21) Vacation
The first day of the trip, Shawn stepped on a stick while walking barefoot to the beach and became stuck in his room until the gaping hole in his foot healed. He was annoyed and lonely, especially since his window had a view of the beach and he could see Gus chatting up some girl and Juliet trying to learn how to surf.
The second day, he started warning her about the surfing instructor, telling her that he was getting 'tidal wave sleazy-man vibes' from him, and that she should ask for a girl instructor. She laughed at him and rolled her eyes, and did not switch instructors, but she spent the entire night in his room, watching all the movies the hotel had.
On the third day, Gus' girl friend became his girlfriend and Gus stopped dropping by to Shawn's room because he was too busy having a wonderful time with Rebecca. Shawn would hold it against him, had he not done that many times himself. But it didn't help his mood any, watching Juliet messing up and getting repeatedly saved by her ridiculously Adonis-like instructor, and still chatting and hanging out after the lesson. He felt a moment of hope when the instructor said something that made Juliet obviously recoil in disgust, but he followed it up with something that made her nearly fall over laughing, and Shawn felt himself beginning to hate the idiot.
The fourth day, he asked about the instructor, received a name and more than he wanted to know about the man's eyes, then spent the entire day becoming friends with the cleaning ladies and asking them to spy on the guy for him, waving off Juliet's questions when she found him grinning widely rather than looking out the window.
The fifth day, Juliet didn't show up once at his room and the cleaning ladies came back with a detailed description of the room, which Shawn then drew a diagram of. He then threw it across the room when he couldn't find anything suspicious at all.
The sixth and seventh days, Juliet remained missing and Shawn began to get very suspicious, calling her over thirty times and asking the cleaning ladies to check her room.
They came back on the eighth day, telling Shawn that she had checked out, along with Gus, and her room was empty. He was up on his feet, hobbling towards the door two seconds later – only to be halted when he stumbled and fell into a cleaning cart.
The ninth day, Shawn remained in bed, thinking hard with his hands in his 'psychic' pose, occasionally dashing to the window to peer out of it, before shaking his head and retreating to bed. Around five in the evening, he called the front desk asking that the cleaning lady who he got along with best, Maria, be sent to his room, faking a horrendous spill. After she came up, he asked her to check and see if either Gus' girlfriend or Juliet's surf instructor had a second room key among their things, having remembered seeing a slightly too-full key pouch hanging from the instructor's wrist.
Early the tenth morning, Shawn received not only Maria's news that they both did have two keys, but a copy of the second one both had, which was to a equipment shed out on the beach. Shawn wrapped his foot in towels and bubble wrap, using Maria's mop as a make-shift crutch as he called the hotel security and hobbled swiftly to bring them to the shed, Maria alongside, highly excited to be helping him. They burst into the shed with the hotel security brandishing guns, just in time to stop the man and women, who were about to shoot their victims.
Gus and Juliet remained in Shawn's room for the night, and though Gus went home the next day, saying they'd solved the 'serial vacationers killing case' and he wanted to get away from the place he almost died, Juliet stayed, because they still had four more days.
The eleventh day, Shawn went with Juliet to the beach, where he sunbathed and she showed off her well-paid-for surfing skills. By the end of the day, his foot was finally good enough to walk on, and he and Juliet took a long walk down the beach together.
The twelfth day was the last day he saw Maria; she had taken her reward for helping with the police investigation and left the low-paying hotel in search of a better job. Shawn and Juliet spend the day in the arcade, wasting almost a hundred dollars, or at what would have been a hundred dollars had Maria not left them a key to the machines so they didn't have to pay.
On the thirteenth, and second-last day of their vacation, Shawn finally went swimming with Juliet, and when they left almost at dusk, he grabbed her arm, and kissed her, still standing in the shallow water.
Their last day at the hotel contained several more kisses and a few very serious talks, but by the time they left at three in the afternoon, Shawn and Juliet both had permanent grins on their faces and a date the next night.
When Henry asked how the investigation had gone, Shawn didn't hesitate to name it his best vacation ever.