Simon and Veronica's parents had been waiting to take a family vacation ever since they had gotten married, so in preparation for their children's senior year they had bought several plane tickets and booked a weeklong hotel stay in Barbados. They had bought it near the middle of the kids' Junior year and were very excited to send their children and all their friends four thousand miles away from their house. The vacation they had planned for themselves was to be alone in their house for once since they had bought it.
They did not even want Veronica or Simon there. However, they informed the kids of this a week before it happened, and neither of the children had the heart to tell them that several of the friends the tickets had been bought for would not exactly be welcome on the flight. Veronica didn't exactly want to spend a week on a foreign island with Simon either, but there was nothing she could do about that even if she decided to try. Their parents had already rounded everyone up and were preparing to drop them off at the airport, so now there was truly nothing they could do about it.
Their parents didn't really care, however, having spent a whole lot of money and being too excited to have the house all to themselves with no chance that their children or their loud friends could disturb their peace. They asked no questions when even Freya stepped into their car to be picked up or when Simon, Josh, and Vik had been banished to the back row of seats in the van.
Josh had tried to plead his case. He gestured to Freya, who was having an awesome conversation with Veronica and Simon's parents in the front seat. "She gets the front seat? She tried to kill us."
"Wow," Anusha stated, looking bored and down at her nails. "Haven't heard that argument from you in a while."
Veronica shoved Josh's face back into the back row and continued looking forward. "Not the same sentiment you had when you were fucking on my bed."
Josh's face paled. "Veronica! Your parents are right there."
"They willingly ignore us," Simon said, "and Freya seems to be keeping their attention quite well."
"She's good at charming adults," Vik added, and the group all groaned at the implications of Vik knowing that. Liz turned around with a spray bottle and sprayed Vik multiple times in the face. He fell back into his seat. "Hey!"
"You're not permitted to speak," Liz said simply.
"You didn't spray them!" Vik said and gestured over to Simon and Josh. Liz sprayed him one more time and then relented that he was right and sprayed Simon and Josh too.
Dylan wiped excess water that had reached her off of her arms. "Be careful with that, would you?" In response, Liz aimed it at her face and sprayed her.
"Okay, that's enough," Lewis said and tried to yank the spray bottle from Liz, but she won the tug of war and clutched onto it tightly. Lewis held his hands up to show he was no longer a threat and began gazing out of the window. Ethan, who was next to him, had already plugged in his air pods and was longingly looking out the window pretending he was in a music video. Tobi was trying to learn origami in another seat over.
"You kids are going to love Barbados!" Simon's mom cheered from the passenger seat, looking around at all the kids in the car. It was clear she actually wasn't paying any attention to what they were doing, however, as she made no mention of any of the strange activities happening in the car. Veronica's dad nodded in agreement from the driver's seat.
Freya joined in and turned around to everybody. "Yeah! The resort we're going to sounds awesome from what your mom is telling me, Simon!"
Simon narrowed his eyes at her. "Awesome."
