My name is Stacey McGill. I'm 23 years old and I live in Los Angeles, California.
I just finished my 5th year of college. One more year and I'll have my Master's degree from UCLA and my long term goal is to become a college professor of mathematics. For the past 5 years, I've either been in a dorm or an apartment close to campus but I'm finally getting my own place in July and I'm rooming with my best friend, Claudia Kishi. We can't afford to live in Westwood, where UCLA is so we found a place in Sherman Oaks. It's about a 20 minute drive to my school but luckily, there's a bus stop at the Sepulveda/Ventura Blvd intersection, which I can walk to from our new place and one of the buses goes directly to the school and that should save me a lot of gas money.
Claudia already graduated from an art school called CalArts few years ago. She's a painter. Well, THAT's the job she is passionate about but selling paintings doesn't always pay the bills so she has a day job working at a clothing store at the mall. I'm going to have to get a part-time job this year as well to make ends meet and I'm not really looking forward to it. We have both acquired a lot of stuff over our years in California and between us, our new place will have pretty much everything we need. My dad was also nice enough to buy a new couch for us and Claudia's parents bought us a kitchen table, so we're set! All of our things are in storage for now but we are moving in as soon as we leave Nevada.
Claudia and I were planning to meet up for breakfast and then we were going to drive to Nevada separately, since we figured we would both need our cars while we were up there.
All my suitcases were packed and in my car trunk and we were planning on leaving around 8 in the morning the next day. My soon to be FORMER apartment was completely empty, except for a pillow and a pile of blankets on the floor, which was my makeshift bed. Hopefully I'll be able to get a decent night's sleep.
The next morning, my best friend was right on time and outside my apartment waiting for me. The first thing out of her mouth was, "Whoa. Slumming it a bit, aren't we?" as she looked at what I was wearing. I looked down at my outfit, which I actually put some thought into. My shoulder-lenghth blonde hair was in a high ponytail and I was sporting a plain white t-shirt and light blue jean shorts, complemented by white converse sneakers. Aside from a simple necklace, I wasn't wearing any other jewelry. I LOVE clothes and I always make an effort to wear nice things and look my best but I was going to be sitting in my car for the next 5 hours, driving in the heat and I wanted to be cool and comfortable. I looked at Claudia's outfit: Black capri leggins, with an oversize dark blue flowy t-shirt that fell a bit above her thighs. She was wearing sandals and a ton of beaded jewelry and her shoulder length jet-black hair was down and straight. I noticed her left foot was wrapped in an ace bandage, which helped her with the pain she constantly has in her foot. I hate seeing her foot wrapped up but with good reason. I guess I'll get into that later, though. I said to her, "well, YOU sure look nice but you're going to regret those dark colors and tight pants, missy. You do realize were driving to the Mojave desert in the summer, don't you?"
She smiled and said, "that's no excuse to sacrifice my style."
"Suit yourself," I said.
After breakfast, we were on our way. We had a long drive ahead of us and I hoped the traffic wouldn't be too bad and the drive would go nice and smooth.