We took at least five hundred pictures after the trophy presentation. That's not even an exaggeration, I counted. Well, I didn't count. Scott did, because he's the kind of person who sees a historic moment and immediately quantifies it.
Teachers, organizers, students from other colleges who wanted a photo with "the guy who beat Tyson", a group of Frostville
freshmen who asked so nicely we couldn't say no, a delegation from some European collegiate board who kept calling us "the little college that could" in accents so thick I barely understood them. And, of course, the Queen. Ms. Roxanne posed with us for exactly three photos: one serious, one semi-casual, and one where Scott made bunny ears behind Henry's head and she actually laughed. I have that one saved in three different folders, just in case.
Most were group shots with all of us crammed together, grinning until our faces hurt. But I slipped away for a few singles
too. I just had to. When you look this good in a suit and you've just won the biggest tournament of your life, it's basically a crime not to document it. The photos would flex nicely when we got back home. Let the underclassmen see what they were aiming for.
The ceremony wound down about thirty minutes later. Thirty minutes of handshakes, back-slaps and congratulations from people
whose names I forgot the second they told me. By the time we finally escaped the hall, my palm was raw and my face hurt from smiling.
We made it back to the hotel around… I don't know. Late? Early? The clock was starting to mean less and less. Naturally, instead of going back to sleep like normal people, we went straight to Ms. Flores'
room.
"Just for a bit," Henry had said.
That "bit" lasted until 4 AM.
Someone put on music. I think it was Laura. Someone else ordered snacks, definitely Marcus. At some point, Scott grabbed a lamp from the corner and tried to re-enact Henry's javelin match, using it as a
makeshift rod while narrating his own run-up in a terrible sports announcer voice.
"And here comes Henry Shackleford, the pride of Crescent College, the man with the golden arm!"
"Put the lamp down," Henry said, embarrassed.
"He's approaching the line, the crowd is on their feet!"
"Scott."
"AND HE LAUNCHES IT INTO THE STRATOSPHERE!"
The lamp flew across the room and landed perfectly on the couch. No damage. It was impressive actually.
Marcus and Laura commandeered the corner by the window and launched into a karaoke freestyle about Crescent's greatness that somehow rhymed "victory" with "mandatory" and "tournament" with "permanent." It was both terrible and amazing.
Zoë and Mackenzie started a card game at the coffee table. It was something complicated with points and betting and rules that seemed to change every round. It dissolved into pure chaos about twenty
minutes in, when Zoë accused Mackenzie of cheating and Mackenzie responded by
throwing an entire handful of cards at her head.
"I didn't cheat."
"You absolutely cheated."
"I strategized. There's a difference."
"You drew seven cards in one turn!"
"The rules allow it."
"The rules you made up!"
"They're the best rules."
I sat on the floor near the minibar, dipping
scones into hot sauce and passing them around like a culinary terrorist. Scott took one, ate it, turned red, and chugged an entire bottle of water. Henry tried one, chewed thoughtfully, and declared it "not bad actually." Zoë refused on principle. Mackenzie tried three in a row and asked for more hot sauce.
Then, Mr. Sebastian walked in with a bottle of Everclear and a handful of bectar vials.
"Absolutely not," Ms. Flores said. Then she took the first shot.
After that, everything started spinning. Not literally, of course. My vampire metabolism handled the alcohol fine as long as I didn't take too much since it had bectar. But the room spun in that way that happens when you're surrounded by your favorite people and the music is good and nothing
matters except this exact moment. Zoë and Henry ended up on the couch together
sometime around 2 AM, crying about the semifinals. About how close we came to losing. About how they'd both been convinced it was over.
"I thought I failed everyone," Zoë said, mascara smudging slightly. "I literally thought my whole life was over."
"Me too," Henry sniffled. "Just… sitting there. Accepting defeat."
"We were so dramatic."
"I know, right."
"We won though."
"We did."
They hugged. It was the most emotionally
vulnerable I'd ever seen either of them, and I was pretty sure they'd both deny it happened if asked in the morning.
Scott, whose tie was now wrapped around his head, appointed himself official comforter. He knelt in front of the couch, placed one hand on each of their knees, and spoke with the solemn gravity of a therapist.
"You are valid," he said. "Your feelings are
valid. Your pain is real. But also, we have a trophy now, so technically you were upset about nothing."
"We know," Zoë said, laughing through whatever tears were left.
"That doesn't make the feelings less real," Henry added.
"Feelings are just brain chemicals lying to you," Scott said sagely. "I read that somewhere. Probably on reddit."
We all burst out laughing. Zoë threw a pillow at him while Henry wiped his eyes and grabbed another scone.
Ms. Flores watched from her armchair, a faint smile on her face, the Everclear bottle now mostly empty beside her. Mr. Sebastian was sprawled on the floor making weird sounds.
"You okay there, Mr. Sebastian?" I called.
"I've made a terrible mistake," he groaned.
"You took, like, three shots."
"I put too much bectar. My body is eighty percent regret and twenty percent Everclear."
The night stretched on. More music. More snacks. More chaos. At some point, Marcus fell asleep mid-sentence, just… stopped
talking and tipped over onto the carpet. Laura put a throw pillow under his
head and left him there. Mackenzie won the card game by default because Zoë was too busy laughing at Henry's impression of Mr. Frank's walk.
I leaned back against the couch, watching them all, and felt something settle in my chest. This was it. This was the thing you
couldn't photograph. The stupid moments, the crying, the laughing and chaos. The
people who'd been through it with you. It felt better than anything in the world.
***************
I don't remember falling asleep. One moment I was slumped against Ms. Flores' couch, and the next thing I knew, someone was shaking my shoulder and sunlight was stabbing through my eyelids.
"Rise and shine, champ."
I groaned and rolled over. Everything hurt. My head, my neck and my pride when I realized I was still wearing my suit pants and my shirt was untucked and wrinkled beyond salvation.
"Wha…" I managed, eloquently.
"Three in the afternoon," Ms. Flores said flatly.
That got my eyes open. She was perched on the armchair across from me, wrapped in a hotel robe that looked way more
comfortable than anything I owned, a steaming mug in one hand and the remote in
the other. The TV was playing some nature documentary about penguins. She looked completely unbothered by the fact that her room looked like a small hurricane had torn through it.
I squinted at the carnage. Empty bottles
everywhere. Food containers stacked in towers. Someone's shoe dangling from the
ceiling lamp. And bodies. So many bodies.
Marcus was face-down on the floor near the mini-fridge with one arm stretched out. Zoë had somehow claimed the entire
other couch, curled up with a throw blanket and looking far more peaceful than
anyone had the right to look after hours of chaos. Mackenzie was sprawled across two dining chairs in a position that defied anatomy. Laura had her head on the coffee table, using a pillow as a makeshift mattress. Henry was… actually, I couldn't see Henry. There was just a pair of legs sticking out from behind the curtain.
I looked at Ms. Flores. She raised her mug. "Where's Mr. Sebastian?" I asked, my voice still rough.
She nodded toward the bathroom without looking away from the screen. The door was closed. Faint sounds of retching echoed from within.
"Ah," I said.
"He's been in there for an hour," she said calmly. "I stopped counting after the fifth time."
Another retching sound from the bathroom.
"Well," I said, pushing myself upright. My joints popped in ways that suggested I was actually eighty years old. "I'm gonna head
to my room. Shower, and maybe burn these clothes."
"Before you go," Ms. Flores finally looked away from the penguins. "Don't kiss the trophy."
I stopped mid-stretch. "What?"
She pointed toward the door. And there it was. Our trophy. The gleaming golden monument to our victory. The symbol of everything we'd fought for. Sitting by the door like it was just another piece of luggage. It took me a second to notice the… residue.
"Is that—"
"Sebastian," she said simply. "Right before he made his first trip to the bathroom. I tried to warn Scott, but…" She shrugged. "Too late."
I stared at the trophy. Then at her. Then back at the trophy.
"Scott kissed it?"
"Passionately. Then he made a sound I have never heard a human or vampire make."
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I settled on a noise that was somewhere between both. "You're just leaving it there?"
"It's a conversation piece."
I shook my head, still smiling, and carefully navigated the obstacle course of unconscious bodies toward the door. I made
sure to give the trophy a very wide berth.
"See you later, Ms. Flores."
"Get some sleep, Darmian."
"Yes ma'am."
The hallway was blissfully quiet and blessedly dim compared to the sunlight assault happening in Ms. Flores' room. I wasted no time getting to my floor, and stumbled into my room. I dragged myself into the bathroom, turned the shower to a temperature that was almost scalding, and stood under the spray. I stayed until the water ran clear and my brain started functioning again. Then I brushed my teeth three times, trying to remove the weird taste in my mouth.
Then I collapsed onto the bed, stared at the ceiling, and replayed the last twenty-four hours in my head. We won. We actually won. I smiled at the ceiling. Then I closed my eyes, and for the first time in what felt like forever, I slept without dreaming of anything at all.
When I woke again, it was dark outside and my phone was blowing up with messages from the group chat. Apparently, the others had found out about Scott's kiss. I messaged him to meet me in the arcade for a quick round in five minutes. It was time to do something fun and low-stakes for once.
True to my word, I was in the lobby in four. Scott was already there, leaning against the reception desk and chatting up the poor girl working the evening shift with the kind of effortless charm that somehow never got old.
"—and that's why crocodiles are actually superior to alligators in every conceivable way," he was saying as I approached. "I
mean, the math is just math, you know?"
The receptionist looked relieved to see me. "Your friend is here!"
"Unfortunately," I sighed.
Scott spun around, grin wide. "There he is! The man, the myth, the guy who saved us all from eternal shame!" He threw an arm around my shoulder and squeezed. "How's
the head, champ?"
"Better than Mr. Sebastian's, apparently."
Scott coughed awkwardly. "Yeah, I heard about the trophy situation. Can't believe I missed that."
"You were too busy gargling mouthwash."
We were still arguing about the semantic
distinction between gargling and disinfecting when we pushed through the lobby's glass doors and nearly walked straight into a small crowd.
Sean Rhodes and his Ravenhurst teammates. All of them loaded with luggage, looking like they were ready to head out. For a split second, everyone froze.
Then Sean's face split into a grin. "Well, well, well. If it isn't the guy who ruined our
entire tournament."
I tensed, but his tone was light. Playful, even. "Technically," I said, "you guys lost to us in tug-of-war. That was Zoë and this guy here. I was just a spectator for that one."
"Don't remind me," Sean groaned, but he was smiling. He stepped forward and offered his hand. I took it. His grip was firm, but not aggressive. "Seriously though? That final was a great game. You guys earned it. Even if it did take a cheating scandal to get you there."
"Hey, we were winning before the drugs," Scott said. "The scandal just made it official."
Sean laughed. "Fair enough." He glanced back at his teammates, who were watching with varying degrees of amusement. "We're
heading out. Evening flight to catch."
"Back to pursuing our 'educational development' I guess," I said wistfully.
"Scary words." Sean grabbed his bag and slung it over his shoulder. "Take care of yourselves."
"See ya," Scott said.
We watched them pile into a waiting car, luggage disappearing into the trunk. As the taillights faded into the evening traffic, Scott nudged me.
"Not bad, right? Having actual friends instead of just people who hate us?"
"Progress," I agreed.
The arcade was on the hotel's second floor, tucked away between a spa and what looked like a very expensive wine bar. It was
everything an arcade should be: flashing lights, beeping machines, the distant
thump of racing games and the satisfying chunk of pinball flippers.
Scott made a beeline for the racing simulators. I followed too, because some things were just instinct.
"Loser buys dinner," he said, sliding into the driver's seat.
"You're already buying dinner," I replied.
"Am I?"
"Yes."
"Fair enough."
We raced for two hours. Scott trash-talked the entire time until I beat him. Then he got suspiciously quiet. Then he demanded
a rematch, and I beat him again.
"You were letting me win," he said after the fourth consecutive loss.
"Absolutely," I said smugly.
He glared at me, then cracked up laughing. "Fine. Let's try something you're actually bad at."
We moved to the fighting games. Then the shooting games. Next was basketball hoops. After that, a rhythm game that required pressing buttons in time with music, which Scott turned out to be weirdly good at and I turned out to be weirdly terrible at.
"How are you doing this?" I demanded, watching him nail a perfect combo.
"Secret talent."
We kept playing. The hours ticked away. At some point, we realized we'd basically speed-run the entire arcade and had
accumulated enough tickets to buy approximately one very small stuffed animal. Scott chose a lopsided jaguar with one eye slightly higher than the other.
"This is Henry," he announced, holding it up.
"Henry looks like he's seen things."
"Henry has. Henry will never unsee them."
We took a picture and sent it to the group chat. Mackenzie replied with a single skull emoji. Zoë sent a laughing-crying face.
Henry himself responded with a string of question marks that went on for three
lines.
By the time we made it to the sushi place, we were starving. It was mostly quiet. A small, intimate spot tucked into a corner of the hotel's third floor, all dark wood and soft lighting and chefs working behind a gleaming counter.
We ordered salmon, tuna, yellowtail and something unpronounceable that the waiter recommended. Scott tried to use chopsticks with the confidence of someone who had never used them before, and spent the first
ten minutes chasing a single piece of salmon around his plate.
"You're embarrassing us," I said, neatly lifting a piece of tuna to my mouth.
"I'm a natural. Just give me time to remember my skills."
I opened my mouth to reply, but before I could, both our phones buzzed simultaneously.
Ms. Flores: Great news guys. Principal Judge is extending our stay by one day. You can guess why. Sightseeing tomorrow. Be
ready by 10.
Scott stared at his phone. Then at me. Then back at his phone.
"Did we just get… rewarded?"
"I think we did."
"With an entire extra day?"
"Apparently."
He set his chopsticks down very carefully. Then he leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms, and began squinting. "You know what
this means, right?"
"That you're going to complain about waking up early?"
"No." He pointed at me dramatically. "Well, yes but also, this is unprecedented. Ms. Sally Judge, the woman who once gave a student detention for laughing too loud, just gave us bonus vacation time."
"I mean, it's obviously because of the great work we did."
"Exactly!" He slapped the table, rattling the soy sauce dish. "Which means we have officially achieved the impossible. She's
proud of us! Do you understand the weight of that? Do you comprehend the
magnitude?"
"I think you're overreacting."
"I am appropriately reacting. This changes everything we thought we knew about the universe."
I grabbed another piece of salmon. "So what you're saying is, we should milk this for all it's worth."
"Exactly! We need to leverage this. Use it as a bargaining chip. 'Oh, sorry I was late to class, Ms. Judge, but remember that time I helped win the CVC? Remember how proud you were? Remember the extra day?'"
"She'll give you detention so fast your head will spin."
"Say what you want, I think it's worth a shot." He grabbed his phone and started typing furiously.
"What are you doing?"
"Documenting this moment. 'Dear Diary, today was the day everything changed. Today was the day we realized that even the
strictest principals have soft spots. Today—'"
"Dude."
"—we basked in the glow of victory and the promise of sightseeing. Tomorrow we shall explore this great city, united as champions, bonded by blood and—'"
"Scott."
"—and perhaps, just perhaps, find meaning in—'"
"Your salmon is getting cold."
He looked down at his plate. The salmon, still untouched, sat there staring at him. He grabbed it with his fingers and shoved the whole piece in his mouth.
So much for chopstick skills.
I shook my head, but I was smiling. "You're unbelievable."
"And yet, here you are. Eating sushi with me, in a five-star hotel, thinking about an extra vacation day. All because of my
incredible tug-of-war performance of course."
"Zoë did most of the work."
"She was the muscle, but I was the brain."
"I'm shocked you even have one," I said, rolling my eyes.
He gasped, clutching his chest. "That's cold, Darmian. Ice cold. And here I thought we were friends."
"We are friends. That's why I'm being honest with you."
He stared at me for a long moment, then burst out laughing. "Fine. Fine. You win. But I'm picking the activities tomorrow. And we're doing everything. Every tourist trap, every overpriced attraction, every gift shop with terrible keychains. We're getting the full experience."
"We're going to need a bigger wallet," I said pointedly.
"We're going to need a better wallet," Scott shot back. "Mine has, like, twelve dollars left in it."
"Let's see how much we can rob from Ms. Flores."
"No budget, unlimited ambition. This is going to be interesting." He said, grinning.
We finished dinner sometime around eleven. Scott beaded back to his room, still clutching his lopsided jaguar, while I took the elevator up alone. My key card beeped, the door clicked open, and I stepped into my room. It looked exactly as I'd left it. Bed unmade, towel on the floor, AC set to arctic
conditions.
I pulled back the covers, slid into bed, and let the city lights blur into darkness.
***************
The sun was already doing its best to ruin my morning when I finally peeled my face off the pillow. I know this because the curtains in my room were thin enough to let in approximately one million lumens of golden Canadian spite, and also because my phone screen, when I finally managed to locate it, read 10:27 AM. I stared at the numbers for a solid five seconds, waiting for them to
rearrange themselves into something less incriminating.
"Absolutely not," I muttered, sitting up
immediately. "There's no way."
I dressed in approximately eighty-seven seconds, which was a new record. Sweatshirt? On. Jeans? Zipped. Shoes? Tied halfway through the elevator ride. Hair? Absolutely feral, but that was future Darmian's problem.
The elevator descended with the kind of pace that suggested it was in on the conspiracy to make me late. I checked my phone again. 10:32. She said ten. Ms. Flores had specifically reminded me after her message in the group chat, which
meant she'd been expecting this exact outcome and was probably already halfway to the first destination, laughing about it
with the others while I stood alone in the
lobby.
I opened the doors and braced myself for emptiness. The entire squad was there.
Ms. Flores leaned against the reception desk, coffee in hand, watching me emerge with an expression that suggested she'd been taking bets on my arrival time and had just won. Mr. Sebastian sat in one of the lobby armchairs, looking significantly less green than yesterday, which was a marked improvement. Henry was mid-eye-roll at whatever Scott had been saying. Zoë was pretending to be fascinated by her phone. Marcus was doing something complicated with his shoelaces. Mackenzie and Laura were in what looked like a very intense discussion about something on Laura's screen.
I stopped walking, then looked around. Checked my phone again to make sure I wasn't going crazy.
"You're all… here?" I asked.
"Observant as always," Ms. Flores said, taking a slow sip of her coffee. "Really earning that champion title today."
"I'm fashionably late I guess."
"Fashionably late is five minutes. You were existentially delayed," Laura said.
"Our principal," Henry said, stepping forward and fixing me with a look that was trying very hard to be stern but failing
woefully, "extended our stay by an entire day. An entire day, Darmian. Do you know what that means?"
"That we get to see Toronto?"
"That we get to see Toronto," he confirmed, "and you almost made us start sightseeing without you. The first real day off in a week, and you try to sleep through it. Unforgivable."
"Hey, to be fair," I said, "I did win the final. I needed some quality sleep."
"You can't use that as your get out of jail free card."
"Henry's just mad because he woke up at eight," Zoë said, not looking up from her phone.
"Eight is a reasonable time!"
"It's really not," Scott said, taking another bite of his pastry. "Eight is for farmers and people who hate joy."
"Eleven is for people who don't care about
sightseeing," Ms. Flores added, raising an eyebrow at me.
"Ten-thirty is for people who appreciate the finer things in life," I countered, sliding into the group with practiced ease. "Like
extra sleep. And not being the first one ready for once. It's called pacing yourself."
"It's called poor time management," Mackenzie retorted.
"Same thing."
"It really isn't."
"Look," I said, spreading my hands, "I'm here now and that's what matters. The details of my arrival are irrelevant. Let's focus on the positives."
"You being here is literally the only positive," Laura said. "That's a pretty low bar."
"Anyway! Sightseeing! Toronto! Let's go before Darmian falls asleep standing up," Mr. Sebastian said, nudging us outside.
We got into the limo while Mr. Sebastian drove, which was either a show of confidence in his recovery or a test from Ms. Flores to see if he'd learned his lesson about Everclear. Judging by the way he winced
at every sharp turn, I'm going with the latter.
Toronto unfolded around us like something from a postcard. Tall buildings, busy streets, the kind of energy that reminded meabout New York . But it was different too in an odd, but warming kind of way. Our first stop was the CN Tower.
"Non-negotiable," Ms. Flores announced as we piled out. "You haven't seen Toronto until you've seen it from up there. Also, it's
free."
"It's not free," Mr. Sebastian said.
"It's free for us. Special arrangement. Collegiate discount."
"There's no such thing as a collegiate discount for the CN Tower."
"There is when you know people."
I didn't ask what kind of people. I was learning that some questions were better left unanswered.
The elevator ride up was its own kind of
experience. The glass walls let you watch the city shrink beneath you, buildings becoming blocks, cars becoming ants, people becoming… well, invisible at that height, but you get the idea. Scott pressed his face against the glass like a five-year-old. Henry maintained his composure but kept glancing down with the kind of expression that suggested he was mentally calculating how far the fall would be. Zoë stood quietly, taking it all in, while Marcus and Mackenzie
were having an intense debate about whether the observation deck counted as
"high enough" to qualify as extreme.
"It's three hundred and forty-six meters,"
Mackenzie was saying. "That's objectively high."
"But you're inside," Marcus argued. "There's glass, and glass doesn't count."
"The floor is glass in some parts."
"That's worse, actually. That's so much worse."
When we reached the top, the view stopped all conversation. Lake Ontario stretched out like an ocean, blue and endless. The city sprawled beneath us in every direction, a grid of life and movement that made me feel both incredibly small and incredibly present at the same time.
"Whoa," Laura breathed.
"Yeah," I agreed.
Scott found the glass floor section immediatel and proceeded to do exactly what you'd expect: lay down on it, spread-eagle, and announce that he was "one with the void."
"Get up," Henry said.
"I am communing."
"You're embarrassing us in front of people."
"The void does not judge. The void accepts."
"The void is going to accept you right through that glass if you don't—"
"Guys," Zoë said quietly. She was pointing a something outside the window, but I wasn't looking where she was pointing. I was looking at her. The light caught her face in a way that made everything else blur around the edges.
Then Scott made a ghost noise and ruined the moment. Classic Scott.
The Royal Ontario Museum was next, and it was exactly the kind of place that made you realize how little you actually knew about anything. We wandered through halls filled with dinosaurs, ancient civilizations, art from across the globe. Mackenzie and Marcus attached themselves to a guided tour and didn't emerge for two hours. Laura found the bat cave exhibit and refused to leave until someone physically dragged her
away.
I spent most of the museum time wandering with Scott and Henry, occasionally peeling off to look at something that caught my eye. A sarcophagus from ancient Egypt. A totem pole that stretched toward the ceiling. A display of medieval armor that made me grateful I lived in an era
where combat was optional.
"Imagine fighting in that," Henry said, nodding at a suit of plate mail.
"Imagine winning the CVC in that," Scott replied. "You'd have infinite aura.
"You'd also be dead from heatstroke."
"Worth it for the aesthetic."
At some point, I found myself alone in a gallery of Chinese art, standing in front of a painting that must have been centuries old. It was simple, just mountains and mist, fading into each other. But something about it hooked me. The way the artist had captured distance. The way the mist seemed to move if you looked at it long enough.
"You okay?"
I turned. Zoë stood a few feet away, hands in her jacket pockets, watching me with that unreadable expression she got sometimes.
"Yeah," I said. "Just… taking it in."
"It's beautiful."
"It is."
We stood there for a moment, not talking. It wasn't awkward. It was the opposite of awkward. It was comfortable in a way I
couldn't explain.
Then Scott's voice echoed from somewhere down the hall: "Dinosaurs! Actual dinosaurs! Come look at the bones!"
Zoë sighed. "We should go."
"Yeah." I didn't move.
Neither did she. Then she smiled quick, almost hidden, and turned away. I followed, because that's what you do when someone smiles at you like that.
The Distillery District was our third stop, and it was like walking into a different century with cobblestone streets and old brick buildings, that made me want to slow down and actually pay attention. We
wandered through galleries and shops, sampled chocolates from a place that
claimed to have the best in Toronto (they did), and watched a street performer
juggle fire while riding a unicycle.
"Show-off," Scott huffed.
We grabbed street hot dogs from a cart near the entrance, because Ms. Flores had declared that "you haven't really experiencedToronto until you've eaten meat from a cart." She was right. They were perfect, salty, greasy and wrapped in cheap paper. We stood in a loose circle and ate
them like the sophisticated champions we were.
We grabbed bread sticks from a nearby bakery afterward, because apparently we were in a competition to see who could consume the most carbs in a single afternoon. Scott won, obviously. He always won at eating. It was his secret superpower.
Casa Loma was our final stop, and it was exactly as ridiculous as the name suggested: a castle in the middle of Toronto, complete with towers, secret passages and gardens straight out of a fairy tale.
"This is insane," Henry said, staring up at the structure. "Who builds a castle in a city?"
"Someone with too much money and not enough hobbies," Laura suggested.
"Someone with excellent taste," Scott countered. "I'm building one of these someday. You're all invited."
We explored for hours. The towers offered views of the city that rivaled the CN Tower's, but much closer and intimate. The gardens
were peaceful in a way that made you forget you were in the middle of a metropolis. The secret passages, which were actual hidden doors and staircases sent Scott into a spiral of excitement that lasted approximately the entire visit.
"This is it," he kept saying. "This is the dream. Hidden doors everywhere. Imagine your room just… having a secret staircase.
Imagine."
The sun was starting to set by the time we piled back into the limo, exhausted in the best way. The city lights were beginning to
flicker on, painting Toronto in gold and white against the deepening blue. Everyone was quiet.
We got back to the hotel around eight, dragging ourselves through the lobby. Marcus was the first to head up, muttering
something about showers and sleep. Laura and Mackenzie followed, then Henry, then Zoë with a glance back at me that I pretended not to notice.
Scott clapped me on the shoulder. "Good day."
"Good day," I agreed.
"Tomorrow we go home."
"Yeah."
"Sad?"
"A little."
He nodded, then he headed for the elevator, leaving me alone in the lobby with Ms. Flores and Mr. Sebastian, who were
having a quiet conversation at the reception desk. I was about to head up myself when Marcus's voice echoed from the elevator lobby:
"OH NO."
We all turned. Marcus stood frozen in front of the elevator doors, hands patting his pockets with increasing desperation.
"What?" I called.
"My phone."
"You have it?"
"No. That's the problem. I don't have it."
"You don't have it where?"
"If I knew that, it wouldn't be a problem!"
The next fifteen minutes were a masterclass in Marcus panic. He retraced his steps approximately seventeen times, each recitation ending with the same conclusion: he'd last had it in the bathroom at the museum. The bathroom. Hours ago. In a different part of the city.
"I can't believe this," he kept saying. "I can't believe I did this."
"I can," Mr. Sebastian said. "You lose everything."
"I do not lose everything! Darmian, back me up here."
"You lost your keys last week," I chuckled.
"That was different."
"You lost your shoe last month."
"It was raining! I took it off and forgot!"
"You're a disaster."
"I'm a visionary. Visionaries don't concern
themselves with small details."
"Like phones?"
"Exactly. So what do I do?" Marcus asked, turning to Ms. Flores with the expression of a lost puppy.
"I'll call the museum later," she said. "See if they found it. If not… well. New phone."
"My photos!"
"Cloud?"
"I don't use cloud. Cloud is surveillance."
Ms. Flores stared at him for a long moment. Then she turned to me and Mr. Sebastian. "Get your things ready tonight. We leave for the airport at noon tomorrow. Flight's by two. Anyone not on that plane is on their own." Her eyes found me. "That means you, Darmian."
"I resent the implication that I'm the only one who needs this warning," I said, frowning.
"You're the only one who's proven it necessary."
"That's fair."
She nodded, satisfied, and headed for the
elevator. We followed, Marcus still muttering about his phone and the paradise of a world without cloud storage. The doors opened shortly after, and we scattered to our rooms, exhausted and full and happy in the way that only comes from a day well spent.
I collapsed onto my bed, stared at the ceiling, and smiled. One more night and it would all be over.