The whole convention center went silent, the lights went down and there he was walking towards me. Jason Kennedy the anchor of my favorite TV show E! News. I have looked up to him for years and never thought the day would come when I would get to meet him. Butterflies fluttered around in my stomach, thoughts and questions kept racing through my mind, is this a dream? I had practiced what I would say to him in the incident that I would ever meet him. But I couldn’t get the right words out and my whole body went limp. Is this really happening?

After opening my presents Christmas morning it was time to pack for my trip to California with over 200 teens from the Portland area. We would all board a train for a long journey to California; the 30 hours went by like minutes. Meeting new people and getting closer to the people who I’ve known my whole life was well worth the hard earned money I had raised with my best friends so go on this adventure. Lauren, Haylie, and Alison have been my best friends for many years, each of us with completely different personalities, more times than not they clash immensely. Lauren is quiet but knows how to have a good time, Alison is rather bossy and is the leader of the group, and then there is Haylie the rebel, the one who every time her and I get together we somehow manage to get in trouble.

I thought Disneyland with my 3 besties would be the best thing in the world, and it was for the first few hours. We all bought matching sweatshirts and princess crowns to wear around. We were quite the pair until we all started arguing about what rides we wanted to go on. Alison and Lauren decided to go together and left me and Haylie in line for the Space Mountain ride. From that moment we all knew how the rest of the week would go. Lauren and Alison would be the angels who showed up to everything on time and Haylie and I would in some way get in trouble.

The Anaheim convention center was filled with 8,000 youth from over the world coming together to learn what we could do to help end modern day slavery. You walked into the entry way and could hear the roar of voices. This convention was the main reason we had come to California. As well has the concerts and of course Disneyland was just icing on the cake. The first two days of the convention was filled with fun and exciting hands on learning exhibits. But by the 3rd and final evening of the convention Haylie and I were exhausted. Our leaders were fed up with having to worry about us showing up to things and not sneaking out to hang out with the guys we met. Haylie and I were told to wait in the hotel until the guys from our group came to walk us there. Jamin and Brian came down the elevator and asked if we wanted to go to dinner with them. Haylie would do anything to avoid going to the convention so we went to Ihop which was a mile in the opposite direction.

After eating dinner we headed towards to convention center and we realized we each had many calls from our leaders and friends trying to figure out where we were. When we finally arrived we were greeted by our main leaders Matt and Abby who told the boys that they saved them seats. Abby told Haylie and I we had to find our own seats. Extremely angry we left our groups floor seats to look for seat far far away from everyone. We finally found two aisle seats towards the top of the bowl. There was only 3 hours left before New Year’s we sat in our seats and were soon were fast asleep. After about an hour or so we woke up to loud Christian rap music performed by the band Grits. Both Haylie and I strongly dislike rap music.

We got up to go get coffee from one of the coffee bars on the lower level of the convention center. As we walked down the stairs we see a man running towards us pushing us in the other direction as we made our way back up the stairs we looked over the rail. A man with light hair he looked to be in his early 30s lying on the ground at an awkward angle. Paramedics were assisting him into a neck brace and then onto a stretcher. As the Police approached us Haylie got nervous. He asked us simple questions about the accident to see if we saw anything.

As the investigation came to an end we realized that it was almost time for the New Years after party. We hurried into the Auditorium and stopped at the door, we looked on the big screen to see the gorgeous Jason Kennedy giving away an IPod to another lucky person. We watched the 3 contestants making up little raps to see who the crowd thought did the best. Haylie noticed something that looked familiar My princess bag was on the screen. We made our way towards our seats and there he was standing in the empty place that Haylie and I were once sitting. I quickly turned around and made my way to the nearest door, we stood there with huge grins on our faces I knew he wouldn’t walk through the crowd and that he would make is exit through the back. In my head I rehearsed what I was going to say to him. I