Chapter One

The first chapter (day one) of my novel.

 

“Harlow! Hurry up honey!” My dad yelled up the stairs of our home in Chicago. “We need to be at the airport soon!”

I hopped off my bed, where I had been laying, listening to my iPod, waiting for time to pass, which didn’t seem like it was happening. I glided across my room to look in the full-length mirror. I looked good, I though. I had on my apple green v-neck dress with cream colored accents by Tibi, low bronze wedges from Wanted and a thick gold cuff bracelet from Tiffany & Co, in which one of my aunts bought me for a middle school graduation present. My light blonde hair was pulled back into a half-ponytail and slightly curled. I didn’t have any makeup on other than a quick brush of brown mascara and clear lip gloss.

After doing the once over on my appearance, I grabbed my cream colored Tufi Duek tote and ran downstairs and out in front of my family’s brownstone, with the sold sign in front. Our black town car was waiting with my parents inside at the curb. My mom had brought my suitcase (packed with the only clothes I owned that weren’t in some room in New York) down earlier, so I climbed into the back of the car and my dad took off toward the airport for my 12:45 flight to New York City!

 

Three hours after the plane took off (technically two, but the time change makes it three), the plane landed at LaGuardia Airport. Quickly, I got off the plane, collected my suitcase from the baggage claim, and walked outside of the airport to find the limo that GHS had set up for me to take along with two other freshman back to the Grande Central Park Hotel, the hotel we were staying at, where we would meet the rest of the group in the lobby at 5 o’clock.

I found the chauffer with a sign reading: Gateways High School-Harlow, Nathan and Sidney, right outside the automatic airport doors. I walked up to the younger man, tolling my suitcase behind me and carrying my tote on my shoulder.

“I’m Harlow,” I told him.

“Oh, hello! Welcome to New York City!” he began, and opened the car door for me. “I’ll take your bags for you. You can get in,”

I handed him my suitcase and tote, and climbed into the black town car, much like my parent’s car in Chicago. I wasn’t the first one to arrive; a girl with shoulder length light brown hair had already arrived.

“Hi, I’m Sidney Rice,” she told me.

“Harlow Hollis,” I smiled and told her. “Where are you from?”

“Denver, Colorado. Originally though, I’m from Idaho. What about you?”

“Right now, Chicago. But I’ve lived just about everywhere.”

“So, you’re kind of already used to moving around all of the time? Are you excited for this?” she asked me.

“Of course I’m excited!” I exclaimed. “Who wouldn’t be excited to miss out on your typical high school education?”

“Oh my god I know! I counted down the days throughout middle school, literally. I don’t know what I would have done if I wasn’t accepted,” she began. “My brother graduated from Gateways two years ago and my sisters a junior in the program this year. They both said that this pretty much gets better buy the minute. They both said that there are rough times, but they agreed it’s completely worth it.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I think there would have been bad times anywhere. I think I’m ready for just about anything though.”

Just then, a gorgeous guy climbed into the car and sat down next to me. He had longer, flippy black hair, and blue eyes that you could stare into forever. He turned to look at the two of us and smiled.

“I’m Andrew Corrigan-Welsh,” he told us. “I’m from Maine.”

“I’m Harlow Hollis, and I’ve kind of lived all over the world, but originally I’m from Boston.”

“Sidney Rice, Denver.”

By this time, the driver was in the car, and attempting to get out of the parking garage and into the streets of New York. Sidney, Andrew and I kept talking about our high school experience and our prior lives. I liked both of them a lot, which was good. I figured that if I really liked two people, the other twelve couldn’t be that bad either.

 

Eventually, the driver pulled up to the curb in front of our hotel. It took a little bit longer than I expected, as I had forgotten about New York City traffic around this hour—nearly impossible. He stopped the car, opened the door closest to the curb, and went to the trunk to take out our suitcases. Sidney, Andrew and I stepped up onto the curb, and followed the bellhop that took our luggage on a gold cart into the hotel lobby.

The bellhop placed the luggage cart to the side of the lobby and walked over to the three of us.

“You’re from Gateways High School, I’m assuming?” he asked us. The three of us shook out heads, confirming his correctness. “May I have your names so I can put your belongings in your rooms?”

We gave him our names and then he pointed to a large group of people sitting in the lobby, who upon entrance to the lobby, I had assumed were our classmates. Sidney, Andrew and I walked over to the group and introduced ourselves to the whole. I gathered that we were the last people to arrive, seeing as there had to be more than twelve fourteen year olds sitting there. As Sidney, Andrew and I sat down against the wall, like most of the others, a tall brunette who couldn’t have been older than thirty stood up to talk.

“Hi, I’m Angela, one of the four teachers for the class of 2011 here at Gateways High School. The other three are up in their rooms getting things organized right now. I know you thought that this was only supposed to be a class of fifteen, but we changed things for the program after we sent out the first round of acceptance letters and decided to change things. This year, we added two more people and every year after this we’re going to add three or four more to your graduating class. Before I go over roommates, groups and jobs, I want to discuss your academics. This year alone you will be completing twenty courses, however not necessarily at the same time. Every week you will be given a syllabus, and everything is to be completed by its due date, but since you were all fantastic students I’m assuming that’s pretty obvious. You may not have all of the subjects every week, but for your first two weeks you will. We’ll get more in-depth about this topic later.

“Okay, when you get to your room, you will find a packet explaining more about the program, and a sheet of paper giving you your jobs for this year. We’ll also be explaining more about our system of learning and our travelling at dinner tonight.

“As for roommates, most of you will be with one other person. There are three girls, however, whose parents paid a higher tuition fee therefore they get to stay in larger rooms, they will be rooming together since there’s an odd number of girls, so it worked out pretty nicely. If you want a bigger room, you’re going to have to call your parents as soon as possible to see if they’ll add to the tuition they already paid, but you can’t get the upgrade until next term, since all of the rooms are already booked and paid for.

“For the girls, the roommates are: Shauna and Breanne, Kendra and Arianna, Sidney and Peyton, and the triple--Noelle, Demeter and Harlow.  As for the boys, the roommates are: Talon and Andrew, Grant and Cade, Nathan and Jake, and Tyler and Peter. I have a list of all of your room numbers and the room keys, so form an orderly line and I’ll give them to you,

“It’s about 5:10 right now, and we have dinner reservations at 6:30, so please be back down to the lobby at six o’clock sharp,” Angela finished. 

I started heading toward Angela, to get my room number and key when a tall, thin girl walked up to me. She was utterly gorgeous, one of the most beautiful people I had ever seen—with black, almost blue hair cascading down her shoulders and onto her back, violet eyes surrounded by thick, long lashes, a creamy completion, high cheek bones, and the perfect smile.

            “You’re Harlow right?” she began with a faint accent I couldn’t recognize, but later determined it was Philadelphian. “I’m Demeter, but everyone calls me Demi,”

            “Hi! And yeah, I’m Harlow, “I said, in a pretty enthusiastic manor. “Do you know who Noelle is?”

            “No, I got here with Talon, Grant, Jake and Breanne about five minutes before you arrived so I didn’t see her introduce herself. She saw the two of us, so she knows who we are,” Demi said.

            “Yeah, so did you know that you were in a big room?” I asked.

            “I did. I’m kind of a compulsive shopper and I haven’t exactly mastered the techniques of being organized, so my parents thought it was better for whoever my roommate, or in this case, roommates, that we have more space. But I swear I’ll try to control my disastrous lifestyle. Did you know?”

            “No, I had no idea, actually. Seriously though, I’m not exactly the neatest person either, so don’t worry. Oh, and as for being a compulsive shopper—you have no idea.”

            Just then, a tall, blonde walked over to us. Like Demi, she was incredibly pretty. The girl had honey blonde hair that was slightly wavy and just past her shoulders. Her eyes were big, bright and brown, her cheeks appeared to be naturally rosy and her smile was radiant.

            “I’m Noelle,” she said with a deep southern accent. “I got our keys and our room number. We’re on the twenty-second floor in the Royal Suite!”

            “Awesome, thanks!” Demi said. I smiled.

            The three of us walked toward the elevator, following the crowd of the other kids, and went up to our suite. Upon our entrance into the room, we walked through the ginormous living room, into the dining room, taking a brief look into the unfortunately empty pantry, and back through to the bedroom. When we got to the bedroom and collapsed onto the two double beds.

            “Well, this is pretty cool!” I exclaimed.

            “Oh my god, I know! We need to go grocery shopping to get food for our pantry. We’re the only ones who have one, so we’ll probably need to get a lot of stuff to share,” Demi suggested.

            “Maybe we can go tonight after dinner or something. I’m so excited for this whole thing though!”

“We probably could do that. I’ve been excited forever too! Well, I’ve always been, but now that I’m actually here, it’s crazy,” I started, looking at the three stacks of twelve textbooks each. I decided I definitely didn’t want to immediately break out the syllabus for the week, but I wanted to do something productive. “Should we unpack and then get ready for dinner?”

            “That’s a good idea. I don’t really feel like reading more information packets right now. I just finished reading the original booklet for the thirty-eighth time on the plane. I’ve just about memorized it word for word, so I’d rather read more stuff later. We probably could just listen to what they have to say at dinner and pretend we know exactly what they’re talking about. I mean, how much more could be in those things that wasn’t in the booklet? I think I’ll just look it over for twenty seconds before dinner,” Noelle said. “Are you guys going to change for dinner tonight?”

            “I am, just because I sat on an airplane in this outfit, so I feel a little more, well, not as gross,” Demi stated.

            “Same,” I agreed. “I packed so that I would have something different to wear out at night.”

            “Okay.”

            While the three of us unpacked, I learned a lot about the two girls, who for at least this year would be my roommates. Demi was named after two Greek goddesses—Demeter and Persephone (her middle name), because her parents are both archeologists who had been working in Greece at the time before, and for a while after, she was born. After Greece, she moved to Italy, and she has a sister named Maia Ceres, after two Roman goddesses. When she was nine years old, she moved to Philadelphia, where her parents are both archeology professors at a college. She and her friends frequently came up to New York City on the train to shop. Other than shopping, she liked art, another reason she came to the city.

            Noelle was originally from Georgia, but moved to Alabama at the age of five, when her parents bought an old plantation house, with the intent on restarting the cotton farming (minus the slaves); however, instead they turned the plantation into an inn, and opened a resort a few miles away on the Gulf of Mexico, which skyrocketed with success. She had an older brother who was a junior at GHS, and a younger brother who was in 8^th grade, and would come to GHS next year, as long as he was accepted. She was on her schools dance team and frequented the beauty pageant circuit, winning twenty-seven pageants since she was five years old. In fact, she recently gave up her title of Miss. Pre-Teen Alabama (the 11-14 years old division) to come to Gateway’s. She hadn’t been to an actual mall since she was ten, and did most of her shopping online, except for a few boutiques and smaller stores.

            The funny thing is that all three of us are lanky, and wear the same size jeans. Demi and I wear the same size tops and shoes as well. We all liked the same types of music—virtually everything and love the same cheesy movies and no matter how many times we see them, they never get old, and we still cry no matter how much we’re expecting a person to die or what not. Our favorite colors are all purple and our lucky numbers all end with the number six. The three of us are all fluent in French, although Demi and I are also fluent in Italian, and Noelle and I are fluent in Spanish as well.

            At six o’clock sharp I was standing in the lobby, with fifteen of my classmates and four teachers (Angela, Martina, Dan and Zach). We were waiting on two more girls, Arianna and Kendra I think. Basically, after Noelle, Demi and I unpacked our things and made a brief grocery list, in hopes of being able to shop after dinner, I put on my pink, brown, cream and gold paisley patterned dress I bought at Rampage recently, gold Olivia Morris flats and my gold Tiffany & Co. cuff bracelet. My hair was re-pulled back into a half ponytail, clipped back with a gold and pearl barrette, and I re-curled the ends. To finish, I refreshed my makeup, darkening it a little bit for night, and lightly sprayed Valentino Rock and Rose perfume on my wrists.

            Three minutes later, after talking with a girl named Shauna who was from San Francisco, Arianna and Kendra (I had been right) showed up in the lobby. Arianna apologized profusely for their tardiness, and then we were on our way down West 59^th Street and eventually onto West 57^th Street for a little bit, until we arrived at an upscale Italian restaurant called the West 57 Ristorante.

            I was seated at a table of six with Demi, Shauna, Grant, Nathan and Dan. The six of us talked for a few minutes, only going over the basics, about where everyone lives (Shauna’s from San Francisco, Grant’s from Virginia and Nathan’s from Springfield, Illinois) and general interests, before the waitress came to take our drink orders. I for one had been dying for a diet coke since I stepped off the plane this afternoon, so I was pretty happy.

            The waitress came back with our drinks, and took the rest of our order. When she was gone, we got the second speech of the day. This time, it was from Dan:

            “Okay, I know you’ve already heard some about what’s going to happen in this program from Angela, but unfortunately I need to go over more.” We all rolled our eyes, and Dan laughed kind of nervously.

            “I’m sure you all saw your textbooks in your room, I know it looks like a lot, but you only have every subject the first two weeks of every term, and trust me, it’s not as much as it looks like. We have notebooks for you all too, we just haven’t brought them to your rooms yet. We’ll do that tonight. You’ll write your outlines, derivatives and dialogues in them. Oh, and on the syllabus where it says vocab cards, just make a section of your notebook and make a glossary of terms. We’ll check all of your work at the end of the first day at a new destination. We’ll give you your tests on the plane.           

            “Other than your school work, you’re all assigned to teams. Your team has to plan a trip every term, in which you will be taking the last week of the term. You’ll have a budget for some trips and on others you’ll have a specific stipulation you’ll need to add to the trip. On that week, you won’t have any school work. We’ll get into more depth about this tomorrow so that you and your team can pick your destination, and begin planning. I believe that your first term trip needs to be somewhere in the Caribbean.

            “Tomorrow we’ll also give you the weather forecast for Patagonia, our next destination, so you can pick what you want to bring, so we can ship all of our suitcases when necessary. You’ll get your passwords to the website tomorrow also. The whole packing process isn’t all that hard, but we’ll help anyone who needs it for the first couple weeks.

            “About the individual roles, we won’t be starting them until next term—except for you Harlow, since you’re the translator, you’re kind of out of luck, since we need you every time we go into a foreign country where they speak a different language.

            “Umm...Other than that, do you have any other questions?” Dan finished.

            The five of us looked at each other, waiting for someone to say something, however that didn’t happen. The waitress came back with the four appetizers we ordered, breaking the awkward silence. Happily, Shauna, Demi and I began eating our mozzarella, tomato and basil bruchetta. Nathan was eating some sea scallop thing, Grant was eating a fried vegetable dish and Dan was eating some calamari thing.

            For another minute, no one said a word. Dan must have sensed that we all thought this moment was slightly awkward. In a way, it was really awkward. I had just met four of these people less than twenty minutes ago, and yet there was pressure to be having conversation that suggested that we had known each other for years.

            “So, you guys are awfully quiet,” Dan said.

            “Well, that’s the first time I’ve ever heard a teacher call his students too quiet,” Grant stated.

            “This is a little bit different than your average school. We promote talking, as long as you’re in control and not going crazy,” said Dan, as he laughed.

            “Wow, that just made up for all of the school work we had,” Nathan joked.

            Demi, Shauna and I laughed a little.

            “Hey Dan, are we allowed to go out for a little bit after this?” Demi asked.

            “I doubt it will be too late, so probably. We just need to know where you’re going. Also, we’d prefer that Arianna goes with you guys, because she knows this city well,”

            “Okay, that’s good,” I started. “Demi, Noelle and I wanted to go grocery shopping to stock up our pantry for the week,”

            “That would be fine, I think,” Dan replied.

            Just then, three waitresses came back with our main dishes. My Gnocchi Genovese was put down in front of me, and I could not wait to eat. Despite the fact that I had eaten bruchetta earlier, I was starved.

            As the six of us ate, the awkwardness was lost. We carried on conversations about a large variety of different things, which made me happy. Shauna made plans to come grocery shopping with Demi, Noelle and I, and we hoped that Arianna would agree to go with us, as well as some other people, for company, and getting to know purposes.

            We finished up our main courses, and were handed our desserts (a chocolate soufflé for me). When our desserts were gone, or nearly gone, we paid and went to stand outside the restaurant with the others.

            Arianna was more than willing to take us to the nearest grocery store, in company of Shauna, as planned, and Kendra, Arianna’s roommate. The six of us took off toward the grocery store, planning to quickly shop and then return to the hotel to start some of our class work in our suite.

 

            It was 8:30 by the time the six of us got back to the hotel carrying a few bags of innutritious food in hysteric fits of giggles. Our trip to the grocery store had definitely been interesting with a run-in with Ari’s recent ex-boyfriend, who was unaware that New York City was the first stop on our list (he accused her of lying about her reason for their breakup), and then some old guy kept following us on the way home, so we had to keep dodging him and going completely out of our way to get back to the hotel. To top all of that off, a woman was absolutely convinced that Demi and I were famous. It took us all twenty minutes to finally induce that we were fourteen year old freshmen in high school.

            I was  exuberant that Dan let us go grocery shopping—I got to bond with the girls a lot and I felt much more comfortable now that I had actually had some real conversations, other than ‘oh hi, where are you from?’.

            We got off the elevator on our floor, Kendra, Ari and Shauna disbursed to their hotel rooms, planning to meet back in our suite to take care of our Introduction to Art and Introduction to Business class work. Noelle, Demi and I quickly put away the food into our pantry, except for the drinks, which we put in the mini fridge.

            As soon as Shauna, Ari and Kendra arrived, we sprawled out in the living room with our text books and notebooks, which had oh-so-miraculously appeared in our rooms when we got back from the store. At ten o’clock, we shut our books, happy to be done with all of our Art and Business homework (except for an Art essay, but that required a visit to a museum first), and everyone left, since we had to be in the lobby by 7:45 the next morning—a 6:45 wakeup call.

            Quickly, I changed into my purple silk pajamas with the white polka dots I had just recently bought from Victoria’s Secret, and climbed into one of the queen sized beds, Noelle next to me and Demi right across the room in the other bed. It was a weird feeling to know that the crazy grocery shopping trips whenever we had a pantry, nightly homework sessions followed by getting ready for bed with Noelle and Demi was going to be part of my lifestyle for at least this year. So far, even though it’s only been one night, I liked it; I just hoped things wouldn’t get old and boring eventually. I was also glad that I was getting along with everyone I’ve met so far. I still had yet to talk to a few people (Breanne, Peyton, Talon, Peter, Tyler, Cade and Jake to be specific), but Shauna was rooming with Breanne and said she was really nice, but quieter, so I had doubts that there would be many people—if any, that I didn’t like.

            “That was fun!” Demi exclaimed.

            “Yeah it was,” Noelle started. “I wonder what we’re doing tomorrow.”

            “I looked on the schedule and it said that we were going to the Met, the Guggenheim Museum, Carnegie Hall, the Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center,” I answered. As I was getting ready to go to bed earlier that night, I was digging through the various papers on top of the desk and found packet with what we were doing throughout our week in New York City.

            “Oh, that sounds fun,” Noelle began. “Wait, what’s the Met? Isn’t that a New York baseball team or something?”

            Demi and I started laughing. We both knew that Noelle had no knowledge of anything New York City related, so it was understandable that she didn’t know what the Met stood for, but it was just funny that she knew the lesser-known New York City baseball team.

            “Yeah, the New York Mets are a baseball team, but the Met is the shortened name for the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” I explained.

            “Oh! That actually makes sense!” she exclaimed.

            “Two museums in a row—that’s going to be thoroughly captivating,” Demi said, sarcastically.

            “It won’t be bad, we probably won’t even cover a quarter of each museum,” I replied.

            “Yeah, most likely just enough to see what we need to see and then be on our way,” Demi agreed.

            “Ugh, I’m so not tired right now. If I was at home, it would still be like 9:30,” I commented. “But I don’t want to stay up till three in the morning and regret it at six o’clock tomorrow morning when my cell phone alarm goes off.”

            “I’m not tired either, but I know what you mean,” Demi agreed.

            “Yeah, but another hour or so won’t kill us. The night is still young!”

            “Isn’t that what you say when you’re actually out and about, not lying in bed?” Demi joked. I laughed; listening to Noelle’s funny comments and Demi’s responses for the past few hours has been pretty funny. 

            “So,” Noelle began, dragging the word so out for about a minute. Demi and I looked at each other, wondering what this would lead to. “Jake’s really good looking isn’t he? Oh, and I was sitting next to him at dinner, and he is so funny, too!”

            Demi and I looked across the room at each other and smiled. Noelle was already seriously thinking about the guys and we had only been here for a few hours, five to be exact. Then again, I would be lying if I said I didn’t think most of the guys that I had really seen here were good looking…especially Nathan, Grant and Andrew, so who was I to judge?

            “I don’t know,” I started. “I haven’t really seen him too much. I think Nathan, Andrew and Grant are pretty good looking though.”

            “Grant kept looking at you during dinner,” Demi began. “I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I caught him.”

            “Aww, Harlow! That’s so cute! Not that I actually know who exactly Grant is, but that’s okay, it’s still cute,” Noelle stated.

            “Oh my god you guys, seriously, I doubt he was staring at me,” I tried, though I clearly caught him looking in my direction at least three times throughout the meal. I hadn’t talked to Grant too much, so I didn’t really want to make it sound like there could potentially be something between us. Besides, I didn’t come here for romance; I came because I needed to go to school and this seemed like the most entertaining and exciting way.

            “He so was Harlow and you know it!” Demi retorted.

            “No, I don’t know it!” I lied. “Besides, I’m not looking at anyone seriously in that way.” The second part was true.

            “You know you’ll find someone eventually though. How could you not? When you spend so much time around the same eight guys, something’s bound to happen,” Noelle said.

            “Yeah, I guess, but I’m not going out looking for someone right now. I’m happy being single, at least for awhile.”

            “That’s probably good,” Demi agreed.

            I rolled over in the bed, and Demi shut off the lights in the room. Even though too much time hadn’t elapsed since we all began talking about how we weren’t tired, I was suddenly exhausted, and it went without saying that my other two roommates were as well. I had a long day, no wait, a long four years, ahead of me, and I didn’t want to be exhausted by the first full day

            Before I could fall asleep, I couldn’t help but to think about how close I already felt to Demi and Noelle. Though it could potentially be too early to say, I could tell that we were going to have a great friendship. I hoped the same about Kendra, Shauna and Ari. I liked the three of them a lot too, and I wanted to keep up with my good start with them. I yawned and then rolled over again. I had plenty of time to be tired. Right now, all I wanted to do was sleep.

Author's Note

Suggustions more than welcome! Let me know what you think!

Reviews

[Forist.johnston]

It's a really interesting piece. At first read you'd think it would be something like 'Spy High', but in Collage form. =] it's very well written, now I'm off to read Chapter Two!

[lauren emily]

*claps*Bravo! Bravo! I really love this story. I can't wait for the next chapter.
Great job,
Lauren