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“Doyou want to pop into that store?” I ask my best friend, Ren, nodding over to a little soap shop.
“Sure.”
I smile as we cross the busy street and enter the quaint shop, the bell tinkling overhead and the smell of lavender, vanilla, and mint wafting toward us.
The girl behind the counter nods at us, but it’s obvious she’s too excited to talk to her friends to pay us any mind.
“I wonder what all the fuss is about today,” I whisper to Ren as we walk down the first aisle.
There seems to be a hundred different bars of soap in here, and I stop to smell an orange and grapefruit one.
“There’s something happening at the castle. The King is looking for his Queen,” Ren says distractedly as she grabs a lemon soap.
“Aww, that’s exciting. Also, how do you know this?” I ask with a laugh. My best friend quirks up an eyebrow.
“I read the paper this morning at breakfast.”
I smile to myself as Ren browses the nearest shelf. “Of course you did.”
I always say that Ren was born in the wrong era. She hates everything this generation seems to love. She doesn’t own a phone, prefers to read books in paperback form rather than eBook, and she still gets her news from newspapers. She only has a laptop for work, and I swear that I’ve used it more than she has.
I’m the exact opposite of my bestie. I couldn’t live without my phone, I’d rather scroll through Instagram than flip through a newspaper, and I need my laptop for work, so I’m on it all the time.
It’s not that I’m vain or narcissistic like so many people think of my generation. For me, technology, the internet, and social media represent freedom. An escape from reality for a bit, as well as a real way to pull myself up and out of the shitty hand life dealt me.
Ren, on the other hand, gets stressed just thinking about keeping up with different apps and platforms. It’s hard enough for her to remember to check her email.
On paper, it doesn’t make sense for us to be friends. Yet, as soon as she was brought to the group home I was staying at, we latched onto each other. I showed her some of the basics of surviving foster care, like making sure you can pack all of your belongings in a duffel bag in under five minutes, and which social workers actually listen to you when you have an issue. In turn, Ren has kept me grounded, she’s been the most loyal friend I could ask for, and she’s always up for an adventure.
When my bestie got the idea to backpack through Europe after our high school graduation, I was all in. We’ve been working and saving money for this trip for the last few years, and I can’t believe it’s finally here.
We graduated back in June but our social worker wouldn’t sign off on us leaving just yet. We had to wait until the end of August to be able to go, and even then, she only said yes because it was so close to our birthdays. Ren turns eighteen next week, just a few days after me.
We’ll be official adults soon, though, truthfully, it feels like I’ve been an adult for as long as I can remember. Stress? No sleep? Too many responsibilities and not enough time or money to keep up with it all? Check, check, check. Tack on the helplessness of being thrown into the foster care system and a few wretched foster parents, and yeah, I had to grow up fast. Ren did, too. Our birthdays just make it official.
Ren drops the lemon soap into her basket, jarring me from my thoughts. I toss in the orange soap I’ve been clinging to. We’ll have to watch our spending while we’re over here, but Ren and I take soap and body wash very seriously. All the girls in our first group home were forced to use the boys’ body wash. They claimed that they only had enough money in the budget for one kind of soap, and instead of finding a more neutral scent, they just picked a boy brand.
“It’s open to the public, you know,” Ren says as we head down the next aisle.
“What?” I ask, grabbing a vanilla-scented bar of soap.
“The ceremony tonight for the King to find his Queen. It’s open to the public.”
“Oh, right.” I almost forgot what we were talking about. “And you want to go to it?” I ask in shock.
Ren would rather be curled up in bed than all dressed up and in a room with people she doesn’t know. It’s ironic because she would make a great Queen. She’s smart, kind, loyal, and generous, all qualities a good leader should have. Too bad Ren would never voluntarily sign up to evenattemptto become a Queen.
“Might be cool to see the castle,” Ren says with a shrug. Soon, her adorably devious smile appears, and I wait for her next words. “Plus, I mean… there will be free food.”
“Ah, there it is,” I say with a chuckle. She grins at me.
“Want to check it out?” Ren asks. I bite my lip.
“Sure.”
We just landed in Scotland and decided to go north and work our way back to London for our flight back home. This little town was the first one we came to, and the hotel was cheap enough that we decided to make it our camp for the next week.
“We should get going then. The whole town is shutting down early tonight, and we need to get changed before we go.”
