Jennie O’Neill
Mrs. Boyle
Honors Lit. & Comp. II
Period F
11/16/11
An Unexpected Journey
72 hours was the time that it took
to bond three complete strangers; 72 hours without food, water, or an adequate
shelter. What had been planned to be an exciting expedition hiking up the Swiss
Alps turned calamitous when an unfortunate series of events took place.
However, it was these very series of events that led to a friendship unparalleled
to another.
While the
three college freshmen from Harvard boarded the minivan, they exchanged
pleasant smiles as they took their seats. Though everyone seemed to be quite amiable, they all began to judge each other with
artificial smile plastered on their faces. From each vantage point on the
minivan you could see eyes peering from different directions, you could hear
phony laughs, and you could see the apparent disgust on their faces when
someone tried to strike a conversation with one another.
Among these
four students was a beautiful girl, Katie, with a pair of Gucci snow goggles
perched atop of her dirty blonde hair; a tall, well-built young man named Calen
with light brown hair and a faded scar above his left jaw; and a girl called
Bailey with striking features such as strong cheekbones and piercing green eyes.
Katie was
daughter of the Senator of New York, and throughout her life money had never
been an object. She had grown up living a privileged life on the Upper East
Side of New York City, and attended boarding school since the day she started
Kindergarten. She was never pressured to get good grades because her family’s
money could buy her into any school she desired. She attended Harvard solely
due to a long legacy of family members that had gone there before her;
otherwise she would have skipped college to party with her friends every night
in the city. She had not always been a party girl, in fact, up until she was
sixteen she obeyed everything her parents said. It was only after she heard her
father talking to his new wife about how he preferred her company far more than
his own daughter’s that she got the picture loud and clear. The truth was
harsh, but Katie knew that her father never really had any interest in raising
her. That is why she had always gone to boarding schools her whole life and had
barely spent time with her family. She knew she could let the remark her father
had made slide, but she also knew that it if she did not do anything about it
she would still remain completely invisible in his eyes. After she came to that
conclusion, she rebelled against everything her father told her to do. She
refused to do her schoolwork, she stayed out late every night to go drinking
with her older friends, and finally after a few months of doing this she began
to get her father’s attention. However, once she got that attention she could
not stop. It was like a drug she had been yearning for her whole existence, and
finally once she got it she knew she was never going to give it up. If
misbehaving meant she finally got her father to care about her, then she would
do it for as long as she lived. After she managed to scrape by at Harvard, a
teacher suggested she take a break and try experiencing something knew. He told
her about how he knew a teacher was looking for students interested in climbing
the Swiss Alps with him, and she immediately jumped at the opportunity. Though
she was managing to attain her father’s attention, she was somewhat tired of
the same routine of going out and drinking and needed to get away from her
chaotic life. She suspected that it would be a new adventure to look forward
to, but she never realized how profoundly this trip would impact her life.
Calen knew
nothing else but rowing. Growing up on a lake throughout his childhood, his
father would take him out every morning and row boats with him. It was the one
thing that had helped them bond when Calen’s mother left them when he was
young. When Calen was only twelve, he began training for the Olympics to join
the United States crew team. Every day he dedicated everything he did to
improve his skills in crew and it eventually paid off. After five years of
dedication, Calen was chosen to join the Olympic team and compete in the next
summer Olympics. Only two weeks before he was supposed to fly to his training
camp at the Olympic Games, he had an accident. A friend had told him about a
great lake to train on near the coastline of Connecticut, and he drove down one
afternoon with all of his gear. This lake was completely new to him, so as he
rowed down some streams that flowed off the lake’s course he had no idea that
it would lead to large rapids. Calen was a strong swimmer and rower, but there
had never been such dangerous conditions he had ever endured. As he struggled
to gain his stability in his boat, he hit a large bump and flew straight out of
his boat. The memories that followed that accident he still has no recollection
of. Only blurs of the bright fluorescent lighting found in the hospital are
what he remembered. Once he awoke, the doctor told him he had hit his head on a
sharp rock that cut through his left jaw and onto his skull. Unfortunately, that
was only the minor injury he took. When he flew from his boat, he landed in an
obscure angle that broke three disks of his spine. To his luck, the injuries
could be healed over a span of time but even after they had healed he would
still no longer be able to compete in any sports. Calen could not accept this
mentally. He had worked for his whole life towards one goal, and now that it
was gone he had nowhere to go. He did not know if he had any other talents
aside from rowing. The only redeeming quality he had was that he was very
smart. His father had gone to Princeton and homeschooled him for almost his
whole life while he was training for the Olympics. As Calen laid in that
hospital bed for weeks, he came to the decision that he would apply to go to
college and see where that took him. However, he knew that he could not rely
solely on his grades to get him accepted; he would have to say something in his
application that would set him apart from the others. What he wrote down he
stared at hours before he actually sent it. What he had said was unique about
him in his application was that he was a rower. However, he left out the detail
that he could no longer do it due to his back injury. When he received his
acceptance letter from Harvard congratulating him, and telling him how excited
they were to have him on his time, he was almost in disbelief. He never thought
that they would accept him because so many other people applied there. But as
he reread that letter again and again, he came to the realization that there
was nothing that he could do to change it. He was not going to deny going to
Harvard; his father had always wanted him to go there. So when Calen started at
Harvard the next fall, his teacher informed him of an ‘expedition’ that he
would be leading in the Swiss Alps. Without thinking, Calen accepted
instantaneously. Even though he was supposed to start crew that month, he knew
this expedition would buy him some time before he had to face the music.
Bailey had been a straight A
student for her entire life. There was never one test that she did not study
for, one project that she forgot, or one assignment that she did not go above
and beyond the requirements for. She was always at the top of her class, and
she intended to keep it that way. Bailey’s parents raised her to believe that
she could achieve anything that she set her mind to, and it ended up paying
off. Her grade point average was above 4.0 and she was considered by her
parents the “model child”. One secret Bailey’s parents never discovered about
her though was that she was not as perfect as she was perceived to be.
Underneath Bailey’s prim and proper exterior was someone far more devious. She
used this devious side of her to maintain her perfect status among her peers,
and even more importantly, to get accepted to Harvard. This devious side came
to play when she had finally perfected one of her final English Papers and gave
it to the teacher to read. She had no doubt in her mind that she would get
below an A-. But when she received it back with a bright C+ plastered on the
cover page, she was not amused. If she did end up getting a C+ on the paper, it
would her bring her grade down to a B-, and that just was not acceptable if she
wanted to get into Harvard. She had asked the teacher very sweetly before to
revise it, but he had told her no. So after being quite persistent, she had no
other choice. She told the principal of her high school that he was sending her
inappropriate texts, and trying to take her back to his apartment after school.
Although the English professor denied everything she said, she had already
taken his phone without his knowledge and sent vulgar texts to her number so it
would appear he was lying. After the professor was fired from his job and sent
to jail for a couple of years, she no longer had to worry about getting bad
grades.
Once she was accepted to Harvard and
decided to attend there, one of her friends told her about a trip to the Swiss
Alps. As she did more research about the trip, she quickly became infatuated
with the area, and also the precarious life that mountain climbers lead. After
talking with various professors about the trip, she signed up for it. She was
excited to see what new experiences she would gain.
As the three students and their
guide got off the bus and began to trek up the mountain, they stopped and took
short breaks along the way. The sunlight was fading into darkness quickly and
as they made their last stop for the day, they found a small cavern where they
could camp for the night. Once they all got set up, they sat down and Bailey
took out a small bag of cookies she had baked the previous night for the trip.
She handed one to each of them and they all sat in silence eating their cookies
around a small campfire. There was a sharp silence that hung over them for a
moment until a series of coughing came abruptly. All three of the college students
looked over to see that their guide was coughing almost as if he could not
grasp any air. The guide’s face was inflamed and swollen and he had broken out
in a rash all over his face. Calen and Katie panicked, as Bailey managed to
stay calm and try to interpret what the guide needed. The guide pointed in the
general direction of a lonely water bottle in the corner of the cave and she
handed it to him quickly. As the guide tried to gulp down a couple sips of
water he began to cough it back up as he struggled to take in oxygen. The last
word they made out before he fell to the ground was “nuts”. Both Calen and
Katie spun around to look at Bailey who had an astonished expression on her
face. Bailey had not realized when she passed out the cookies she made that the
guide was severely allergic to nuts―
and now here he was, practically dead on the floor. As the three of them stared at their only
guide, who was no dead on the floor, anger spread across the room like
wildfire. The three of them argued with each other- yelling, and blaming each
other for his death. After about two hours of nonstop arguing, all that they
could do was each sit on opposite sides of the cavern in silence. There was
nothing they could do to save themselves now. None of their cell phones had
service, and even if they did they would not have known who to call because
they were in a different country. All they could do was wait until a new day
started.
As the sun peaked through the snow
clouds in the morning, the three of them got up and agreed to bury their guide
as a sign of respect. They found a small patch of snow overlooking all of the
other mountains in the distance and buried him there. After doing so the three
of them walked back and stared at each other. There was only one bottle of
water in the cavern, three-fourths of which had emptied by the guide, and the
only source of food they had left was half a tuna sandwich and two cookies.
They divided up all of the food
equally, still leaving the little they had left for the next day. As they
munched on what little they had they began to talk. It is strange how even when
someone is amongst strangers, it seems to be easier to talk about what you have
always wanted to say. Katie began, telling the other two about her life and her
struggles as they sat in their corners quietly soaking up the details. After
she finished saying everything she felt about her relationship with her father
and how she truly feels about the situation, Calen told his story about how he
rowed. Half way through, large tears rolled down his scarred cheek. He had
never told anyone in person how important it was to him, and it was blatantly
obvious that he had been holding it in for a long time. After drying his tears,
he sat with his head bowed, and Bailey began to sob. She confessed the terrible
thing that she did to that teacher, and how she wished she could undo it. Katie
and Calen stared in disgust as Bailey told them the things she did to maintain
her perfect average. Once she finished saying everything on her mind they sat
and talked. They talked about everything together; their childhoods, interests,
hobbies, and thoughts.
Though they had only known each
other for a total of 72 hours, they had shared more with each other than they
had shared with anyone else. As the next day passed they remained in the
cavern, feeding off the remnants of a stale cookie. They attempted to go back
down the mountain, but the weather conditions had gotten so bad that they were
forced to stay in shelter. The likeliness of their survival was not great with
the given conditions. However, life―whether
it be good or bad at the time―wwould
always be easier to get through when you have people to accept and support you.
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