Our Adventure

“Okay Mom,” I say, “here’s the plan: we would drive up to Interlochen and visit Lizzy and be back within the day.”

“How far away is it?” she asks.

“Only about six hours,” I respond.

She looks skeptical.

“Who would drive?”

“My friend Ethan. He’s willing to do it and...”

She cuts me off saying, “He’s your age! No, absolutely not. I won’t let you go unless there’s a parent.”

I look to my dad, but he just shakes his head and says, “Your mother is right. Sorry Celine.”

I leave the kitchen table and whip out my phone to report to my friends.

Absolute no from my side. My parents won’t hear about it.

Pretty soon I get responses from everybody else. There’s no way we can go through with this... My parents will kill me!... Guys we should come up with some kind of strategy... How do we ask them permission without mentioning that we’re gonna be six hours away? It looked like any hope of going to visit Lizzy was just gone. There was no way we would be able to leave and get back without our parents noticing. We would need most of the day to be able to pull it off. Then there was the whole deal of keeping it a secret from other people but finding someone we trust in case anything happened. We also needed a car and someone willing to drive the entire twelve plus hours. There was also the cover story and the food and finding a day that would work for all five of us.

Challenge accepted.

The day after the chats with the parents, we decide to plan a trip. We don’t think that we will actually follow through with it, but planning is usually half the fun.

Sam, Karen, Gabbi, and I go on a bike later that day. We stop at a park near a pond and take out some food.

“Guys,” Gabbi says, “we should have music for this car ride.”

So we all start naming off our favorite artists, ranging from Justin Bieber to Hollywood Undead, The Doors to Neon Trees, and The Beatles to Green Day. We all go back home and add our song choices to the newly made Google Doc.

Fast forward a couple days.

There is a Google Doc made with all of our songs; there are at least 90 from each person. We all burn CDs for the car ride. Ethan decides to go ahead and print out some maps from Google maps and tells us that the trip would take at least six hours each way. Interlochen, Michigan is our destination. Lizzy is at a very prestigious music camp called Interlochen Center for the Arts. She would be gone for six weeks; a lifetime during the summer. We decide on July 13th, which just happens to be a Friday.

Now, if you were about to go on 300 mile trip that you totally lied to your parents about on Friday the 13th, would you go?

A supposedly unlucky day is the least of our problems. We need a cover story, something that would take up the entire day. Six Flags was suddenly our favorite place in the world. I would sleep over at Karen’s, Karen at Gabbi’s, Gabbi at Sam’s, and Sam at my house, and then we would head off to Six Flags for the day. Ethan would supposedly leave his house around seven in the morning and leave a note saying he was going out to breakfast with all of us and then joining us at Six Flags.

July 12th, we’re at the Taste of Park Ridge. We had all dropped our stuff off in Ethan’s car earlier that day. We enjoy our time there and make sure that none of us let anything slip.

“Are we really going to do this?” I ask Sam.

She nods and turns to Karen, asking her to confirm.

Karen gives me a worried look and says, ”Are you okay?”

I respond saying, “Yeah I’m fine, just super nervous.”

They both nod in agreement.

After the crowd begins to die down, we head towards Ethan’s house. We text him to let him know where we are, and he soon answers back.

Stay in the park behind my house. Parents are up unusually late. I’ll let you know when it’s safe.

It is close to midnight. We jump whenever a car passes by, thinking it’s a cop car.

Finally at half past midnight, we get the all clear.

We run to Ethan’s garage and quietly get in his minivan. He puts the car in neutral, and slowly backs out of the garage. We leave all the doors open until we are out of the alley, making sure not to make a noise. I text my sister, who I told the plan to in case anything were to happen, telling her I was about to leave. She tells me to be careful and to update her every once in awhile. We speed down the side streets and realize that we didn’t have any snacks. There is a 24 hour Walgreens a couple blocks away. We stop there and make our purchases. We get back in the car and eventually reach the entrance to the highway.

“Here we go,” says Ethan.

We’re on the highway.

As soon as we’re out of Park Ridge, we all scream.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this!”

“We’re free!”

“This is crazy!”

None of us could believe what we had just done, but we also felt sort of badass. What ever happened from now on, we would deal with it together.

It is about one thirty in the morning, and we are all wide awake. Sam is the copilot because she is the best at staying awake. Karen, Gabbi, and I make ourselves comfortable in the back.

What would you do to kill the time? Six hours ahead of us and nothing to do but sit and talk.

We drive and drive, and there is no traffic to stop us. Nothing but open road in front of us. The night is clear and the stars are easily seen. The sunroof is pulled back and the moonlight floods in. For miles and miles, all that is seen are fields of corn and the occasional farmhouse.

We all drift off to sleep, even the copilot, but Ethan stays awake and alert. After a restless twenty minute nap, I wake up and make conversation with him to make sure that he is still awake. I ask him how he’s doing, and he says that the 5-hour Energy is still working wonders.

More time passes, and we pull into this small town that we had planned to stop at for breakfast. It is about five thirty in the morning. The town is silent. The streets are lined with shops and cafes, and the dock is full of small boats. The sky is still a navy blue. We explore the docks, lie in the street, and wave to a man in a street cleaner. The cafe that we go to opens at six thirty. We go to a park and decide to go back to the dock. We sit there with our feet dangling off the edge and watch a mother duck swim in the water with her ducklings. The sky turns a light orangey-pink as the sun comes up. When the cafe finally opens, we go in and order some food. All of us got some coffee and some kind of pastry. As we leave, a pair of men sitting on the porch turn to us.

“What are you kids doing out this early?” one of them asks.

“We’re going on an adventure.”

They chuckle and wish us luck.

We all pile back into the car and drive again. At this point, Interlochen is a little over an hour away. We stop for gas, and Sam and I venture off to a cherry stand a couple yards away from the station. We come back with two bags full of juicy cherries.

Finally, we pull up to Interlochen Center for the Arts. We park in one of the visitor parking lots and step out of the car. It looks like a summer camp taken out of the movies. Interlochen is a huge camp surrounded by trees. There are cabins everywhere, and it isn’t uncommon to see people walking around with instruments in hand. Music can be heard from a distance. Hundreds of boys and girls walk around going to one class or another, one of them occasionally giving us a weird look. Everybody there is wearing a blue or white polo shirt. We all feel out of place, and we look for the registration cabin. We walk to the girl’s side of the camp, and immediately find it. After a short dispute with the counselor in the cabin, she lets us walk around.

Ethan knows Lizzy’s schedule, and she knows we’re coming. We look for the the building that she is in, asking random people for directions. We finally find it, walk in, and wait in the lobby. Soon, waves of kids come through the hallways. We look for Lizzy, but soon stop. It would be impossible to spot her, a girl under five feet tall, among the crowd. You can imagine our reactions when we finally saw her.

Before she could even say a word, we all had our arms around her.

Ethan exclaims, “I wanted to hug her first!”

We were all screaming. We finally let her go.

“You guys are all crazy!” she yells.

We laugh, and she gives us a tour of her camp.

She shows us the classrooms, the dining hall, and the auditorium. She treats us to ice cream from the small stand. It is the best dollar strawberry ice cream I have ever eaten. She introduces us to some of her friends, including another girl from Maine South. She gives us a tour of her cabin. It has about six bunk beds and writing all over the walls and ceiling. Pictures of friends and family, random objects, and camp agenda cover the walls. She takes us to a small beach on the edge of the camp. There is about 10 feet of shore and a lot of big rocks. We stick our toes in the water. Ethan lays down on the nearest bench and takes a well deserved nap. It ends up only being about half an hour long. We tell Lizzy about all the happenings of Park Ridge, and she tells us stories about her camp. As she talks, she seems right at home. She loves this place.

Soon the time to say goodbye comes. We end up only staying for about two hours, but Lizzy understands what we went through to come visit her. We say our goodbyes, and promise to see her when she gets back home.

She walks us to the minivan, and we all get in. She asks us to bring her home with us, but she quickly changes her mind and decides she wants to stay. We say our goodbyes again and drive away.

We’re back on the road again.

At this point, the coffee wears off and we’re all really tired. None of us had had more than two hours of sleep. We blast the music to wake us up and roll down the windows. It is around one o’clock in the afternoon.

We drive and drive, stopping once for gas and to reload on snacks. We do everything we can to help Ethan stay awake.

“Ethan, let me drive. I have my permit,” Sam says.

“No, I got this. Just keep me awake,” He responds.

After driving for about five hours, we hit rush hour traffic. Luckily, we are already back in Illinois and pretty close to Chicago. By this point, we are all dying of hunger. We get off at the next exit, which happens to be in a sketchy part of town. We go into a Jimmy John’s and order food. Ethan comes up to me and confesses that he doesn’t feel well at all. I tell him to take some of my sandwich and get some sleep. He had spent at least twelve hours driving so far. He barely eats and goes back to the car to sleep. We scarf down our sandwiches and give Ethan some time to sleep. We go back to the car, and he is already awake, ready to drive.

We drive on.

It is about seven o’clock. The sun gets a bit lower, and we can see the skyline. We are all silent. We are soon back in Park Ridge. I am the first one to be dropped off at home. As we approach my street, I rehearse my story in my head. I think of the rides I could’ve gone on and the food I could’ve eaten. We are a block away and the car stops. We all hug each other and swear to text everybody after we talk to our parents. It is almost eight o’clock. We pull up to my house. As I ring the doorbell, the minivan speeds away, and so ends our adventure.