Chet and London were our friends, but only by default. We had known London for years, so we felt obligated to her, which kept us from throwing her out on the street. I like to think everyone has friends like that, so I'm not just being needlessly cruel when I say that London and Chet were the most impossibly repetitive couple I had ever met. They were great people separately, but when combined, became a unstoppable force of boredom, which infiltrated into our normally witty conversation, and contaminated it with useless anecdotes about their private lives. Sometimes I wondered if they had any hobbies or interests outside of their relationship, but if I were to ask, I would only be met with blank stares.

London was the type of girl who admitted she had never been interested in a boy when the feeling wasn't mutual. I couldn't begin to comprehend that kind of existence, but I wasn't sure I was jealous of her, because she always got her heart broken. Chet was the most stable boyfriend she had, so I couldn't hate him completely. He didn't do drugs, he hadn't been to jail, his sexuality wasn't questionable, so he passed all the basic requirements, and was already ahead of the curbs as far as her exes were concerned. There was nothing wrong with him, really, except he was-

"Boring," Jose said, right as I was thinking it. We were at the Pirate Palace, where Sophie worked, and he hadn't even taken a sip out of his $8 chocolate milk shake, which had started melting into a chocolate puddle. "That's the last thing we want this camping trip to be. I'm making the executive decision that we cannot invite Chet or London."

"It won't be like, a 'we're your friend' kind of invitation, it will be one of those guilt invitations," Garrett said.

"I get those all the time," Ben said, and he wasn't joking. "A guilt invitation is better than no invitation."

"Is it?" I asked.

"I don't really know. I take what I can get," he said.

"That's a deep philosophical question we all must ask ourselves, and we could not possibly answer right now. That's why some hard decisions have to be made."

"Bu-"

"No buts. No London, no Chet."

"What are we talking about?" Eva asked. She had gotten up to go to the bathroom a few minutes ago, which was a strategic move on Jose's part. Eva would've insisted we invite London and Chet, because that's just the kind of person she was.

"We're talking about how Jose was peer pressured into getting a milkshake he had no intentions of drinking."

"No we weren't," I said. "Garrett's a liar. We were talking about Chet and London."

"Oh!" Eva's face brightened. "They're coming with us?"

"No," Jose said, "They aren't. That's the point. And it's non-negotiable."

"Come on, y'all," Eva said, and flashed us her charming southern smile, which she had just gotten the braces off of last summer. "London has been our best friend for years."

"Best friend is a strong word..." I said.

"I thought you wanted to invite them, too!"

"I do," I said, "I'm just playing the field."

"Well, if we invite London, then we have to invite Chet," Ben pointed out. Then Jose exclaimed, in a voice that was far too excitable for the conversation,

"That's what I'm saying!" He looked like he was about to jump right out of his seat. "None of you have any idea how much responsibility it takes to put together a camping trip. I do all the work around here, and what do I get for it? NOTHING!" I would've told him to calm down, but I had tried that before, and he remained unbothered.

"Okay, your vote doesn't count anymore," Ben said. "You're too emotionally invested." I looked over at his empty plate, where a double stack cheeseburger had once been. He crumpled up all our straw wrappers and lined them up, like an arsenal. All of Ben's maturity evaporated when we went out to eat. Once, we had been asked to leave a Waffle House, because he kept dropping quarters in everyone's drinks. I wasn't familiar with Waffle House's behavior policies, but my suspicions indicated they didn't demand outrageous dining etiquette from their customers.

"This isn't a vote," Jose said, at the same time Garrett asked,

"We're taking a vote? Sorry, I zoned out for a minute. Are we still talking about this?"

"Apparently."

"Well I vote yes," Eva said, and I nodded along with her to show my support.

"Not to take sides or anything, but I'm on Eva's side," I said.

"I think it's a bad idea," Garrett said, and I was shocked, because as Eva's boyfriend, I thought he was automatically programmed to agree with her. "I mean, they'll be competition for best couple."

"They aren't any competition," Eva giggled, and they locked eyes.

"You're right, babe. But in all honesty, Chet just isn't my favorite person. There's nothing wrong with him, I just, I don't know..."

"Boring?" I offered.

"Yeah, that's it. He's boring. We once had a twenty minute conversation about shoelaces."

"On one hand," Ben said, "I'm inclined to disagree with Jose, just because he's being obnoxious." Jose didn't hear him say this, because he was staring at his reflection in the napkin dispenser. "But on the other hand, what would happen if we handed Chet the aux chord? He would probably play country music or something."

"Good thinking," Garrett said. "We've got to think about this logically if we want to come up with a solution."

"We need a tie breaker."

"Where is Sophie when we need her?"

"The one time she's actually working," Ben noted. He was one to talk, because he held a job at a supermarket for approximately three works over the summer because it was "killing" his "social life." "It's kind of hard to kill something that's already dead," I remember telling him, and he had turned up the volume of his rap music over the sound of my voice.

"SOPHIE," Jose called out, and, I swear, every single head in the restaurant whipped around to glare at us.

"JOSE!" Sophie answered back, and I wondered how she hadn't been fired already. Eva buried her face in her hands, looking like she was about to die from embarrassment.

"Guys, please stop," she said, hating to be the center of attention. That's probably why she was friends with us. Because when we were all shouting over each other, she never needed to be, but it came back to bite her whenever we caused scenes in public places.

"Fine, I'll text her," Jose said, since Sophie wasn't curious enough to come over and see what we wanted. She was busy talking to a girl with long, dark hair I could only see from behind. I wondered if it was Rowan, before I remembered Rowan was a figment of her imagination.

"Is it safe now?" Eva said.

"Yeah," Garrett told her, "I think the storm is over."

"Why are Jose and Sophie allowed to interact with each other?"

"They shouldn't be," I agreed. Jose's phone buzzed (naturally, it was on top volume), and he said,

"Sophie votes no."

"Pics or it didn't happen," Ben said, and then grabbed the phone out of his hands. Jose struggled, but Ben held him back, and tossed the phone to Garrett. "Read what it says."

"Sophie says, in all caps, with five exclamation points, YES!!!!! THEY SHOULD DEFINITELY COME!!!!" We all laughed, and then Garrett said, "Jose, you are the biggest fucking liar." He was breathless from the fight when he replied:

"I was just.... thinking of... the good.. of the group."

"Jose's last words," Ben said. We all laughed, and for some reason, in that moment, I was extremely grateful that they were my best friends

****************************************************

Ben was the first one in the grade to get his license, and he was so desperate to show off his Toyota Camry, he became our personal chauffeur. Even though most of us had our own rides now, the habit still stuck. That was why he was behind the wheel for the entire six hours it took us to get to Agate Beach Park, which Jose swore was the best, most serene campground in all of northern Michigan.

Sophie road in the front seat, because she had called shotgun when we all met up in the parking lot of an IHOP that morning. Actually, I had called it too, but she called it louder.

If you were picturing a crazy road trip with high school friends, good music, and an endless snack supply, that couldn't have been further from reality. We woke up at 5 AM, at Jose's insistence, so we wouldn't have to go to sleep right when we got there. We were quite, cranky, miserable, and unwilling to remove our earbuds, even out of common curtesy. It was Chet's job to bring the food, which of course he forgot.

"I'm really sorry guys," he had said, as if that were an acceptable apology to give a hungry group of teenagers.

"Can we get breakfast?" Sophie asked, the pure hopefulness in her voice breaking my heart a little bit, because I already knew the answer.

"No," Jose crushed her dreams, "We're on a strict schedule."

"What are we supposed to do when we get there? Live off the land?"

"It's not, like, the wilderness, Sophie. We're not on 'Survivor Man.' They have hot dog stands and frozen pizzas."

Garrett and Eva were fighting, because Garrett had said Eva was too close with Jose. Why he choose that particular morning to notice, I will never have any idea, but it was really inconvenient for the rest of us.

Garrett was an agreeable person until you ask his girlfriend for nudes, which Jose had, the summer before they got together. I had a difficult time believing Jose really did that, because it didn't sound like a very Jose-ish thing to do, but that's what Garrett and Eva insisted. I dated Jose in May through July of sophomore year, and he never asked me for nudes. I didn't know whether to be thankful or slightly offended. Anyway, I loved both of them, and I didn't believe either would lie, so I chalked it up to a misunderstanding and tried not to get involved.

"Sit next to me!" Eva said, and I did, even though I really didn't want too. Whenever she was frustrated with Garrett, she didn't want to complain about him, she just wanted to forget about it, which was far less interesting. It was my job to distract her, and that moment, I wasn't feeling up to the challenge.

"Sit next to me," Garrett told London, and in my head I thought, bad move. Garrett and London were even worse than Eva and Ben, because Eva and Ben had been friends since elementary school, so it was understandable. Garrett just eternally sought relationship advice from London, seemingly for no reason, except that she had been in a lot. So when London climbed over the first row of seats to sit in the middle of the back, and Chet sat on her right side, and Garrett on her left, I knew Eva and Garrett weren't going to be making up anytime soon, at least that weekend.

"Can you believe him?" Sophie turned around and mouthed to us from the front, using her left hand to cover the side of her mouth.

I shook my head, and Eva pretended like she didn't know what Sophie could possibly mean.

"Here we go!" Ben announced, and then pressed the button on his dashboard that started up the engine. My own car, a Honda Civic, operated the same way. When I went to take my driver's test, I didn't know how to turn a key in the ignition.

Sophie shrieked with delight, "Road trip!" but it was a little more half-hearted then her usual efforts, and was met with grunts from the rest of us.

"How are your shoelaces holding up, man?" I heard Garrett asking in a low voice. Either he was still groggy, or he really didn't want Eva to overhear him talking about Chet's Air Jordans.

"Pretty good. They still come untied a lot. I'm thinking of trying superglue."

"That's a good idea. You don't want them to stop the whole basketball game and wait for you again."

"No, that was bad," Chet agreed.

"And the homeschooling's still going well?" Like I said, Garrett could make conversation with a wall, and that's essentially what Chet was.

"It's great. I found a co-op group, recently." I knew what a co-op was, unfortunately, although I would never admit it.

"Does anyone want to put some music on?" Ben asked. "I can't do it, because I'm driving."

"You're driving?"

"Don't get smart with me, Garrett. I'm not afraid to pull over."

We drifted off into smaller, side conversations. London, Chet, and Garrett were playing FMK, which was a classic example of something London would do for fun. Sophie was watching videos on her phone, and would laugh out loud about every two and a half minutes.

"You've got to see this," she'd say, and then hand the phone to someone who didn't care.

Jose was just watching over us, like he was enjoying his creation. I could practically see the mental high-five's he was giving himself, for orchestrating such a successful social event.

I wanted to say something to Eva, but I wasn't completely sure what to talk about, besides the obvious.

"What's been going on with you lately?" She asked me, and I hated that, because we were supposed to be best friends, and here she was making small talk with me, as if we didn't see each other every day.

"Chemistry is hard. My parents are strict. Nothing new." I didn't mean to come off as being cynical, but those two things consumed the majority of my thoughts.

"What about Cal?" She asked me, and for some reason I was embarrassed, which left me feeling even less like her best friend. Weren't we supposed to be able to talk about anything?

"Oh, there's nothing really to say about that."

"I mean, like, do you think he's cute?" Of course that's what she meant, and I didn't know why I had to get so defensive about it. I thought about it for a moment, because I wanted to get the answer exactly right:

"Yeah, I do. He has pretty blue eyes."

"He plays baseball," she reminded me.

"I've heard he's not very good at it."

"That doesn't matter. You can still paint your number on his cheek," she said, and then I reminded her about the time when I was in 8th grade, and I had a crush on a freshman on the basketball team.

"I wrote his number on my wrist, with his initials and a heart," I said, "And then I raised my hand to ask a question in Spanish class. He was sitting right next to me, and the look he gave me when he saw it was priceless." Eva laughed,

"Yeah, I remember that now. I had forgotten about it though. Maybe I was blocking it out? That's so bad, Penny. So bad, but funny."

"He has a girlfriend, though."

"Jacob?" She said, referencing the object of my eighth grade affections.

"No, Cal."

"That didn't stop London, the time she stole that deaf girl's boyfriend."

"That was so bad," I said.

"So bad, but-"

"Don't say it! It was not funny, it was just bad."

"Okay, I agree with you. Maybe I can convince Garrett to join the baseball team, and we can go to the games together."

"The day Garrett joins the baseball team is the day he gets rid of all his cardigans," I said, and Eva laughed again, but then her face fell, and I knew she remembered they were fighting. "Hey, hey." I said. "It's okay. You guys are gonna make up."

"Are you talking about me up there?" London asked. "I thought I heard my name."

"Oh, we were just talking about you and Max."

"Max? Who dated that deaf girl until he didn't anymore? That was so funny," then she put her earbuds in again. Eva's facial expression contorted in disgust.

"What if he wants to get with that?" She whispered, almost directly in my ear, as not to risk any eavesdroppers overhearing the juicy conversation we were about to have. "I mean, she's my friend, but she's-"

"So bad?" I finished, so she wouldn't say something she regretted.

"Yeah. I guess that's a good way to put it, although that's not exactly what I was going to say."

"And to answer your question, no. She has Chet now."

"That wouldn't stop her," Eva rolled her eyes. "Or him."

"It would, Eva. Garrett's loyal. You know him better than that. You know that he works twice as hard at everything, just so he won't be like his dad." I was so thankful he had his music turned all the way up. He was humming along and tapping his foot, otherwise I wouldn't have said any of that.

"What are you talking about?" Ben called back to us, like he was at the end of the table at a Hibachi restaurant.

"Your mom," Eva replied, a little bit more loudly than she needed to, and then turned back to me. "You're right. I'm sorry I said that. Garrett's such a solid guy. You won't tell anybody, will you?"

"As long as you don't tell anyone about my pseudo obsessive friend crush on Cal."

"I knew that was real!"

"I'm just kidding. It's not. But I still don't want you to tell anyone. You know, that it's not real."

"I won't," she promised seriously.

"The middle row of my car is no place for secrets!" Ben said, although it would've been, if he were sitting in the middle row.

"We'll tell you later," Eva said, and then whispered, "or not."

"I heard that!"

"Concentrate on your driving." Then Sophie started giggling uncontrollably, out of nowhere.

"You've got to see this," she told me, and then passed me back her phone. "It's a vine compilation of ice bucket challenge fails."

"What is your sense of humor?" I asked, just in time to look in the rearview mirror and see London falling asleep on Garrett's shoulder. I shot him an angry glare, and he gave me a, "what do you want me to do?" hand motion.

"Come on, let's watch this," I told Eva, trying to distract her from turning around.