I rue the day I joined the Academy.

It'll 'look good to colleges,' it'll be 'challenging,' it'll 'prep you', it'll blah blah blah blah…Set me up for success, my ass! Although they did prepare me for how to work with the most insufferable, self-centered, asinine individual known to man, what I wasn't prepared for was the 'real world'. If it weren't for my upbringing, I would have absolutely no fucking skills to help me be Chuck Noland'ed in the middle of fucking nowhere. 

Why, in God's name, do they have no wilderness electives at that hellhole? I can imagine the admin meeting now: 'Yeah, the students should learn about coding and graphic design. Basic first aid? Mmmm…Nah. A food and nutrition course that won't end in eating disorders? No can do. You know what? Add another college prep course.'

I am so suing for negligent representation when I get ba-

Puht. Squaw. Squaw.

I am not going to look. I don't even need to look. I can feel it on my shoulder, slowly sliding down with the consistency of cooling toasted marshmallows. I don't even have food in my stomach to throw up at this point.

Breathe, Bri. Just Breathe. As it slides down faster, I feel a wave of nausea. It’s not working. I am two seconds away from doing a sea burial, and it won't be for me. I hear sand shifting around and a shrill seconds later. 

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeew!"

"Shut the fuck up, Kendall." I watched a red-faced Liam rushing behind me from the corner of my eye. An eye sore through and through with his fading purple hair framing is a deceptively attractive face; you can see he's on one just by that evil smirk that goes with every scream Kendall lets out. "It's just a fucking crab," Liam says, grabbing the critter without getting pinched somehow.

“But it’s just-ah! Ahhhhhh, staaaaaaaaaaaapaah!”

I turn away as Liam begins to chase her with the crab. The sight I find myself facing is only better by a slight margin, and that's saying something. The front of the plane looks like a crushed soda can. We all assume, and hope, that the impact instantly killed the pilots, as well as the first and business-class passengers. I guess sometimes it was nice being poor or not using public restrooms. (I say this because a few of the passengers from economy went to the bathroom just before everything went to shit and were never to return.) Most of us towards the back made it out okay.

"Liam! Staaaaaaaaaaaapaaah!”

Unfortunately.

There were few people other than my group in that section, leaving us with twenty-nine…

"Ahhhhh. He's not breathing! Oh gawd-"

Our only living chaperone, Mr. Fern, lies unresponsive in the sand. One of the few adults who made it along with us started chest compressions, but if I recall correctly, he'd been sitting like that for hours. Everyone had left him alone because we knew he was stressed and tired, but it looked like he kicked the bucket.

So, correction: twenty-eight people survived. Our original plane had technical difficulties, and our flight was shifted to a red eye. Many passengers from our original flight time just opted for the following day. Despite the sinking feeling in my gut, I tried to be optimistic, focusing on how we would be on a different, supposedly functioning plane and that we'd have more room to spread out from the rest of our classmates and other passengers. Only it didn't work out that way, did it? 

It was supposed to be a simple trip. The Academy I'm in, qualified, was invited, or whatever, to some uppity young scholars convention in Europe for a week. There were competitions that were supposed to take place. (Don't ask. I wasn't paying attention during the interest meeting, and I refused to sign up to participate in any event unless it was an emergency.) While the exact nature of the intended purpose escapes me, what I do know is that it was going to be a cesspool of egotistical brainiacs. Most likely, a bunch of stupidly well-off kids like the ones I'm surrounded with who think they are better, smarter, and more entitled to whatever resources their school is offering. And I just know that most of them would roll over to please teachers and faculty alike, all because they have no sense of self-worth outside of academic validation…poor babies. 

My mother raised me to have security within myself, so this trip was intended to be a grand people-watching session. Meet new people, get some handles for their social media, and feast on the spectacle of too many kids and not enough chaperones. The three-day relationships people would have with students from other schools? Pure gold. Watching a student fumble a presentation or trip going upstage? I'm dying. The gossip? Juicy. I'm just a girl who wants to be entertained. It's the only thing that convinced me to come.

I didn't plan on attending for a while because the idea of going didn't sit right with me, plus, I already did something similar for the debate team last year. Then, a few of my friends began to back out of the trip because the cost and my not being there were a little too unappealing (they could've said they just loved me). Apparently, that was unacceptable (because they wouldn't have any token students on the trip, but you didn't hear that from me). 

My counselor called my freakin' mother with Carowinds-level waterworks; I mean crying and whining about how I was missing out, how my presence was irreplaceable, and that he feared I would regret it later if I didn't go. That son of a gun knew every button to push, and when I came home that day, I was unprepared for the mom-eyes. All I remember is walking into the kitchen, her silver-lined gaze, and ten minutes later, I'm signing papers like I sold my soul to the devil. It had indeed rained with the sun out that day—should've taken that as a bad omen.

At the airport, my reluctance was…apparent, to say the least. The guilt of my mother and aunts paying for this trip weighed on me, but I kept quiet as momma hugged me tight. I knew they wanted me to take every opportunity that came my way—it's why she had me join the Academy in the first place. I remember the silk of her headscarf tickling me as she reassured me that all I needed to do was keep an open mind. Squeezing me tighter and tighter, whispering that this trip was just temporary, but it's starting to look miserable and permanent.

Painfully permanent.

Despite my initial anger, I'm not going to blame her. This is all on me. I knew what I felt and let others push it aside. I...I don't even want to imagine how she will react when she hears the news. Damn it, this whole thing's gonna throw her into a nervous fit...and she was doing so well this past year. 

I should've Listened to my gut, but hindsight is twenty-twenty and all that other bullshit. Matter of fact, this whole situation is so...insane. None of this makes sense.