Travel // Shawn Mendes

twenty-five

"But you should have seen the way he looked at me. I felt like a total princess."

Jennifer Everett loved to flirt, but she barely talked about guys like this. She spared me absolutely zero details on Caleb, and the whole time we went around London on our last day, visiting a hair salon and numerous shops, she apprised me of more about him than I knew about myself.

"Well, he might not recognize you now," I jokingly point out, referring to her hair.

Jen was always a fan of hair dye, and consistently dyed hers a very light strawberry blonde, thinking she looked better with the color. After going through a whole "I'm ruining my hair, Nora!" crisis, my best friend impulsively dyed it back to her natural auburn color and trimmed it to her shoulders about two hours after lunch. She was loving it.

"As if I cared that much. Only opinions I take that seriously are either yours or my mother's. Speaking of, do you like him?" Jen quizzed, wanting my input.

"I don't know him well enough. But he does seem like he likes you." I voice, not wanting to lie. She nods her head, taking in my answer.

"Alright. Now onto the more serious questions. Hair up or down?"

We were getting ready for Rachel's party, and since it was a casual sort of thing, Jen was wearing a pair of black shorts and a plain, red, and cropped shirt. I picked my regular dark blue jeans and an olive green tank, trying my best to recover from when after I changed, Jen advised me to wear my white tank top instead, forgetting that it was currently buried in the clothing cemetery.

"Can you even put hair that short into a ponytail?" I ask, and Jen waves a finger at me like I had made a good point.

"Uh, sort of, but it would have strands everywhere. I could clip it at the front instead?"

"Just leave it down and curl it," I advise, watching as she reaches for her curler.

Ten minutes later and we're both ready, walking outside to our Uber. The ride takes about twenty minutes, and I don't have to guess once we're there.

The house was absolutely crowded, with people out in the lawn and cars parked up and down the street. It reminded me of the parties that Jen always brought me along to in high school. The weird thing hit me when I remembered I wasn't in high school anymore, and I mentioned it to Jen as we got out of the car.

"Fine by me. If I had to live one more day with fifty minutes of Mrs.Walker, I was going to stab myself. Bitch." She mutters the curse to our sophomore biology teacher, and I nod my head in agreement.

"Jennifer! Oh my gosh, how are you?!" A high pitched British voice greets, and my friend runs over to the short blonde, squeezing her into a hug.

"Noel! Oh my gosh, so nice to see you!" Rachel cheers, pulling me into a brief embrace. I don't bother on correcting her.

I didn't know much about Rachel, except for the fact that she wasn't as famous as Jen and liked to use my friend for social media gains. I would never tell Jen this, of course, since Rachel would be Jen's teammate when they got to The Zone, but my friend wasn't oblivious to all of her surroundings. She's probably noticed a thing or two about Rachel's behavior.

Anyways, I've met both Rachel Lee, and her younger sister, Danielle Lee. Her sister is much more likable. She was eighteen, and everything about her seemed natural. While Rachel always tended to apply thick wings of mascara above her almond shaped eyes, Danielle didn't, and always seemed that she didn't really care about what anybody thought.