Secret let her arms swing as she walked against the light breeze. The day was surprisingly bright considering there was a heavy cloud overcast that only seemed to emphasize how gray the world was. The Heights had been equally gray, seemingly even more dull than the atmosphere at school. She'd had a splash of bright, vibrant color when she had vacationed in Chicago for the weekend. Ah, Chicago, how she missed it so.
The days building up to the trip were filled with dulled anticipation of what could be a trip that could either make or break her. By the fourth day of work, the day of departure, Secret had been running on about four hours of sleep a night and she was craving some kind of creative interaction. Instead, she found herself strapped to an office chair, brainlessly copying and pasting data into Excel columns.
At least they had given her something to do.
Well, that wasn't entirely true. Secret's boss for the week decided to be AWOL for most of the days that she was there saving his "big project" for the last day, the day that she had planned on sneaking out early to avoid rush hour traffic. On that day, he had sprung about 500 tests on her as well asking for interpretation of all the data.
Secret scoffed at the thought.
Well, she did her best and ran for the door when the clock hands reached 4:00 without so much as a look back.
It was vacation time.
She arrived at P, the Conqueror's, house to find him, surprisingly, ready for her. They packed up the car and zipped off for the freeway�.
�and found themselves amidst many new and frightening car problems.
P blew them off and Secret thanked God that she wasn't driving. As soon as the car problems seemed to subside, they found themselves trapped in gridlock.
Oh goodie, Secret thought, we didn't miss the traffic.
It eventually subsided and they commenced on a 200 mile journey on I94 alone, filled, of course, with many stops. Then came the wonderful world of Indiana, Illinois, and the toll road. Finally, they arrived in the busy suburb of Schaumburg.
Immediately upon check-in the desk receptionist warned, "There's a bus load of high school kids that are going to be arriving any minute now."
Somehow Secret knew that the perfect hotel had to have a kink in it. They dragged their things up the stairs and changed into swimwear. As they walked toward the stairs, Secret could hear running and screaming.
"Looks like they're going to follow us to the pool," she quipped to P.
And boy was she right.
Forty or fifty teenagers packed themselves between the pool, sauna, and hot tub. Secret merely tossed a couple aside and found a place in the hot tub that had some how reached well above safe temperatures when she dipped her toe in.
"Be careful, it's hot," one of them said after she'd already put her whole leg in. She winced as she tried to slowly put her whole body in the tub, tears welling up when it had reached her neck. After a few moments, though, she got used to it and could instantly feel the knots from the work-week disappearing from her battered shoulders. However, she could only stand a few minutes of it.
She and P sat outside the pool while the steam wafted from their skin, trying to cool down enough so that submersion in the pool wouldn't feel like walking into Antarctica. She clasped P's hand and they watched the high schoolers wreak havoc on their chaperones. Secret remembered what it was like to be so immature. In some ways, she missed it; she hardly liked thinking of herself as such an "uncool" adult. Though, she hardly wanted to go back to when things were so utterly confusing.
The water was lukewarm when they finally decided to brave it and it was hard to find space with all of the high schoolers chasing around a football.
"I bet we could have sex in this pool and they wouldn't even notice," Prominence hinted.
"I don't want to face angry chaperones," Secret hissed back.
They swam around for awhile and decided to try one more dip in the hell-fire waters of the hot tub. Secret decided to take the opportunity to interrogate one of the chaperones.
"So are you guys staying here tomorrow too?" Secret asked amidst splashes and screams of annoying 15 year olds.
"No, no," she replied and went on to explain the rest of their itinerary.
"Thank God�." Prominence breathed almost loud enough for the woman to hear.
After a few more exchanges between the pool and hot tub, J and P decided to find a place to eat and replace all the fluids lost by the boiling pot.
Alas, the only open place was Denny's.
Over a quick meal, Secret listened to P talk about his new business and watched a haggard waiter struggle with all the evening tables. They returned to the hotel to find the high schoolers still in the pool. Instead of bothering with them again, they retired to their room and rented Harry Potter off of the pay-per-view television.
She snuggled up against P as he rubbed her back. Secret felt her eyes getting heavy after only getting 16 hours of sleep in the past four days. She managed to sleepily watch the end of Harry Potter before falling into total oblivious sleep on P's shoulder.
�..To Be Continued With Day 2�.
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