I drop my bag onto the counter, “Daniella Fray.” I tell the volunteer. She looks down at her list, and scratches off my name. I pick up my heavy overnight bag and walk over to Tessa.
“It’s always weird hearing your full name.” She tells me, shoving a piece of her curly brown hair behind her ear. I have been called Dani since the second grade, Daniella was too long, and Ella was too fairy tale.
“Yeah, yeah Tessa Wayland Carstairs.” I retort.
“You know I hate the double last name.” She whines as we make our way towards the cafeteria.
“This is the worst idea our school has ever had. I mean forcing us to come here on a Thursday night? For what? Bonding?” I roll my eyes. “It will probably have the opposite effect.”
“What do you mean?” Tessa questions while trying to shove past the mass of people going into the cafeteria.
“I mean, all of our grade spending the night in the school, a secret is going to come out. Then that secret will be everywhere, and then we will all turn on eachother.” I say.
“You watch too many t.v. shows.” She tells me. “Here.” She is pointing to an empty table in the middle of the room. We plop our bags onto the table and wait for the principle to come.
“They couldn’t have picked a worse night if they tried.” I open my backpack and pull out a stack of papers.
“What do you mean?” She asks looking to see what I’m pulling out.
“Come on, we have a huge math test tomorrow.” I shove the notebook papers into her hands. She looks down at them then raises an eyebrow.
“Are you sure..” She gets interrupted by the Principle.
“Hello Students!” She cheers into the microphone. “Who is excited for tonight?”
A couple of people cheer, Tessa rolls her eyes.
“Hey can we sit here?” I turn around to see big blue eyes staring at me. Nicole, the shyest girl in our class. I see Sofia and Cami standing behind her.
“Yeah sure.” I gesture to the empty seats next to us. While they are sitting down I grab the papers from Tessa’s hands and shove them back into my backpack.
“Okay, we are gathered here to bond together.” Our principle continues her speech. “I want this to be a close school, where everyone feels welcome.” I resist the urge to roll my eyes at Tessa. “Now I want you to meet some new people today, maybe invite someone you haven’t talked to much to spend the night with your group. That is all for my announcement, just have fun!” She walks off the stage.
“Oh yeah have fun spending the night in our school.” I sarcastically tell Tessa.
“Hey Cami can I borrow a hair tie?” Sofia asks. Sofia has the longest hair, it goes almost to her waist, she constantly has it tied back into buns or ponytails.
“Yeah, you didn’t bring a hair tie?” Cami asked while handing it to her.
“Must have forgotten.” Sofia says looking at her wrist.
“Come on let’s go set up our sleeping bags.” I pull Tessa towards our math building.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 6 pm~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We had just settled back into our sleeping bags when a door flung open from a classroom.
“Girls! I’m so glad I found someone.” Our teacher, Miss.Park says rushing towards us.
