Off the Map

6

"You're late," said an older voice from inside the conference room.

"We're so sorry," Wyatt said stepping inside. I followed him in and apologized as well.

"Well I see you two have already met, we were just about to do introductions so if you two will kindly take a seat then we can begin." I followed behind Wyatt as we both took a seat. The table that obviously usually sat in the center of the room was pushed to the far side of the room, on it was plates of food. Yes food. That made me very happy. In the center of the room was eleven chairs all in a circle. I sat down next to Wyatt and a girl with medium blonde hair and green eyes. She was wearing black jeans, a grey t-shirt and a red flannel. I suddenly felt extremely underdressed and self conscious. "Okay so we'll start with ugh.... you," the older man said pointing to the girl next to Wyatt, "stand up, stat your first and last name, your age, favorite color and where you're from. For example, my name is Johnathan, I'm thirty-eight, my favorite color is black and I'm from here."

"Me?" the girl asked as the man nodded, "I'm Meghan Hurst and I'm about seventeen and a half. My favorite color would have to be, hm.... probably a dark green and I'm from South Africa," the girl said as she quickly sat back down. Next up it was Wyatt.

"Hello there everybody," he started talk before he even stood up. But even though you could tell he was nervous, he carried himself in a way that made him appear confident, "my name is Wyatt Timmer, I'm seventeen years old. My favorite colour is a light ocean blue and I'm from the "tiny" city of Halifax, Nova Scotia. It's not actually as small people think it is." he said sitting down still looking confident. A sudden rush of panic came over me, it was my turn. Everyone was looking at me, oh god I didn't want to do this. But of course I had to if I was going to get along with everybody. Slowly I stood up and waved.

"Hello... my name's Florence Hoyte," I said. I was so nervous I felt like I was going to faint. Ever since I was a kid I had had problems with fainting and sometimes I would faint for long periods of time. I had seen doctors about it but no one could ever figure out what was exactly wrong, usually they said it was just anxiety. I continued to talk not wanting to get caught up in flash backs of presenting projects in school. "I'm seventeen as well, my favorite color is orange and I am from New York City." I finished sitting down as quick as possible. As quick as I sat down the next girl stood up.

"Bonjour, my name is Fleur Augustin and I am eighteen years old. I live in Domfront in France and my absolute favorite color is lavender," the girl next to me said in a heavy French accent. The cycle continued for another seven or eight minutes until we had gone all around the circle. Most of the other winners were seventeen and eighteen though there was one sixteen year old. 

"Okay, now that everybody sort of knows each other," Johnathan said pausing before continuing "I'll be telling you about the next few weeks that you'll be spending here in Washington, First thing is that you'll be attending a school here for the next month before we start our trip. It's part of a summer program so that way if we ever get to a place where you can't attend class you'll be ahead. Everyday you'll go to school, after school you guys will walk to the national geographic's headquarters and learn about photography methods from some of our photographers. Some days most likely on the weekends you will attend self defense courses. Since we will be travelling to places that may be dangerous, you'll all need to know how to defend yourselves. You will also be attending 'culture lessons' about manners in other cultures, lifestyle, proper dress, and a bit about food. That way when we arrive in a new place we will only need to refresh your memory." The idea of all these classes made my stomach flip. I was so excited to learn about cultures and stuff like that but at the same time I was so nervous. Questions where racing through my head, would I be able to keep up with all this work? Would I be able to keep up my private photography sessions? What would happen if I was sent a request to take pictures for a shop? I hadn't even realised that my hand had shot up, I had been so spaced out. "What is it Ms. Hoyte?" Johnathan asked.

"I was wondering if we'd have any free time to explore?" I said still a bit dazed and confused.

"If you must know, yes." He answered very sternly and slightly annoyed. The next twenty or so minutes were a blur. Johnathan talked about the rules like don't be late, no sexual relationships with each other, etc.... After he had gone over all the rules he passed us a list. Each one of us got one and on it there was a list of countries and cities. "These are the places we will be visiting, in order. You've already received this list but we wanted to give the list to you again," I looked over the list and got so excited. A lot of big name places were on the list and some other places I had never heard of were on there too. It felt like I was seeing the list for the first time. Johnathan continued talking about the reason for picking where they did, a lot of the reasoning was because the wanted us to pack light so they didn't want us to be in say... Canada during the winter.

Finally the meeting was over, all of us rose from our seats and headed over to the food table. Even though I had just eaten a bunch of grapes and half a bag of party mix I was somehow still staving. The table had all types of food. Fruit trays, cookies, juice boxes. They had a lot of stuff, so I picked up a plate and put some food like chips, strawberries and mini tomatoes onto it. I quickly went and sat back down in my chair. I watched as people awkwardly tried to socialize, tried being the key word here. It mostly ended up sounding something along the lines of "hey" "hi" "cool" "yeah" "It was nice talking to you" "bye" conversation over. I was glad that I wasn't talking to anybody, I could probably sneak away back up to my room in a little bit if I wanted to.

"Hello there," I heard a female voice say. I looked up to see a girl that looked like she was more of a model than a photographer. She had long wavy brown hair and plump lips. She was wearing short shorts and a blue tank top that was so old and worn out you could almost see her bra.

"Ugh... hi."

"You're Florence right?"

"Yes I am and you're..." I paused trying to remember the girl's name "Ciel?"

"Yep," she replied popping the p. "I just came over wondering why you and a ugh... what's his name..." she continued muttering the last part under her breathe just loud enough that I could hear it.

"Wyatt?" I asked giving her the answer to her lingering question.

"Yes that's his name. I came over here wondering why you and Wyatt were late."

"Oh that's a long story, but I'll give you the short version. Basically we met and he invited me to his room and we lost track of time," I said smiling a bit.

"Okay, cool. It was nice talking to you."

"You too," I said as she walked away back to the people she had been talking to before. Her and her friends kept looking at me then back to each other and then over to Wyatt all the while giggling with one another. Annoying, like they didn't how obvious they were being. I was tired of being ridiculed so I walked back over to the table and filled my plate will chips and all the junk food I could spot and then walked out the door.