Here's an edited version with descriptions, y'all. So enjoy!
Hallie - April 20th (The Day of Our Arrival) - New York
Airplane rides are always boring. Really boring. This particular flight was one of the worst I'd ever been on because it was a red eye flight (our school's really cheap), I couldn't go back to sleep, and I couldn't listen to music. My headphones decided to have a tangle fight and now...well, you know.
I'd brought a book, but I had already read it all - twice. It was getting hot and stuffy in the cabin, and I was feeling super cramped. Liz, by some heavenly means, had managed to fall asleep... on my shoulder. I didn't want to move or wake her, but as we neared New York, my rate of comfort became inversely proportional to how much time I'd spent stuffed in the seat. If you're not a math nerd, that means that I was really, really uncomfortable.
"Attention passengers." The captain's voice came over the loudspeakers. "We will be arriving at LaGuardia Airport shortly. Please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts."
I sighed. Only a few more minutes until freedom. Sort of. As soon as we get off the plane, I was heading straight for some Advil. The kids in our class are super rowdy, especially when cramped up in small spaces for multiple hours at a time, and it was giving everyone-including me- a headache.
I decided I should try to wake Liz up. It always a while, and if I waited until we landed, would be pretty annoyed. Besides, it would give me something to do.
"Liz, wake up." I shook her shoulder.
"Ugh...five more minutes, Mom," she groaned. I facepalmed.
"Liz, we're landing," I shook her again. My half-asian friend mumbled something incoherent and twisted herself so she was practically entombed in the scratchy airline blanket. I rolled my eyes. If this was the way she wanted to play... well, you know the phrase. Two could play this game. "Elizabeth Callahan. Andrew can see you drooling."
She jerked awake, arms flailing as she tried to keep her balance. Seeing as her extremities were still wrapped in the blanket, it wasn't hard to imagine what was coming next. Thump. Liz fell on the cabin floor, but soon she got herself back into her seat (with her seatbelt on). Her brown eyes scanned the cabin, frantically trying to brush out her tangled dark-brown hair. Then she realized that Andrew wasn't even looking in her direction, and she hadn't even been drooling in the first place anyways. She glared at me. "You are an evil person."
I smirked. "We're landing."
"Oh." She slumped in her seat, blinking groggily. I glanced out the window and saw the city of New York sprawled before me, its inhabitants only just waking. Our class was talking and laughing, and some were just waking up, like Liz. This was going to be one, well... strange week. I mean, a week spent in New York City with your history class, seeing the sites and touring all the major museums? What could be more fun?
The plane landed shortly after, and finally, I was free from the cramped confines of that sardine can the airline had the nerve to call a plane. I breathed deeply in the fresh air and began to walk over to the area Mr. Smith pointed out. Liz collapsed in a chair next to me and yawned.
"Uh-oh, Liz has her 'I would kill the world but I'm too tired' face on."
I looked up to see my friend, Iris Lacour, standing over me, her violin case in one hand and her backpack on her shoulders. Iris had shoulder-length chestnut brown hair and green eyes (which I think our friend Eddy is obsessed with), and is also abnormally short (sort of...she's five feet tall) and shy. But once you get to know her and she opens up... and well, let's just say you don't want to see her hyped up on sugar.
Next to me, Liz groaned and glared at Iris before picking up her worn copy of The Lord of the Rings and flipping to a random page in order to avoid conversation. Why did she bring that book anyways? It's so thick...in fact, I could see her using it as a weapon.
A moment later, I saw Iris wave at someone and glanced up to see our friend Edward Kennedy (Eddy for short) standing in front of the jetway, looking utterly lost and confused. Like me, Eddy has blond hair and blue eyes, but he is at least four inches taller than me and Liz. Right now he's 5 foot 7 inches, but he's still growing.
When he saw Iris' hand, he brightened up a bit and headed in our direction. He flopped down in the chair next to Liz, which earned him a groan as well. Liz is not a morning person. We didn't talk as we waited for the rest of our class to arrive. That's one of the things that I love about my friends. We don't have to be constantly chatting. Mr. Smith finally strode up, guiding some of the stragglers to our spot, and began attendance. I hate attendance. I get all the stuff about liabilities and whatnot, but attendance has always seemed like such a big waste of time to me.
"Hallie McTaggart?"
"Here!" I shouted over the din of my fellow classmates. After attendance was (finally) done, we all piled into another sardine can- this time a bus- for a forty-five minute drive to our hotel in the heart of the Big Apple. Eddy, Iris, Liz, and I sat near each other so we could talk. But we spent most of our time twisting our heads this way and that as our driver pointed out various tourist attractions. Suddenly Liz shrieked, "Oh my gosh!"
We all turned around. "What's wrong, Liz? Are you okay?" asked Iris, ever the empathetic one.
Liz looked at each one of us in turn and then, slowly, said, "The Statue of Liberty isn't on our itinerary."
We had all been looking forward to seeing the Statue of Liberty since we'd heard about this trip. It was one of the major reasons we'd all decided to go. Eddy had told us all stories about the statue in sixth grade (he was a major history nerd), and for a week, we'd all been obsessed. Frantically, we all pulled out our own copies of the itinerary. Please let it be a typo, please please please.
I searched my itinerary. No Statue. I was still staring at my itinerary thirty minutes later when we pulled up in front of the hotel, as if the words I was searching for would mysteriously appear. That was when I noticed that tomorrow afternoon, we would be visiting the Ellis Island. That would be the closest we could get to the statue. As we waited for our bags outside the bus, I formulated a plan in my head...a plan that just might work.
"Alright class!" Mr. Smith struggled to be heard over the chatter of my classmates. "We'll be checking into the hotel now. Each room holds four people, so you'll have to split up into groups of four. All of the same gender, please." Excited chatter sprung up on all sides as people tried to decide who they wanted to room with. Iris, Liz, and I glanced at each other wordlessly. Groups of four meant that we would have to room with someone else we didn't know (or like, for that matter). Too bad we couldn't turn Eddy into a girl...
Finally everyone had figured out their roommates. Our fourth member was a sour-faced girl named Caitlyn, who was obviously annoyed that her friends had kicked her out of their group. I could tell that Liz was trying not to groan out loud. Eddy was rooming with a bunch of nerds like him, so I figured he'd be okay.
Mr. Smith was walking around assigning rooms. "Alright. McTaggart, Callahan, Lacour, and Patterson - you'll be in Room 209."
He handed me two room keys. Caitlyn immediately snatched one away. "I'll take that, thanks." I just shrugged and let her have it. Liz, Iris, and I usually stuck together anyways. Besides - the fact that Caitlyn was taking a room key meant that she was probably going to be off visiting her friends in the other rooms. And that was fine by me.
We dragged our bags into the hotel room, after a long bout of complaining from Caitlyn when she heard that the hotel didn't have working elevators. Honestly - it was only two flights of stairs. The hotel room wasn't as bad as I expected. Two queen-sized beds and a good-sized bathroom. Iris and Liz decided to share a bed, but I immediately declared that I was going to sleep on the floor. I didn't want to share with Caitlyn, and Her Majesty wasn't about to give up the bed.
Soon, we we back out the door again for our first day of sightseeing. We all piled onto the bus again. It had started to rain - I was glad that I had brought my jacket. We drove through the rain for a while before arriving at a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown for lunch. Afterwards, Mr. Smith gave us a little history on Chinatown, and then he let us roam wherever we wanted - as long as we didn't get lost or get into trouble. Eddy joined us and we meandered around for a little while.
"So guys," I took out my itinerary, making sure to keep it under Iris' umbrella.
"Oh no," Eddy groaned. "Nothing good ever comes after those two words."
I sent him a look. "As I was saying...I've been thinking,"
"Oh dear, that's a dangerous pastime," Eddy mumbled.
"Shut up. Anyways, I've been thinking - the Statue of Liberty isn't on our itinerary - but we're going to visit anyways."
Liz raised an eyebrow. "Like...sneak away?"
"Exactly - I didn't endure Eddy's pointless ranting for nothing."
"Hey!" Eddy protested.
"Ellis Island is on the itinerary. We have to take a ferry to get there. There are two stops - one at the Statue, and then one at Ellis Island."
"Oh! So we're going to sneak off the boat when it stops at the Statue? I like this plan." Liz's eyes gleamed with excitement.
"I don't know guys..." Iris looked uncertain.
"Come on, Iris! You've been just as excited to see the Statue as us since Eddy started talking about it!" I tried to convince her that it was a good idea.
"Honestly, I think she's just excited whenever she can hear Eddy's beautiful, melodious voice," Liz muttered, smirking.
Eddy overheard us. "Wow. Just...wow."
Liz and I burst into laughter. Iris just stared at us in confusion while Eddy glared.
"Seriously, guys. It's a great idea!" I was nearly jumping in excitement.
"Wouldn't they notice if we were gone?" Iris was still hesitant.
"They'll just think we missed the stop. When they call our cell phones, we'll just say that we missed the ferry and we'll catch the next one."
"I...guess that would work..."
"Good! The trip is set for 2:00 tomorrow. We have to make sure that we pack our cameras and something to pass the time. I'm not sure at what intervals the ferry comes in."
"Why do I get the feeling that this is going to be a bad idea?" Eddy wondered.
"It's going to to be great!" Liz said, grinning.
"Of course you think that." Eddy mumbled. "You two always come up with "bright" ideas that get us into trouble."
"Come on, Eddy - Carpe Diem!" I grinned. "Oh look! A firecracker store! We should check it out!" I headed in the direction of the store, dragging Liz with me.
"We should just ditch these guys," I heard Eddy mumble to Iris.
"Go ahead - we won't interrupt your date." Liz snickered.
It is always a pleasure to see Eddy's face go livid with rage. "We aren't dating!"
"Kidding, kidding." Liz smirked and opened the door. "Sort of...," she added, quietly so that only I could hear.
After picking out some firecrackers, almost setting the shop on fire, and getting kicked out of the shop (followed by rapid-fire curses in Mandarin), it was time for us to meet up with the group again. We piled back into the bus, tired from our long day out in the big city and lack of sleep (along with jet lag). We arrived at the hotel, where pizza was waiting for us in a meeting room. Once everyone had their fill, Liz, Iris, and I headed back up to our room. I didn't know where Caitlyn was, but since she had her own room key, I figured she'd find her way back to our room eventually. We showered, changed, and relaxed in our beds. (Mine was a large stack of pillows and a couple of blankets stolen from Caitlyn's bed.)
We all quickly fell asleep; however, around 2:00 in the morning, I woke up, thirsty. I stood up and rubbed my eyes, trying to find my way to the bathroom. We'd forgotten to close the curtains before collapsing into bed, so a sliver of moonlight sliced through the room, landing on Caitlyn's empty bed. Wait. I looked again. Caitlyn's bed was made, cool, and empty. I was scared out of my wits that she had wandered off. If she was caught, she would be stuck with us all day tomorrow, therefore ruining our plan. I woke Iris up and then... well, attempted to wake up Liz. It didn't work.
Quietly, Iris and I snuck out into the hall with flashlights, looking to see if Caitlyn was anywhere to be found. We looked around for a while, even knocking on some of the doors of other girls, before I had an idea. Iris and I snuck off to the boy's wing next, and sure enough, we found one room that still had its light on. Wearily, we knocked on the door. One of the kids (I think his name's Aaron...) opened the door in his boxers. I peeked around him while Iris explained our predicament and saw a startled Caitlyn laying on his bed, covered in blankets. Seeing us, she timidly motioned to Aaron, who asked us to give them a minute and closed the door. About half an hour later, Caitlyn walked out of Aaron's room and made the journey with us back to our room.
I hit the pillow and didn't wake up until the alarm went off at 7:30.