira and got a strawberry banana smoothie. Then we got in the car, made sandwiches, and got on the road again to the hotel, but on the way there the tire popped. We had to pull over for like at least half an hour on the side of the highway. After we got out of the car and stretched and played around, Kira and I sat down in front of the van and threw rocks at the road. Finally, we made it to the hotel, but before we all went into the hotel, we had to stand outside in the hot sun because the line was long. After we got our key, we went into our rooms. We got two, the girls and the boys. All of these girls, Regina, Kira, Grandma, and I went into our room, made something to eat, and got ready for the pool. I don't  fully know what the boys did, but they got ready too.  Then we went down to the pool, and we were going to swim, but we ended up messing around outside the pool for a bit. Kira pushed me into the 8ft part of the pool, and I touched the ground with my butt, and I thought I was drowning! Kira came to the rescue and pretended to grab me, but I think I was being dramatic and acted like I was drowning so she would be worried. Finally, the boys jumped in and asked to race, and I won one game and lost one game against Jokoby. We got tired of swimming and getting in and out of the pool to jump in, so we went over to the hot tub. We were all being kind of annoying because there were a bunch of adults in the hot tub we wanted to leave. They did. We had the place to ourselves,  jumping in the hot tub and playing tag! Then we got hungry and bored, so we went inside, showered, ate, and hit the sack. As I drifted off to sleep, I thought how fun tomorrow would be at Santa Cruz.

-Marissa Cardenas