Chapter Two

Two hours and 41 minutes later, we finally touched down in Florida. After the wonderful travel on the plane (note the sarcasm), we were all so excited for the hour car drive to the beach house we rented (again, sarcasm).

We settled in the car, with my mom and Bex in the front and me, Macey, and Liz in the middle seat. Word to the wise, whatever you do, don't try to race Bex to the passenger seat of the car, you'll end up with bruises. Trust me, I speak from experience.

During the car ride, I caught Macey writing in a notebook, I tried to see what she was writing, but she noticed me and rotated it so I couldn't see. I shrugged it off, it was unlikely I would be able to see anything through the dark lenses of my aviators. I decided to try to find out what was in it later.

A boring 5 minutes into the car ride, Liz had an excellent idea.

"Let's play the alphabet game!" she exclaimed.

"Never played." Macey said with a bored look.

"Are you kidding me?!" I asked her "You spend so much time on the road, how have you never played the alphabet game, it's like the ultimate road trip game." The truth of it suddenly hit me, I played that game with my dad that day we went to the circus.

"Well, how do you play?" Macey asked, seeming genuinely interested. As Lizzie and I explained the game, Bex started looking for the first letter in the alphabet. about halfway through our explanation Bex shouted:

"A!"

And the game began. The next 45 minutes were filled with screams and yells as we each found letters in the alphabet. Macey caught on quickly, and despite my mothers trash talk, we found she was rather bad at the game. She had only found 2 letters, I was leading with 6, Bex followed with 5, Lizzie and Mace were tied with 4 each. With only 5 letters left, we all had our eyes open. Eventually we reached the beach house and we were all startled as my mom yelled

"We're here!" Liz jumped about a foot in the air and I felt my pulse race with a small amount of adrenaline.

I rolled my eyes and started to unbuckle my seat belt.

"First come first served for room assignments!" called my mom as she went to open the door. We all raced out of the car and up through the house. Bex was in the lead and I was hot on her heels, Macey was right behind me and considering the fact that Liz was on the research and development track, she was keeping up pretty well, until she crashed into the table.

"Oopsy Daisy!" she called as she raced to make up time. We giggled a little as we ran upstairs and launched ourselves into rooms.

Mine was down the hall across from Bex with a queen size bed and good sized dresser and closet. It was an off white and a door led to the bathroom that connected with Macey's room.

Macey had a good sized room almost identical to mine but hers had a mirror in the corner, across the hall from her was Liz. Liz had the smallest room but it was decent size. She and Bex would share the bathroom at the very end of the hall, with a closet in between the two rooms. I knew we would probably all end up sharing the bathroom between me and Macey's room.

My mom's room was downstairs with a master bathroom branching off just down the hall from the kitchen. The opposite way of the kitchen, there were some couches and love sacs with a T.V. and movies, a door on the left of that lead to another bathroom. With a pool in the backyard and our private stretch of beach, the house was nice. The kitchen was a good size, with modern appliances and I decided that we wouldn't let my mom near them. She would probably end up destroying the microwave.

As Macey and Bex unpacked, Liz and I explored the backyard. The beach started a few yards away from the pool. There was a shower to rinse off the sad and a fire pit just past the back door. I could already picture the nights to come.

But adventures would have to wait. It was barely five o'clock and I was already exhausted. As Liz and I went back inside, we chatted mindlessly about what we planned to do over the next month.

"We'll have to have s'mores at least once." She said. I nodded my agreement.

"And we'll go on at least one night swim in both the ocean and the pool." she gave a small smile as she picture us crashing us through the ocean in the dark.

"Hey girls! Do you mind if I order pizza for dinner?" my mom asked as we started up the stairs.

"Nope, sounds good" we said with a smile

"I can already guess what kind you girls want" she said with a wink. I started to grin. No matter what anybody said, we were carnivores and we loved nothing more than a pizza covered in pieces of sausage bacon and pepperoni.

"Cam! Come unpack, I need your bathroom stuff!" Macey called from our joint bathroom.

"Lizzie, I need yours too!" Bex's british voice echoed from their bathroom.

"By the way," Macey said as she appeared in her doorway "we are waxing tonight, and you two are not getting out of it."

I stifled a groan and went towards my room. I gave Liz a mock salute and she smiled and repeated the gesture, almost knocking the sunglasses off her head. I grinned at her as I walked backwards down the hall, almost running into Bex.

"Careful Chameleon" She said in a mock serious tone. Her huge smile told me she was trying to get me to run into her.

"You wanna fight Duchess?" I asked her smiling. I put my fists up in an overexaggerated defensive state.

"Definitely!"

"Then put up your dukes!" I teased her and just as we were going to start circling each other, Macey came out.

"Nobody is fighting anybody until Cammie unpacks." She turned me towards my room "March." She said simply.

I dragged myself through the door and quickly threw clothing into drawers and even took the time to hang up shirts. Almost twenty minutes later I brought my bathroom stuff to Macey who was vigorously arranging and rearranging her products.

"Finally, stay in here just so you know where everything is. " I leaned against the wall as Macey added my things into the row of cosmetics on the counter. She occasionally asked my opinion and I gave her the best answers I could think of. Sometimes they were satisfactory and sometimes they weren't. Yet another half an hour later, Macey was finally content with the way it was arranged.

"Make sure if you use anything you put back exactly where you found it." she tells me sternly and I nod.

"Can I go spar with Bex now?" I asked pleadingly

"Yes, I suppose" She said with a roll of her eyes. I smiled and raced to change.

I put on a pair of tight black athletic shorts (the loose ones drive me insane) and one of my exercise shirts from P&E at Gallagher. After tying my laces, I went to find Bex. She just so happened to be in her room. I banged on the door.

"WHAT?!" She yelled

"You wanna spar or what?" I yelled back

She appeared at the door grinning like a mad man.

"Let's go." I smiled back at her as we headed for the beach.

As we reached the sand, we pulled off our socks and shoes for better traction on the somewhat slippery surface.

We started circling each other. I loved sparing with Bex because it was a challenge. I knew her better than anyone else, but she knew me in ways that not even my mother knows me. I could predict her moves as easily as she could mine. Add that to the fact that Bex had moves that she was forbidden to pull in sparring matches, it made for one interesting fight.

Bex moved first, she always does. We fell into a familiar routine of punch, block, kick, duck, lunge, until we hit an unfamiliar element. We had traveled closer to the water, we were on the wet sand. I was distracted by this fact when Bex tackled me head first into the water. We went down spluttering and came up laughing. We sat there with smiles on our faces when I reached down, grabbed a handful of sand and threw it in her face.

"Oops" I said faux innocently with a grin on my face. She glared at me and threw sand back at me and laughed.

"Oh, you're going down." I said with a serious look on my face. I grabbed some sand and tangled it in her hair. That stopped her laughs real quick. She shoved some sand down the back of my shirt and I returned the favor by shoving some down her shorts and when she bent down to return the favor, I put sand down her shirt. Both of us were dripping in mud and sand, but we kept going. We laughed and threw sand and Bex even got some in her mouth! About half an hour later, Liz came to see what was so funny. We looked at each other and flung some sand at Liz. She gave us a death glare before joining our fight. She had only been with us for fifteen minutes before she was as drenched as we were. My mom and Macey were the next to come out. None of us dared throw sand at either of them. My mom produced a camera from her pocket and took a picture. We gave the camera a cheeky pose.

She grinned at us and said "Rinse off the sand before you come inside. Liz you can come shower in the downstairs bathroom. Pizza will be here in about half an hour. " Macey laughed at us before heading inside.

We hurried to rinse off and then inside to shower. We tossed our clothes into the laundry basket.

"Food's here!" Macey called. We raced down stairs and sat at the table in the kitchen.

"I was wondering how long it would take you girls to de-sand yourselves." My mom said with a wink.

"Weelllll," I drawled "We wouldn't have to 'de-sand' if it weren't for Bex" I shot a teasing look at my best friend.

She stuck her tongue out at me. "Don't act like you didn't throw any sand," she said with her british accent leaking through "in fact, I think you were the first to throw sand."

"So we have Cammie to blame for the sand everywhere?" Liz asked in her southern drawl with her eyebrows raised.

Macey laughed a little at the idea of me starting a fight "Boy, am I glad I wasn't involved in that little fight" she said as she took a big bite.

"Don't worry Mace, we'll get you in the next one." I said back.

We laughed and dug into the pizza. We ate 2 boxes of pizza in no time flat. As we were clearing our plates, my mom inquired as to what we planned to do next.

"You girls want to watch a movie?" she asked

"We would love too, but we're waxing tonight" Bex answered.

Liz and I groaned.

"Come on girlies." Macey said as she lead us upstairs, to our doom.