Two Weeks With Chelsea

Chapter 9

Chelsea sat on her bed tracing the golden letters of her book with her finger, lost in thought while she waited for the right time to head down to the showers. Stacy was leaving for the break a few days ahead of most people and only had a week to prepare. Chelsea had just over a week but still had no plans for where she would go. The school's board of governors would not bend and allow her to overnight at any faculty member's home, but it didn't matter since the offers for a few nights here or there had been withdrawn long before the board made their final ruling. The board had even gone so far as to bar the faculty from being involved in making her travel arrangements. She was on her own.

After a quick shower she grabbed her writing journal and headed for her spot on the second floor of the library where she would gaze out the window and follow the path around the tear drop shaped drive with her eyes. She would take the long route through the dorm building, into the back hall of the cafeteria, across the main building and into the back side of the commons then up the back-entrance stairwell to the library. This routing pretty much guaranteed she wouldn't run into Stacy or anyone else along the way. She paused for a moment at the back end of the commons before heading towards the stairwell. It was nearly empty; only Trevor at a table and a couple other seniors watching television. No sign of Stacy. A slight route change was in order.

As she walked through the nearly empty lounge, she passed Trevor. He was sitting alone, working on his computer. She paused briefly before passing by and tried to muster the courage to say something. She continued, without stopping, towards the front of the building and into the hall that connected to the front side of the library.

"Hi Trevor, I'm sorry to hear about your trip," she muttered to herself as she stood in the hall shaking her head. "I'm so lame."

After several minutes, while she sat quiet and alone in the library, the printer at the desk a few yards away came to life. The mechanics of the machine churned for a few seconds as it warmed up and prepared to print someone's document. The noise broke the silence and snapped Chelsea from her trance like state at the window. She looked around from her seat, then stood up to have a better look. She was sure she was alone. She had wondered if she had walked past someone on her way in, but all the tables were empty. She went back to her seat as the printer finished its job and went silent again.

Moments later, the printer churned out another document. Chelsea snickered. The school had recently removed several printers from the network, and it had taken several people by surprise when the default printer on the students' laptops changed to the machine in the library. The new set of pages slid out of the machine and joined a large stack of homeless documents in the output tray. She decided to check the stack of paper that had just been spit out of the printer to see if she could help them find their owner.

"Hotel reservations," Chelsea said as she inspected the document.

Her heart skipped as she read the name of the hotel guest, Trevor Leland. She smiled. She knew he was in the commons. She had never been able to speak to him because she never thought she had anything to say that wouldn't make her look and sound like a complete fool. She didn't even have to say anything. She could hand him the stack of papers and smile. He would definitely notice her. She looked deeper into the stack of papers and found his flight itinerary.

Chelsea collected her journal and rushed out of the library. She stopped in the hall outside of the commons and looked at her reflection in the glass of a display case. Anyone else would be wearing jeans and a t-shirt, or leggings and a hoodie, but even after taking an evening shower she had put her uniform back on. She adjusted the kilt and blouse and took a deep breath.

"Hi, Trevor," she said, practicing what to say when she delivered the papers. "You printed these in the library. No... Hi, I found... No... Hey, Trevor..."

She stopped rehearsing her lines then turned and walked into the small connector that led into the lounge area. Her eyes were fixed on the table where she had seen Trevor earlier; his computer was still there but he was not. She glanced to the right and found him, collecting papers from the printer in the corner and waiting for a new batch to work its way out of the machine. She stepped back into the connector, paused and looked at the stack in her hand. She could still deliver them, but she was sure he had already run off a new set. Would it be lame if she handed him the papers he no longer needed? She then focused on herself; perhaps handing a person a stack of useless papers was lower on the 'scale of lameness' than having put her school uniform back on at nine thirty at night.

By the time she had decided that handing him the papers was still a good way to be noticed, he had collected his computer from the table and started towards the back exit of the commons. She looked at the papers in her hand for a moment. Her shoulders slumped as she let out a defeated sigh. She inched towards a recycling bin then decided to have a closer look.

"Where is he going?" she wondered quietly as her eyes scanned the details on the pages, "Barcelona..."

As she read the details an idea burrowed into her head. An idea worthy of, and inspired by, Stacy, of all people. If Stacy were holding those papers and hadn't set her sights on her science teacher, she would have been all over this one. In fact, she had done something similar but on a much lesser scale a few times over the past year. "Why not follow Trevor to Spain?" she thought to herself.

She rushed to her dorm and pulled her computer out of its case. She wasn't usually the impatient type, but the computer seemed to take much longer than usual to boot up. She was afraid the flight would be full or worse yet, rational thought might take over and put a stop to the madness that compelled her.

The extent of her experience with any kind of travel was a bus trip to Canada for her grandmother's funeral two years earlier. The preparations for that trip left her ready for this one; a gently used passport was close at hand, and a credit card for expenses was still valid and holding a zero balance thanks to automatic payment from her trust fund. After her fifteenth birthday Chelsea was emancipated and worked directly with her bank manager to handle her financial needs. All that was left to do was to make the flight arrangements and a hotel reservation. With the computer booted and at the ready, she got to work. The itinerary listed his flights and seat selection. It couldn't get any easier.

"How cozy," she thought as she selected the seat beside Trevor on the flight from New York to Barcelona. Trevor had chosen the window seat and the aisle seat immediately to his right was free for her to take. She had to settle for the seat on the opposite side of the aisle for the small connecting flight from Portland to New York. It was a short flight anyway, so not sitting shoulder to shoulder with him wasn't too much of a disappointment. She envisioned the long flight across the Atlantic, seated next to him, perhaps she might drift off to sleep and rest her head against his shoulder. He might put his arm around her and draw her in close, a gentle peck on the top of her head as he said goodnight.

"Enough dreaming!" she said to herself. "Hotel!"

The hotel still had a few rooms available. Unfortunately, she couldn't easily request the room next to his; at least not as easily as making her seat selection for the flights. An email to the hotel after the reservation was complete might do the trick. She wrote up her request and provided her reservation number. And, just for good measure, added his reservation details to make it all seem official; like he was party to this scheme.

Now that the reservations were out of the way she had to do a little shopping. The first thing she put on her mental shopping list was a suite case. She had borrowed Stacy's when she traveled to Canada years earlier, and the tiny overnight bag she used to carry for her visits to faculty homes wouldn't do for a two-week trip. She couldn't possibly go to Barcelona without a camera and a backpack. The weekly visit to the mall promised more than the usual routine of aimlessly wandering for two hours after a slice of 'The Works' at Papa Gino's. She might even be able to avoid lingerie shopping with Stacy, completely.