School Heroes

Chapter Two

The next afternoon the students all met outside of the school. The large group of friends sat together on both the bus and plane ride. The bus ride was small and cramped as per usual on the old school buses the high school owned. Once the high schoolers got to the airport, check-in was relatively painless and they only had to wait 30 minutes before their plane began boarding. The plane was a big jumbo jet and there were only a few strangers on board, the majority of the plane was taken over by the loud sophomore class. The plane aisles had three seats per row. Grace, Ally, and Emily in one row with Grace at the outside aisle; Emily at the window seat, and Ally in the middle. Across from them: Alissa, Cristine, and Delilah, with Delilah at the window seat, Alissa at the aisle seat, much to her disliking, and Cristine in the middle. Mason, Roger, and Phillip to a row behind them. Mason had gotten the window seat with Phillip in the middle and Roger on the aisle seat. Behind Emily was Steve, behind Ally was Carlos, and finally behind  was James.
Emily watched as the plane began to take off, her shoulder being tapped from behind her. The female turned around to look at Carlos, "What?"

"Can I have some gum?" He asked twisting a bit of his short hair.

"No." She replied sternly.

"Come on. Please?" He whined.

"I didn't bring any." She lied as she put a piece of gum in her mouth.

"Can I have some gum?" Ally asked batting her eyes, in an attempt to be cute.

"Nope." Emily looked out the window as the plane began to rise off the ground.

On the other side of the aisle Cristine, Alissa and Delilah were sitting in silence. Alissa seemed to be in the same kind of trance she always went into during car rides. Delilah was already trying to fall asleep. The only one really attentive was Cristine. She sat there with her leg bouncing up and down. Finally, she turned to Alissa.

"Why do I have to sit in the middle!?" She complained.

"I dunno. It just happened." Alissa mumbled, still in her trance.

"Well, I don't like it! I didn't have to sit in the middle last time I went to New York!"

"That was last time you went. This is different."

"I don't even have anything to lean on when I want to sleep." Cristine groaned.

"Deal with it. I can't help you with that."

Cristine frowned and slouched back in her seat and closed her eyes. She didn't seem pleased with the results of that conversation. The trip had started late in the evening and the plane flew silently through the night sky. The ride was long, most of the kids asleep, a few still awake. Emily was asleep on the small table, Aliss also asleep along with Cristine (who was sleeping straight up) and the rest of the girls.
Steve looked out the window then looked at Carlos, "I think I'm going to go to sleep."

"Okay." Carlos shrugged. James watched a video on his phone that he downloaded. Steve had attempted to fall asleep, however, there was too much noise for him to do so, it was a mystery to him how others who didn't have music fell asleep. So the bright blue-eyed male opted for looking at "art" on his phone and making his own short clips.
Jordan stood up and walked up the aisle once the seat belt light had come off. He walked down to the bathroom, coming back moments later to sit between Jacob and Lewis.

It was still dark outside the windows when the plane began to descend. The green seatbelt sign flickered on as the small number of kids who were asleep woke up. Their stomachs dropped as the nose of the plane dipped down after circling the airport twice. The plane landed and taxied to the gateway as the group of kids got their first look at the big apple. There were still stars in the sky but small rays of sunshine were just beginning to shine through the shadows of skyscrapers. The sophomore class slowly made their way out of the plane, several of them yawning as their lack of sleep caught up to them. Some of the adults helped the half sleep kids grab their suitcases off the carousels and escorted them to the charter buses that awaited them outside. More kids fell asleep as the ones that slept on the plane stared up at the sky. The shadow of the 16-floor hotel passed over the buses as they came to a stop.