Just a few hours earlier we were inside the colorful bus wondering when the Alabama border sign would appear. But now, I cuddled up in the king size bed with a blue quilt laying over me and Emma laying next to me. Sleeping felt like something I hadn’t done in days. All of the sudden the bedroom door opened up letting in the artificial light of the hallway. Emma rolls over next to me and peers at the door. I opened up my eyes and squinted toward the door and questioned who was standing there examining who was awake.

Brooke steps inside the door and whispers, “Do you want to go down to the beach?”

“Why? It’s like nine o’clock and dark,” I said, rolling over to get comfortable.

“I met these cute boys and we are going to meet them at the beach,” Brooke said, confidently not seeing anything wrong with it.

“I don’t want to get out of bed,” I said, “and that sounds like a really bad idea.”

“No, it’s fine Kurt met him earlier and liked him,” she said, “you guys have to come, it will be fun.”

Emma rolls over and says, “fine when are you going down there?”

“Five minutes, get up and get ready,” Brooke said, closing the door.

Emma and I slowly rolled out of bed and flick the light switch. Both of us dug through our bins of clothes looking for something to put on that was semi-appropriate to be in public in. The whole time we got ready I was thinking that this was a really bad idea and we probably shouldn’t do this. Emma convinced me that it was going to be fine and Owen, Emma’s brother, suggested that we could bring a knife just in case. This didn’t make me feel any better but I decided to go along with it. Normally, I am the one that would say no to this and I did but I decided maybe I am just overreacting.

Five minutes later we walk down to the beach altogether. We swiftly walked down the humid stairwell and out the beach gate with our blankets in hand and the knife in Emma’s pocket. Each of us laid out a blanket on the cool sand and sat down waiting for these boys to show up. Sitting in the sand next to the blue-green water, the ocean air swept up onto us with its salty smell relaxing some of our nerves. But in the back of my mind, I knew this night was going to be a tornado.

As soon as the boys walked down the cool, sandy beach I knew this was not going to be good. Two boys approached and did not look like what Brooke had earlier explained. They were not in high school like they had earlier stated but they were here and we had to along with it now. We started conversations with them and hoped that they would leave as soon as possible because I knew we all had the same bad feeling about them. As we sat on the cold sand on blankets we talked about why they were in town. They both said, “we are in town for a college cross country meet and we are running a half marathon tomorrow.” Red flags went up everywhere, one being that cross country doesn’t have half marathons and that they had earlier stated that they were in high school and only 17 years old.

After trying to end the conversation and go back to our room we starting walking back up the beach with our blankets in hand and our minds panicking. Turning around I saw the two boys just mere steps behind us, uninvited. We all got to the boardwalk gate to our condo building and were trying to convince them that we had to go home so they would leave and not see our code. We reached the metal door with the lit up keypad and reluctantly after they weren’t leaving us I pressed in the four-digit code hoping that this would end soon. The door opened up and we walked through trying to be friendly but showing them the front of the building so they could leave but they insisted in going swimming. Not knowing what to do we opened up the door to the indoor pool and sat down on some wobbly chairs. When the boys looked down at there phones I looked at Emma and motioned toward her phone. I texted her that she needed to text Owen, who was sitting upstairs and is six foot tall and about two hundred pounds to come down and help us. She looked and sent the text.

Within seconds I see Owen open up the first of two double doors and I knew we were safe. He walked across the wet tile of the pool room and sat down next to us. He didn’t say much but you could tell the two boys felt uncomfortable. Emma and I stood up from our chairs and said “we need to go up to the room and go to bed before our parents know we were gone. You guys need to come up within fifteen minutes so sorry but you guys gotta go,” with a shake in my voice.

We arrived at our condo door and I punched in the code as quickly as possible and as soon as the green button lit up I felt relief. We slipped into the first bedroom door on the left and sat down on the bed looking at each other. That was one of our dumbest ideas we have ever had. As I laid down in bed and Emma ran to the bathroom for an anxiety relief session, my heart was racing and I knew I needed to think for myself from now on. I vowed to myself as I stared at the ceiling that night that I wouldn’t do something I knew wasn’t right anytime soon. Finally, the door opens and everyone that went down with us was back in the room. After comparing stories and reflecting on what happened we all crawled into bed, deciding we shouldn’t let Brooke make the decisions next time.