Just Us in Paris

Un. We're Going to Paris!

I love the photo up above! I thought it was cute and it has an Eiffel Tower so it kind of goes with chapter...or story! :)

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10:06 a.m.
Eastern Time Zone
Beverly, MA

SLOANE BAILEY

I stare up at the boy band posters tacked up onto the ceiling. A smile edges it's way onto my lips, as I hum a few short notes from a random song.

I couldn't recall the title (much less the actual lyrics), but I knew I had heard it on the radio yesterday, when I was driving with Lacey.

I shrugged, I forgot a lot, but one thing had been on my mind constantly for the past six months: the contest.

Six months prior to today, I had convinced my best friend to submit an essay to a contest. I had yet to hear the results, but I had a hunch that we would win.

I wasn't overly lucky, per se, but I've won a fair share of contests and prizes in my life. Take third grade, for instance, when I'd been the grand prize winner of a brand new bike or the following year, when we'd welcomed a Yorkshire terrier puppy to our family (yet another result of winning a contest on my part).

I knew that Lacey didn't believe in my hunch, but I did and that was enough to keep me excited about it all.

And there was also the fact that I'll be able to say 'I told you so' to her shocked face when we did win.

I think Lacey just assumed that the contest was about a chance to go to Paris. And don't get me wrong--that was another main and beneficial reason, but had been so keen on submitting the essay because of Lacey.

We were both going our separate ways in a few short months. I was attending a mid-size state college in Oregon with a undetermined major and minimal clues for my future.

But Lacey, on the other hand, has had her life planned out in her dream journal ever since she was twelve, which is a bit young to start thinking about college.

She had received a scholarship to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, School of Journalism and Mass Communications. She claims that ever since she was capable of holding a pencil, she has wanted to become a journalist for the New York Times.

I sometimes joke about how she criticizes me for dreaming big, when she's the one who wants to write for a national newspaper, but unlike me she has the talent to back up her courageous dreams. And me, well, I'm just dreaming for the sake of it. I've got no real talents, unless you count knitting or being able to know the strangest details about any and every reality TV star.

We would be precisely 2,480 miles apart and the distance would be an earth shattering change. I was always used to having my best friend by my side, but it was indeed time for a change of scenery. I needed to know that I could live without Lacey.

And she needed that too. We were best friends, but we are too dependent on each other.

Perhaps Paris could be one last hurrah before we bid goodbye, pack our bags, and drive to our new lives: our separate lives.