Project Equality

Vacation (6 of 7)

Amilia

"Jenna, you and Lisa have truly outdone yourselves," I sighed, sinking into a comfortable massage chair, my feet resting in a little bath of rose water. "I've never felt this calm in my life."

"Aromatherapy, yoga, and all of this is a very good natural way to cope with anxiety," Jen replied. "I think it's nice that we gave each room a different schedule. It allows us to bro it up while everyone else can romance it up."

"This was your secret plan, wasn't it?" Lynn teased. "Keep our boyfriend out of it so that you can monopolize some intimate Ami and Lynn time."

"I've been exposed!" Jen laughed. "I do really like hanging out with you guys, though."

"We have to make an agreement - the seven of us, I mean - to always have a month to get away, even when we're adults," I said. "And eventually, that won't include Lauren."

"What about Andrea?" Lynn asked.

"She's new, there's no telling if that's even going to be a factor. What I mean is that the original seven of us have to do this, because it's something that allows us to root our friendships even deeper," I explained.

"True," Jen agreed. "That's why I have meals and yoga all together. Group bonding. Which actually makes me think of something . . ." She pulled out her phone and started typing.

"Idea for what?" I asked.

"The new version of Club," she said. "Club two point o. We still haven't renamed it. Will we ever?"

"We can ask new members," I said. "Anyways, if we don't, we always just called it Club anyways, right?"

"True," she agreed. "The idea is for group bonding activities. It'll be hard, because it won't be small and intimate anymore."

"Club arguably hasn't been small and intimate since it stopped being just me, May, and Lisa," I pointed out. "I mean, even Lauren was here before Hazel, but she's still considered an OG member, why?"

"Lauren never really wanted to be more than an outsider when I was always fighting Lisa," Jenna pointed out. "It's true, because Ely told me when I offered."

"She has been a key part of us getting here," Lynn said. "We've almost all had the hots for her at some point, and her love for Ely has been an inspiration for us. I feel like we just ended an era, though. Everything after this vacation . . . It's all changing."

"No kidding," I sighed. "This is the last month that we have, you know?"

"We're going to be juniors," Jenna breathed. "I'm terrified."

"You're terrified?" Lynn laughed. "I'm taking so many AP classes, I just might drown. I can only imagine poor Hazel's living hell with almost an entire schedule of IB classes."

"After we're juniors, we'll be seniors. I don't know what I want to be when I grow up," Jenna stressed. I got that on some level. When we were freshmen, four years seemed like a long time, but when we were entering the second half of high school, college felt close, and none of us really knew what we wanted to be when we grew up. Even Ely, who you all know had specific presidential aspirations, had to figure out what to do in the eighteen years between graduating high school and when she would actually be able to run for the presidency. We were all a little lost.

"I'm good at math." It was an understatement, and I knew it was. I wasn't a prodigy, I was a genius, and if you don't know the difference, I'm sorry. Math was my strong suit, but I found it hard to be challenged by anything, and I'm not bragging. It was actually the most annoying thing, because I like challenge. You know what challenged me? Art. I was good at it, but in a way that I was always able to get better. I loved painting, particularly impressionism, and my method of "perfecting" impressionism was met with a simple challenge: impressionism is by nature imperfect. This led to thinking a lot about Vincent van Gogh and studying his art, but I had yet to reach any perfection.