As soon as I walked into the tall friendly hotel, I was swarmed by my teammates. Each one of them took turns telling me all the things I had missed. Alyssa even took it upon herself to show me the secret room they had found. She had long, dark brown hair tied back into a thick ponytail and was wearing her green USF long- sleeve shirt with black shorts on.  
We went to the black marbled register and a familiar short man greeted us from the last time we were there. He was wearing the same navy blue suit and smile he was before. 
We went over to the stairs and walked to some door that looked like it would be the lobby floor, but it was not. The lighting was very soft, but it had just enough light to make out everything that was there. There were boxes everywhere and in the corner was an accumulation of dust. I assumed someone either hadn’t been here in a while or just poorly kept up with their chores. When we went to the connecting room where there was a bunch of technology making loud repetitive beeping noises.  
“I don’t think we’re supposed to be in here” I said with a soft expression, trying to be as quiet as I could so that we didn’t get thrown in jail. 
“It’s ok” Apple assured me. “We’ve been coming in and out of here multiple times” she looked confident, but I could tell she was a little nervous under her facade. 
I quickly followed them over to a door that I hoped led to our freedom. Big white lights shown in our faces as our eyes were trying to adjust to the new lighting change. We continued to walk and passed a big green marbled pot filled with ferns. Thats when I realized we had made a big circle and ended up back in the lobby. I was so relieved to be somewhere familiar and not in the middle of the streets.  
I met back up with my dad and we headed up to our room. There was a huge huddle of people near the elevators, and we all packed into it. 
“Six, please” my dad said, as a nice lady pushed the button my dad had requested. 
 I had only stayed in our room for a good five minutes before I made my way downstairs. As I stepped out of the elevators, I noticed that my teammates were gone from where I last saw them. A cloud of sadness came upon me; still I walked around to find where they could’ve gone.  
I looked to my right; no one. I looked to my left; still they were not to be found. I started to lose hope but then I heard heavy footsteps approaching. As I turned around, I was almost tackled by Apple who was running at full speed in her socks.  
“Jeez” I exclaimed, trying to keep from falling to the floor.  
Before I could get another breath in, she asked me, “Do you have apple pay?” She looked excited and was waiting to hear my response. 
“Yeah... Why” I said confused as to why she would need it. 
“YES!” She blurted out. She jumped in the air and grabbed my hand leading me over to a vending machine full of ice cream. 
I smiled in amusement at how excited she could get over ice cream. She chose C-12, a fudge pop, and wouldn’t let me forget the number. After she was satisfied, I decided I needed one too. I planned on getting C-11, which was a drumstick, but my brain was so rattled from her repetitive talk about C-12 that that's what I ended up pushing. I am not the biggest fan of chocolate, so I decided to give it to her. She was beaming with joy seeing as she had just acquired two fudge pops.  
We ate our ice cream and then met up with the rest of our team upstairs. We went to the eighth floor where there was an entire lounge area and we decided we were going to talk about plays. However, that didn’t end up lasting very long because we don’t have the longest attention span.  
“We should play red rover” Jazz suggested. 
“What is that” I added, I had never heard of such a thing before, and everyone was looking at me in shock. 
They explained it to me, and I was ready to begin. We chose our teams and I was sure we had the better team because we were so fast. It was their turn to choose, and they said, 
“Red rover, red rover, send Alyssa on over.” She broke free from our hands and took off trying to break the other teams bond. She came so close but ended up getting caught. Just as we were about to go the elevator dinged and all of the players from Riptide came out. We weren’t sure where our relationship was with them since we had just beaten them the day before, but they didn’t care and even wanted to play with us. We ended up choosing to play hide and seek tag, team versus team. 
After we laid down some ground rules, they decided to seek first. We dispersed and Apple, Alyssa, Taylor, and I sprinted down the long hallway to the stairwell. We figured we would just hide out in there, but the temperature seemed to be rising every minute and felt extremely hot. We heard the door swing open and ran down to the main level in a panic. Our feet were moving faster than we were and we went to hide near the gym. We sat there to catch our breaths because we had just run a marathon. I could feel the rush of adrenaline, I wanted to never leave and to just be a kid forever.  
All of a sudden, we were surrounded, they came up as quiet as a mouse. One from the bathroom side, two in the hallway, and another by the exit. We couldn’t anything but “RUN,” Taylor screamed, she couldn’t keep herself from laughing and was giggling the whole way. She’s always laughing at the most random stuff even if it’s not funny. 
Her plan clearly didn't work well because we were all tagged in an instant. We were so sad, but they reassured us that we were the better group because they had already gotten all of our other teammates, and that's all I needed to hear to feel accomplished.  
We exchanged some stories of our struggles throughout this game and met up with the rest of our teammates who were sitting in a room that had been engraved into the wall. There was a tv that had the UFS versus FSU football game on. The score was tied but no one was really paying attention to it because on the other side of the room was a poker game going on between the coaches and dads. I walked over there and sat on a cooler that was full of beer next to my dad. He was shuffling and it was so mesmerizing to see the red cards fold into one another.  
Out of nowhere Coach Andy says “I’m goin all in.” he pushes his pile of about 20 chips into the center of the small, rounded table. He had his bombers hat on and was trying to keep a poker face, but I could read right through him, he was bluffing. He pulled off his hat and ran his fingers through luscious black and grey hair, indicating that he was feeling stress. My dad flipped the card over and boomed; it was not what he wanted. 
“Crap” Coach Andy said with frustration flooding his face. He pulled out a twenty and tried to buy in again but he controlled himself and didn’t.  
“Tessa, come here,” Jaz called out, waving her hand towards her to a group of our two teams. 
It was Lindsey, one of the girls from Riptides, birthday and she had brought a big cake to share with all of us. It was chocolate with brown frosting and blue writing on it that spelt out Happy Birthday Lindsey. The cake was bordered with pink colored Oreos. We all gathered around and sang Happy Birthday to her. We were all like one big team and we celebrated together and ate some delicious cake. 
After we had partied, I was exhausted, so I decided to head up to my room and go to bed. I asked my dad for the key, and he said he meet me up there in a bit. After I said my goodnights, I dragged myself over to the elevators and went to floor six. I opened the door and let out a sigh, I was so ready to go to bed. I grabbed my toothbrush and skincare and went to the bathroom in the corner of the room.  
Once I was ready for bed, I leaped into it and untucked the corners. I had fallen sleep in in an instant and not even five minutes later my dad came in the room, and it woke me up. The door was so heavy that it slammed against the frame, and I was wide awake, there was no chance I was going to bed at this point now. 
“How was your poker game?” I asked in an effort to distract me from the fact that I can no longer sleep. 
“I won the whole thing” he replied, he looked happy, but also like he needed to go to bed as well. 
“YAY” I exclaimed with excitement, “How much?” 
“Two-Hundred bucks” he replied  
“Wow, you should gamble more often” I told him, and then finally was able to rest knowing that my dad was clearly the best poker player ever.