Chaperone Story
Matthew Ryan Fischer
They treated it like it was a vacation – the parents, the kids, and
the teachers. All of them, they were all
the same; they were all looking for a brief moment away, a vacation from their
lives, just a moment to be free from consequence and from themselves.
Twenty-two teenagers sat in the hallway in front of the elevator
bay. Their group had taken over the seventeenth floor of the hotel.
There was a ten o’clock floor curfew, but most everyone was
planning on staying up much later than that. There was a museum tour in the
morning and several Model UN meetings throughout the afternoon, but no one was
too worried about a lack of sleep. The permission slips had been filled out and
the kids were happy to have some semblance of freedom away from school and
home.
There were six adult chaperones, two teachers and four parents,
but no one had seen them in quite some time. After the ten o’clock headcount
they had disappeared. No one was complaining.
Leslie was beautiful. At least that was what Conrad thought.
Leslie was cute for sure, but she was young and had the body insecurity that
most teenagers carried with them. She thought she had too many freckles and too
much acne and was too thin and too tall for a body that hadn’t filled out
enough yet. But those were the thoughts inside her head. Conrad didn’t see all
that. He saw a nice girl who was smart and pretty and seemed to look at him in
a way that made him feel like a man instead of a sixteen year old kid. That was
enough for him. Maybe he was young and maybe it was juvenile, but that was
enough.
Randy was playing poker with Conrad, Mike, Eliza and Stacy. He
could tell Conrad was distracted. His mind was clearly somewhere else. It was
going to be easy to take his money. He wasn’t sure about the others. Mike
seemed to be half-asleep and Eliza was acting like she didn’t care about the
game very much. She and Stacy kept texting each other secrets and giggling too
much. That could have been a front. They had taken his money before and he
wasn’t about to believe that they couldn’t do it again, even if their minds
were on other things.
Stacy got a text from her hotel roommate Rebecca. Rebecca had
disappeared an hour ago with Ryan. According to Rebecca nothing serious had
happened and she wasn’t going to let things get out of hand tonight. Stacy
didn’t know about that. Rebecca and Ryan weren’t hot and heavy all the time,
but they certainly were often enough. She wasn’t going to go barging back into
her room until she knew it was all clear. Stacy wouldn’t admit it, but she
really starting to resent them both. She would have liked to go to sleep, but
was trying to play the part of a good friend. She was hoping she wouldn’t have
to much longer.
Ryan had little pieces of toilet paper pressed to his face because
he had no Band-Aids. He didn’t normally cut himself so badly shaving. Of course
he hadn’t been the person shaving his face. Rebecca had had her turn and it
turned out she didn’t have a very good grasp of what it took to properly shave
a man’s face. It was probably unfair to think that it would have worked. He had
years of practice. Still, he thought, she should know something about shaving.
Ryan couldn’t tell if things were advancing with Rebecca. He had read in a
dating book that it was his job to create safe but dangerous, fun but sexy
situations. It sounded like nonsense, but he decided to give it a try. If he
had known how to make things happen on his own, he wouldn’t have needed a book.
If he hadn’t been so nervous, he might have realized that he was in her hotel
room at her request, and that the job was already done for him. But he was
young and naïve and was the type of guy that needed a book to tell him how to
hit on a girl. This was what he had come up with. It was supposed to be
intimate. It was supposed to be silly fun. Instead his face stung from the
aftershave and he suffered a million tiny cuts. That was okay though, he had
his chance to return the favor by shaving her legs.
Andre looked around the room. He hadn’t seen his younger sister
Rebecca in over an hour. He was starting to get nervous. She wasn’t his
responsibility, but he couldn’t tell that to his parents. He didn’t want to
think about the trouble she could be getting into. He didn’t want to think at
all. His friends Chad and Sean had a bottle of vodka hidden in their luggage.
He was planning on slipping off himself in just a few minutes and getting into
his own sort of trouble. He just wished he could see his sister somewhere in
public view one last time before the night was over.
As the night wore on the natives grew most restless and dares and
shenanigans began. There were contests to see who could eat the most junk food
the fastest. Six people lined up to try and race to see who could chug a
two-liter bottle of cola the fastest. At two in the morning the water guns wars
began. At three it was shaving cream facials to the unsuspecting asleep. At
four, Eric awoke to find his bed and all the contents of his hotel room out in
the hallway. Megan lost two inches of hair from one side of her head. Mary
found herself in the morning without any shoes. It was a long and strange
night.
Leslie had been up on the roof of the hotel with several close
friends. They had snuck out there to watch the sunrise as well as partake in
several forms of illicit behavior. Leslie wasn’t the experimental sort, but she
didn’t mind that her friends were. After the sunrise they realized Mike had
fallen asleep. They tied his hands and feet with his shoe strings and left him
up there. Several people were heading down to the lobby for breakfast. Leslie
said she’d join them, but she wanted to shower and change clothes first.
As Leslie walked down the hall towards her hotel room, another
door opened and out stepped one of the chaperones Mr. O’Conner, Jonathan
O’Conner’s father. She froze up and couldn’t move. He was sneaking out of Mrs.
Hylton’s room, Lisa’s mom. Lisa, her best friend. Mr. O’Conner quietly closed
the door so it wouldn’t make a sound, and then he started to turn to head back
to his room. He looked up and saw Leslie. Clearly he hadn’t expected to see
anyone. They locked eyes and just stared at each other for what seemed like an
eternity. Mr. O’Conner opened his mouth to speak, but Leslie turned and sped
off before he could say anything.
Conrad was at the continental breakfast bar fixing his plate when
he saw Leslie walk into the room. She was distraught and looked like she had
been crying. Conrad didn’t remember setting his plate down, but he must have,
because the next thing he remembered was standing at her side asking her if she
was okay. She mumbled something but didn’t really respond. She was looking
around the room confused and finally asked if he had seen Lisa. Conrad hadn’t
seen her since last night.
“This is all messed up, you know?”
“What is?”
“This. This trip. We’re all here – us, the parents, the teachers…
we’re all acting like this is some escape from reality. Like it doesn’t count.
But it does. It counts. You know?”
Conrad really didn’t know what she meant. He didn’t understand at
all, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. He sat her down at a table and went
to grab her some food. Then he was going to sit and listen to her for as long
as she wanted to talk. That much he understood.
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