Introduction

Name of the male lead – Jasper Parks

Name of the female lead - Janet Rosario

Name of a friend of female lead - Alice Everett

Name of a friend of the male lead – Emmett Parker

Janet and Jasper both are from different schools. Jasper is a confident boy with an athletic physique but is also quite good in studies. He has a good confident nature and is quite popular not only among the girls but also among his own friends.

On the other hand, Janet is a nervous and shy girl who likes to spend her time reading books. Although Janet is a shy girl, she can stand up for herself and her friends when the time comes. She didn’t really have much of a social nature ever since her mother passed away when she was ten.

Em is the best friend of the male lead who has been with him ever since they started school together. They know each other really well.

Among Jasper’s other friends are Andrew, Dave, Eric and Chris(twins), Karla and Stephanie.

Janet didn’t really have much talent in making many friends so she has got only one: Alice. They met each other when Alice got transferred to their school when Janet was around ten years old.

Author’s note

I am highly indebted to my one of my friends (a.k.a. Wendy) who really helped me out in designing this plot. I really want to credit her for this story. So, if you are reading this, thanks! 😊

This story is my first story that has been planned before writing it, so I hope that you all will like it!

CHAPTER ONE

It was about ten o'clock in the morning when all the high schoolers were asked to report to the auditorium. Our principal generally made announcements regarding competitive exams and field trips. All of us were pretty happy as we would normally be having our geography class during that time. The geography teacher makes us write a LOT. That is why it was quite normal for the students to be happy.

Our principal had indeed come to make an announcement for a talent hunt kind of exam. This year many exams were announced and many of the students were applying for those. This one was a good one considering the situation. The exam prizes were extremely generous.

From each school, a group of top five students performing well in the exam would be selected for a free Europe tour of eleven nights and nine days. On this declaration of prizes, many of the students sprung up as if mobiles and laptops had started raining from the sky.

There were three fields for the exam for which anyone could be chosen: English and sciences, Computer sciences and arts.

The thing is I was basically good in all of those. But if I wanted the free tour of Europe, I would need to think more rationally. Being good wasn’t enough. So, the thing was that I had to choose the subject in which I was good AND the others were not. Meaning computer programming.

I knew most of the students who generally participated in these kinds of exams, so, I was pretty sure there are not many students who are good at computer sciences. Our school was pretty big, that is, it had around five thousand

students, so the chance was quite less.

But even so, I was definitely not letting go of this opportunity. It would be quite interesting. It was an interschool thing so students from other schools were also participating.

The exam was conducted after a month. I basically had to learn two programming languages and more about different kinds of software and also about how different kinds of hardware work together. This was all done in detail.

I had no expectations of becoming first but I definitely wanted to be among those five students. Among the others, I know that Em is much better in programming than me, so I knew that he would secure a rank higher than me.

After the exam. The questions were of moderate level. Well, that wasn’t really moderate but after all these years of giving similar kind of exams, had made me used to them.

As I had expected most of the questions had come from programming but I could answer them.

Some others had taken up the English and sciences, as much as I heard later, the maths section had come extremely hard and more than half of the duration of the exam was spent on doing maths only, by most of the candidates.

The results would come after a month, meaning it would be November. To be more exact, the exam results are supposed to be released in the first week of November. All of the students were getting mad for the results, although many were quite disheartened and disappointed as they thought they would miss their chance to the tour due to not performing well in that test.

To tell the truth, even I thought that I might not make it.

3rd November…

The results were out by 10 a.m. The result sheets were put up on the bulletin boards. The names and roll numbers of the candidates were arranged up according to the rank they had secured. The candidates with high ranks had their names on the top.

I saw my name on the sheet. I didn’t even care to look at the rank and where my name was placed because I just thought didn’t make it, so I kept sighing. But Em came out from nowhere.

“Hey there Jay! Don’t you want to join the trip? Why is it that I think you didn’t look at the result sheet properly and didn’t notice that you came second after me and you are qualified for the trip?”

“What?!”

So that was it. I was going to Europe. Wait… Not yet. I hadn’t even informed my parents. This was a much bigger problem. I was talking about Europe and not some locality. They don’t even let me go out on the streets alone.

When I came home that day, dad was standing on the doorstep, and I could guess that he was waiting for me. I think he knew about the result as I had registered his phone number.

I didn’t expect him to allow me for the trip as I was the only son of my family. But the expression I saw on his face was quite different from what I had imagined. I thought he would start dancing. He told me that he had talked to my

mom and that they were both very impressed that I made it to the top five and mom actually thought that if I didn’t join the trip, it would be really bad for the other students who didn’t qualify as they would have been able to go to the

trip instead of me.

I guess you could say that they were happy. Dad told me that as a gift for performing well in that test they were actually going to allow me.

I definitely knew what was yet to come.

The trip would begin about a week later when we would have our winter break. But my parents made me listen to their two hours of guidelines and rules that I had to maintain while on the trip.

Leaving all of that behind I was really happy and I was going to tour Europe. That was all that mattered.

The tour was almost a week later. But I had started preparing for it. Our school had given us a guidebook for the five of us, we had to maintain those rules. Our school has increased its strictness in the last few days after a boy was

caught bringing cigars and champaigns to a field trip.

Just before the trip, I mean on the day before the trip, our school was having the orchestra and every student was cordially invited to it. Every alternate year our school holds an orchestra. In our field, a humongous stage is built and

many students participate in different events, such as orchestra, vocals, etc.

I wasn’t participating this year, but I thought it would be good to visit it, after seeing the efforts the school was putting into it. Actually, I also had intentions for participating in it, before I received the exams of this exams, but then when the school wasn’t sure when the results would actually come, they decided that the students in the Europe trip won’t participate in the orchestra as the two dates might happen to overlap. But it didn’t turn out that way and now it was probably too late for another selection.

But then again, I was extremely happy with what I had got. Em is actually a great fan of Michael Jackson and if really, I would say that he has indeed got the talent of dance. So, he was pretty much upset that he won’ be able to

participate in the hip hop show in on our show day.

Three other members were also accompanying us to Europe – Stephanie, Eric and Chris. I was actually surprised to see the twin brothers getting qualified. But then again, they were extremely good at studies.

Five days later…

The performance of the orchestra was really amazing and the standing ovation from a crowd of seven thousand people really proved it.

We had already started packing up for our trips. The school was also busy packing things. My parents ran around the house like ghosts as they were pretty much excited as I could see.  They had almost packed the whole house. But I got really frightened when mom went as far as packing a chair in my bag. Although, it was a compact foldable one. We were going to go there by airplane, but you believe it or not, it would be my first time travelling by plane. We have not visited far places so we generally travel in our car.

I liked drawing very much and sure enough, I knew that Europe would be a perfect place to draw things, so, I did not forget to take my sketchbook and the digital pen.

We were allowed to bring our electronic devices, so my parents gave me a brand-new phone, which was bought a few months back. Other than that, I took my laptop. It would come in handy for watching YouTube videos late at night. Our trip would begin two days later so, I figured that I could manage without it till then.

There were five of us and as we were informed there would be five teachers as well and one field trip in charge.  We would take a flight from the city airport on 10th November. According to the guide book, we would visit 4 cities. Of them, our first destination would be Amsterdam. We were going to visit two relaxing places and two educational ones.

On 9th November… 

I was really excited about the next day. Many things were going to be a first for me, riding an airplane for starters, and on top of that, visiting a foreign country. It may not look like it but it was the first time I was visiting a foreign land. It was practically the same it showed in the movies, I couldn't sleep. I would have literally stayed up all night if mom had not made me a warm cup of milk.

Finally, …

Mom and dad both took me to my school and we reached there sharp at 2:00 pm, as we were asked. We would stay there for one hour to check out for things and then at 3 o'clock, we would depart for the airport, for reaching which it would take us one hour and then we would wait for our flight at 5:45.

The organisation had counted it that many students would not make it. So, as I had overheard from the in charge, there were a total of around seventy to seventy-five students from different schools, meaning that there were around fourteen to fifteen schools. Emm arrived five minutes. He had packed his luggage within 2 bags while I had a small bag, a bag pack and one trolley bag. He said that he hadn’t packed up much as all he needed was a laptop. He didn’t bring anything much of books or notebooks. For all I knew, even though he is extremely good at sports, he has got a knack for writing.

I hadn’t had much food as mom told me that it would be nauseating in the airplane if I ate too much, but still, I had backup snacks in my backpack, just in case.

We waited in the canteen with each other while our teachers checked things out for the final time. It was 3:13 pm when two of our buses took us to the airport. One of the buses had us and teachers inside it while the other had the luggage. We reached the airport by the time we had expected.

Now almost all five of us were pretty hungry so the teachers took us to the lounge where we all had some snacks and the teachers had sodas. For the next one and a half hours, we all spent our time reading some books, magazines and the guidebook.

Unlike me, Emm had ridden on a plane quite often because of his father’s business trips so he guided things out for me. He told me to keep my boarding pass safe otherwise it would be a hassle.

We all had submitted our big bags. Ten minutes before the flight we were taken to the plane by air-conditioned buses. From our area, two schools were taking the trip including ours. So, there was a total of ten of us. There were three seats on one side and Emm had the outermost seat while I had the middle seat. On the window seat was a girl from the other school. It was really cold in the plane; I could barely take my hands out of my pockets.

The flight duration was about fifteen hours. We had a lot of time. I figured that I had charged my phone completely and my laptop so, it would help me out to survive this long flight. The flight took off at roughly 5:50 pm.

That girl who was sitting beside me was Jane and was from a nearby school. She said that her full name was Janet. Emm was way too hungry that is why he almost emptied that bag full of backup snacks that he had. I helped myself on them too.

It was really dark outside and believe me the scenery of the lighted uptown from the sky was AMAZING. I took several pics. I took out my phone after the hostess informed us that it was safe for us to use our devices. I was feeling very sleepy as the previous night I wasn’t able to get proper sleep. I opened Spotify and started listening to my soft music collection. I drifted off soon after.

I had slept for almost one and a half hours. When I woke up, all that was visible from the window was the night sky. I texted my parents that the take-off was safe and successful, so did Emm.

I could see in Jane’s handbag that she had at least 5 fat books which she started reading one by one. By now I was starting to feel bored. So, I took out my sketchbook and started drawing random things. It was around seven by now. Although the students were from different schools, they had already made good friends out of each other. There was nothing much to do in an aeroplane so we started playing UNO with the cards that Jane offered us. Well, I don’t know how, but Emm ended up winning all of the matches, except for the last one, which was won by Jane. It was fun either ways.

The dinner arrived a few minutes past nine. The school was in charge of selecting the dinner dishes but we could choose between veg and non-veg. I chose non-veg. The food had a burger. It had a pack of French fries and a soda with it. For the desert, we got a pastry. Although I had eaten a lot earlier, I was still feeling hungry.

While Emm had eaten too much before, so he could not finish it all, so he packed the soda and the pastry into his backpack and saved it for later.  Emm had brought many storybooks, so after the dinner, he started reading the books, although I warned him it was not a good idea to read books with extremely small print as it could cause him

air-sickness. But I also wanted to read books, but I had a better idea – audio books. I had brought the new bass headphones that I had received from a scholarship I got previous years, so I made some use out of them.

I had drifted off again. When I woke up, it was 5 a.m. The outside of the aeroplane was extremely cloudy. Jane and Emm both were asleep. I guess it was another mistake of mine to take a lot of naps the previous

evening. I tried to sleep again. Although I was feeling extremely cosy, I just couldn’t go back to sleep. Jane was shivering a little, that’s when I noticed that the blanket had fallen off her. I pulled it up, but I guess it was too late. She had already woken up from the cold. On the other hand, Emm was still sleeping peacefully.

Well, breakfast was going to be served at eight, so that was three hours from then. In that dark, we couldn’t read something or even draw. I figured we could just chat with each other.

There was one big problem. After we had properly introduced each other, there was nothing to talk about. Emm would not wake up earlier than half-past seven, so that was more than two hours from now, and we couldn’t possibly spend all this time talking.

I had another idea. Before I went off to sleep, I had charged my phone. I was pretty lucky to have the row that had the plug point. So, I took my phone out I didn’t switch on the data because I thought I wouldn’t be so good for our health since two of my friends were almost sleeping beside me.

I had downloaded a full playlist of soft songs that would help you sleep, and then I took out my earphones and gave one of them to Jane and the other one to myself and then started playing the songs one by one. She said that she liked them very much and would like to transfer them once we get off the plane. She went asleep about half an hour later, and so did a few minutes after her.

At 8 o'clock… 

The breakfast had arrived. We all had two chicken sandwiches with fruit juice while some others could also choose milk and cornflakes, but I didn’t go for that as it had a risk of throwing out everything. I also ate the pastry and the soda that I had packed last night.

Most of the seats were empty, so I told Emm and Jane to talk to each other for a while, as I wanted to pay a small visit to the other rows also.

I first went to the row where Eric and Chris were seated. In this row, I found another girl, which turned out to be Alice. Jane had told me that she had a bestie, Alice.

Eric also wanted to talk to Emm, after all, they are cousins, so I exchanged seats with him.

Alice told me that she had transferred to her current school about a year back. She had received the seat beside Jane. Jane had been very kind to her to introduce her to the new things as it was tough for Alice to have transferred

in the middle term.

Chris had also brought a pack of UNO and this time I nailed it. We had to pack our things up as we would land in about less than an hour.