“Aloha! Welcome to Hawaii!” Voices warmly welcomed Madeline as she made her way to the lobby desk of the hotel. With cordiality, others began to offer her a tropical drink of which they called “Hawaiian Coco Punch” after assisting her with the many bags left beside her.  The hotel manager handed her a flower printed room key, warning her that this would be her only one during her stay. Madeline then advanced towards the elevator. She noted that the elevator would stop at every floor, and at each one there would be even more obstreperous teens that entered the closed space while singing and jumping to the beat of their mp3s players. Several of them bumped into her while attempting to bust out their dance moves in front of their friends. A few others were using invectives and screamed at one another over an argument about Justin Bieber. Looking on at the many carefree adolescents her age, she felt desolate as she realized that she had no one to travel around the world with due to her lack of friends. Before she could recall her mortifying sophomore year full of humiliating mistakes and misfortunes, the elevator doors swung open.

         “Excuse me! Pardon me!” Carefully maneuvering herself past the crowd of teenagers, Madeline located her room. Suddenly, she stopped in front of her door with a look of deep perplexity, engaging in careful thought for what seemed like hours.
         Her train of thought was broken after a while. “I have never seen a girl as asinine as you. How could you drop your only access to your room? Only idiots do that. Seriously.”
         Madeline’s eyes rose to a girl a bit older than her, one with fierce eyes analogous to a wild beast: both intimidated her so inordinately that she felt weak and hopeless. Madeline kept silent and sank down against the door of her assigned room.
         The girl scoffed and introduced herself as Mari Elli, tossing the Hawaiian printed key towards Madeline. “People like you interrupt my precious vacation. I hope you know that it was definitely not an auspicious time for you to be so careless. I was about to go to the spa for my daily appointment. But, of course, since I am such a great person, I figured I would help such pitiful people like you. You can thank me later!”
         Madeline quickly thanked Mari with an ingenuous expression, mistaking Mari’s act as one of kindness. She eagerly slipped her room key into the slot and opened her room. Everything was neatly adjacent to each other: the bed next to the nightstand, the nightstand next to the lamp, the lamp next to the door. An aberration caught her eye in the corner of the dimly lit space, awkwardly caught in what seemed like a miniature vent. Her thoughts started to become muddled of suspicion, although in all guilelessness, Madeline never feared ghosts or any paranormal activity. These were merely things that she found unfathomable, never being able to see what was so frightening about them.
         The dinner was one of the best Madeline ever had. After picking up a virgin Piña Colada, she tripped over a handkerchief left abandoned on the floor, knocking the drink onto another familiar face.
         “Watch it there, Miss Klutz! Oh my god, is it you again? Are you kidding me? I have a feeling I am ascertaining why this trip has been so miserable: because of you! You should be wary towards how you act around people… when are you going to stop causing trouble so recklessly? You may end up getting hurt by others instead if you mess up real bad, darling.” Mari turned on her heel and stalked away, leaving Madeline in the middle of the hall of partiers in a mess of coconut and pineapple.
         For the remaining five days of her trip, the encounters between her and Mari were anything but friendly. During some occurrences, Mari would simply glare at Madeline in such a way that it was tacit that Madeline was not wanted anywhere on the resort hotel. She soon was a chameleon under the influence of Mari’s bullying, her attitude becoming somewhat bolder and less timid. On the final day of her stay, Madeline was said to have perpetrated an unlawful action. Mari immediately accused Madeline of pilfering her room key, drawing attention from the majority of the occupants of the resort. The hotel manager arbitrated the altercation between the two, coming to the decision that it fell out of her pocket because of the windy weather. However, Mari insisted otherwise, and declared that she would personally show them herself it was stolen and in Madeline’s room.
         Looking out the plane window, Madeline reminisced about the “adventure” she went on for the past week. All the memories somehow brought a smile to her face. If Mari was planning to sabotage her and expel her from the hotel as revenge for interrupting her special spa time and spilling drinks on her, she should have considered it would be Madeline’s last day. This caused Madeline to laugh. If Mari was going to blame her for stealing a flimsy piece of plastic, she should have put it somewhere other than the vent. Madeline wondered how Mari and the summoned authorizes would feel after not seeing Mari’s room card in her room. It had joined the dust collected inside of the vent’s fan anyways. But, she was still confused. How could Mari reach her room if her only access was left in Madeline’s room vent for all seven days?