"Ok..." Jake rubbed her hands together in anticipation, "So...is everyone ready?" She glanced around at the three anxious people around her. Only three. "Where's Calhoun?"

"I'm right here..." He came running up behind the group, bag in hand, and out of breath. "Sorry, couldn't find my keys." Smiling sheepishly, he held them up in front of the group.

"Everyone have their stuff?" Jake began to pile people's bags into the trunk, while making sure they had everything they needed.

They glanced at each other and nodded. Bella was the leader of the group, being the only one fully awake, "Check."

"Toothbrushes, pajamas, underwear, clothes?...we don't want to have to stop for this stuff."

"Check."

"Money?" That was thrown in for Bella. While in Vermont, they were going to do the touristy shopping thing.

"Check," Bella answered with enthused vigor.

"Junk food?"

"Check," hearing Hamilton's garbled voice before Bella could answer, she looked up. The plastic bag he held was stuffed with food. "Courtesy of my mom."

She sighed, "Good to see you're already eating it, Ham...Car games?"

"Check."

"Car keys?" She stopped the packing and glanced pointedly at Scout.

"Check," he jangled them to silence her. "Cabin keys?"

She pulled her keys out of her back pocket and smirked at him, "Check."

Searching the ground for any overlooked piece of luggage, she found nothing. She scanned her friends for a hint that she might be forgetting something, but if she had, they gave no clue. "Well, by God, it appears we're actually ready to leave. Somewhat on time, even."

"Yay for us." Bella clapped her hands together, ready to depart.

Scout put his arm around her as he led her to the front passenger's door, "You are way too hyper for nine in the morning."

"Blame it on Hamilton, he's the one who gave me chocolate."

Everyone looked at him. He shrugged, "She asked for some. I didn't know she had a low sugar threshold."

"This is going to be a long, long trip." Will sighed as he opened the car door.

Scout hopped up into the driver's seat. Bella took the front passenger seat, looking back into the car, she finally registered its incredible size.

"God, Scout...your car...it's huge."

Will tripped while he tried to vault over the middle row into the small, slightly elevated, back seat. His head rested mere inches from the ceiling, which he quickly noted after hitting it. From then on, he asked for the food to be passed back to him instead of trying to steal some of Hamilton's in the seat in front of him.

Jake and Hamilton occupied the central seats in the sports utility vehicle. Most of their space was invaded by skis and snow boarding equipment; so in an effort not to be stabbed in the back of the head with a ski pole, Jake laid her head in Hamilton's lap. Smiling, he began to run his fingers through her hair, in a rhythmic manner that almost lulled Jake back into sleep.

"Oh, I almost forgot...Fake IDs?" Hamilton could hear the tiredness in her voice. Usually, 'the night owl' slept in as late as possible on weekends.

"Check."

The group stopped in their individual conversations to turn to the very enthusiastic voice which emanated from the farthest end of the car. It was Will. William S. Krudski. Scout had a look of utter shock; Bella's mouth was moving but no sound came out, trying to form the words she couldn't find; Hamilton had his eyebrows raised questionably, and Jake was trying not to laugh and break the serious mood of the car.

"Ok - Joking!"

There seemed to be a visible sigh of relief from the group. What had the world degenerated to if Will had a fake ID?

"It's not that hard to believe. I do break rules sometimes." He said indignantly.

"Sure Will."

"Remember that one time we stayed up ten minutes past curfew...I honesty feared for my life." Scout mocked, in his own interpretation of Will's voice.

"Shut up! I never said that-"

"Yeah, come on Scout...."

Will was grateful for Jake's sympathy.

"...He was once late for crew, remember?"

"No...Finn asked him to go unlock the boat house, that was why."

Will could only sigh and put his head in his hands, wishing he had never said check. It was one simple word, but he just had to bring it up. Laying sideways in the seat, he tried to avoid their teasing stares, but their taunting still flowed over the seat back which blocked him from their view.

"Oh...I guess excused absences don't count, huh?"

"Nope."

"There was that one time - ugh, no, that wasn't really..." she tapped her fingers on her lips, thinking, "But what about that - no, that wasn't one either."

"Maybe you're thinking of the time - no, no....that was an accident not an official rule breaking."

Both Jake and Scout sat in silence, pretending to struggle and think of more 'Will's gone bad' incidents, when finally Bella interrupted the quiet,

"God Will, with a record like that, you're headed straight to prison."

"Yeah," Hamilton agreed, "We really need to sign him up for one of those 12 step programs. I mean," he sighed and shook his head, "his kleptomaniac tendencies...well, it's really starting to bother a lot of people."

"Enough!" Shouting from the back, Will sat up, "I get the point! I'm the Marcia Brady of Rawley."

"Can I quote you on that?"


"The music stopped and the crowd in the tent watched as the blindfolded man fell to his death. The man was murdered. How did it happen?" Reading from the small white card, Will looked up to find confusion in Hamilton and Bella's faces.

"He was getting executed?" Bella guessed.

"Nope."

"He...?" Hamilton looked at the roof as if it held the answer he was searching for. "...I have no idea."

"Any other takers?" Glancing around, he saw no one attempt to guess again. "It was during a live circus performance and the band conductor prematurely stopped the music. The blindfolded tightrope walker thought he had reached the end of the rope, and when he went to step on the expected platform, it wasn't there and he fell to his death."

"That's so stupid. How the hell were we supposed to get that?"

"Hey, I don't make the questions, I just read them."

"Ok, then. Do another one." Hamilton turned back to face the front of the car, staring, intent on answering one of the questions. They had been playing for 20 minutes and Jake and Bella were the only ones who actually guessed correctly. Or maybe they were just the only ones trying.

"Professor Quantum has two coins which total 35 cents. Since one of the coins is not a dime, what are the two coins? Hamilton...?"

He sighed, "Maybe it's like 3047 and we've created a new 30 cent coin."

Laughing, Jake looked up at him from the book she was reading, "Where the heck did that come from?"

"Come on. After the last answer anything could be a possibility."

"As realistic as your guess sounds, I'm afraid it's not the right one. Try again - This one's not that hard, it just takes a little deductive reasoning."

"I don't know. I give up."

"A quarter and a dime. One coin is not a dime, but the other one is."

"That's so cheap," Hamilton scoffed. "Of course Will would be the one to bring a game that actually required thought and logic. It's Spring Break, man. Thought and logic aren't supposed to exist during Spring Break."

"I'm not that naive. I have seen MTV Spring Break after all."

"I think MTV does a good job at showing the hormone-driven horniness and all over stupidity of the common teenager." Jake commented, her eyes never leaving the page, as if it was a casual thing to say.

Everyone in the car turned to look at her, even Scout broke his eyes away from the road for a millisecond, "You know we are the common teenagers they are representing, right?"

Placing her bookmark between the pages, she folded her book closed, grinning, "I never said it didn't apply to us."

"So..." Bella felt the need to start a new topic since the thought of continuing the conversation about hormone-driven teenagers didn't quite appeal to her. "Where is everyone going to college?" She turned around in her seat to face her friends.

"The place that offers me the biggest scholarship!" Will yelled from his place in the farthest reaches of Scout's SUV.

"Yeah, I know that feeling." Her glance traveled from the third seat back, into the middle row of plush leather. "What about you Hamilton?"

"NYU, definitely." He sipped at his medium Sprite from their last stop at Taco Bell and snuck a quick glance at Jake, but she was already looking at him, smiling. There was a chorus of awwws from the car. Looking away, he hoped his face wasn't as flushed as it felt. Mumbling to the window, "It has a good art program," he tried to maintain some dignity.

"Yeah, and I'm sure that's the main reason you chose it too," Bella laughed, "Jake?"

"I don't know...I was thinking about University of San Diego, some place in California." She tried to suppress her smile as Hamilton's jaw dropped in surprise. Laughter filled the car and Hamilton pinched Jake in the side to get even. "No, but really, I was thinking of like Columbia or something."

"Wow that's so...prestigious. So...ivy league."

"That's the rumor."

Scout cleared his throat loudly.

"Subtle, Calhoun, Subtle." Hamilton muttered.

"That would be my nickname...Subtle Scout Calhoun."

Laughing, Bella decided to give in to his plea for attention, "Yes, Scout...and where would you be going?"

"Well, thanks for asking Bella. I would be going somewhere near Washington D.C. My dad has this grand idea of setting me up in an internship so I can slowly follow his footsteps in life."

"You've sure got the scandal aspect of politics covered." Chuckling, Hamilton did his best interviewer voice, "Mr. Calhoun, is it, or is it not true, that you were caught with a female in your dorm rooms after hours?"

"No comment."

"What? What is this, Scout? How come I haven't heard of this...Will?" Bella turned to look at Will for answers, but Jake was the one who filled her in.

"Someone was found trying to sneak a girl out of his dorm room at two in the morning, only to be caught and punished severely."

She laughed in surprise as she turned to Scout and slapped his arm, "What were you thinking?"

"It wasn't like that, ok." Shaking his head, he continued, "We were working on a project due the next day and we had kinda put it off until that night...so there we were, at like twelve o'clock, still doing the poster, and we...kinda fell asleep."

"Where were you, Will?"

"Hey, don't get me involved, I was at that National Honor Society thing for a couple of days-"

"He didn't know," Scout interrupted, "So when I woke up, I started having, like, a panic attack, at the thought of getting possibly suspended or arrested or something - not logical, I know - but it was three in the morning and I wasn't thinking clearly. And so, I woke her up and tried to get her out of the building, but the front doors were locked. So we tried to, like, force open the windows and that was not working. I guess they have these burglar alarms which detect if someone is trying to break in and with all our racket we caused them to go off."

"It was so hilarious," Jake added, "This insane alarm starts sounding, so everyone was getting up to see what it was and how to shut it off. Let me tell ya, one hundred sleepy, grumpy boys are not a pretty sight."

"Yeah, so there we were - I'm like, boosting her up to the window, and everyone troops down and finds us trying to escape. And she ends up falling on me and knocking me to the floor. That's when Ham's dad decides to come in, when she is sprawled over me on the floor and the guys are hooting and cheering." He puts his hand over his eyes for a second and shakes his head, "That was, honestly, the most embarrassing moment of my life."