Chapter 82

It’s 6am and there’s no chance of me getting back to sleep. It’s taking everything in me to stay in bed and not jump around my room like a lunatic, simply because it Christmas. And yes, I know I’m fifteen but I’ve been waiting for this day for 365 days and now it’s finally here!

I’d wake Eleanor up but I’m kind of scared of how she’ll react. She’ll either hit me and tell me to go back to sleep or she’ll scream with me and wake everyone up so we can open our presents. Just to be safe, I’ll leave her for another half an hour.

I get out my phone and text everyone on my phone, wishing them a Merry Christmas. I then go through every social networking sight and read billions of status’ and tweets about it being Christmas. I get bored and decide to get out of bed and roam the house or something.

I unplait my hair from last night and put it in a pony tail so I don’t ruin the waves. I’m proud of how they look to be honest. I grab Eleanor’s presents from the top of my wardrobe and carry them all downstairs in the bag. I walk into the living room and see even more presents added to the ginormous pile.

Wow.

I let out a small squeal and sit in front of the tree with Eleanor’s presents. I go through the bag and take off all the price tags, before shoving the bag into the pile.

To keep myself entertained, I take billions of pictures of the tree and all the decorations and upload a few to Twitter and Instagram. I go into my kitchen and try to make the best hot chocolate possible by adding whipped cream, marshmallows and chocolate sprinkles on top. Just when I’m about to leave the kitchen to watch Disney Channel or something, Eleanor stumbles into the kitchen.

“Aren’t you going to make me one?” she smirks, looking at my towering hot chocolate. I look down at it then back up to her.

“Fine” I sigh, handing her my mug.

“Thanks babes” she laughs, taking a sip of it.

“You’ve ruined Christmas already” I sigh, putting a mug of milk into the microwave.

“That’s a shame” she says monotonously.

“Have you seen the living room!?” I gasp, thinking about the tree.

“Yeah I’ve just been in to put your presents in. Lucy, it’s mad” she squeals and I smile widely.

“When did you wake up?” I frown.

“I heard you walking out of the room and it woke me up” she shrugs.

“And you’re not angry?”

“I would be, but it’s Christmas so I’ll let you off” she winks, taking another sip of her... my hot chocolate. The microwave pings so I take my mug out of it and add in the chocolate. I swirl whipped cream over the top, add some marshmallows and put chocolate sprinkles on top.

“Ooo where’s my hot chocolate?” Lauren walks into the kitchen and sits on the bar stool next to Eleanor.

“Are you joking!?” I raise my voice and Eleanor bursts out laughing.

“I’m kidding babe, you know I only like a coffee first thing in the morning” she winks and I let out a sigh of relief. The thought of making another hot chocolate right now is killing me. Instead, I put on the kettle and leave it to boil. “When did you get these?” Lauren gasps, pointing out our pyjamas.

“We were wearing them last night” I raise my eyebrow.

“I don’t remember” she moans.

“We know” Eleanor mumbles, receiving a glare from her Mum.

“How are you even awake right now after last night?” I chuckle, eating a marshmallow off the top of my hot chocolate.

“I had loads of water before bed” she shrugs. “And it’s Christmas! Who has a lie in on Christmas?” she cheers, making me laugh.

“I wish my Mum was like this. Try getting her up now! She-“

“What are you talking about?” Mum interrupts, walking into the living room and sitting on a bar stool.

“What the f-“

“Oy!” she interrupts me... Again.

“Why is everyone awake so early!? It’s half six in the morning” I frown, checking my phone to make sure I’m correct.

“It’s Christmas, lighten up!” she says enthusiastically and I laugh lightly. “Ooo is that hot chocolate?” she widens her eyes, staring at my mug.

“Oh my god!” I shout in frustration making Eleanor and Lauren burst out laughing and my Mum to frown in confusion. I storm off into the lounge and sit on the sofa with my hot chocolate in my hands. I turn on the television and watch some Christmas themed shows with Eleanor, while Mum and Lauren just kind of sit there talking. My Christmas mornings are the best. Note the sarcasm...

“I like your pyjamas by the way” Mum coos. Me and Eleanor look at each other and roll our eyes in sync. My day starts to get a whole lot better when Matt and Dad come down the stairs and enter the living room. Me and Eleanor squeal and they just look at us like we’re freaks. We’re kind of used to it.

We jump off the sofa at the same time, turn off the telly and sit in front of the tree.

“Wait, let me get my camera!” Lauren gasps, running upstairs.

“You’re kidding me, right?” I say monotonously.

“She does it every year” Eleanor rolls her eyes.

“I know” I moan and she starts laughing. I can’t even count the amount of Christmases me and Eleanor have spent together. Both our families get along so well and me and Eleanor are both an only child so it just makes Christmas better if we’re together.

Lauren soon comes down the stairs with her big professional camera in one hand and a small video camera in the other. She hands the video camera to my Mum and we watch as she turns it on and hits the record button. We stare at her impatiently, waiting for her to give us the signal that we can open our presents. The second she puts up her thumb, Eleanor and I start to tear open our presents.

We’ve finally opened all of our presents and I’m so happy with everything I’ve got. The amount of times we’ve thanked our parents is uncountable. I’ve got so many clothes, bags, accessories, room decorations, electronics and films. I got everything I could ask for. I guess that’s a plus of being an only child.

And Eleanor’s finally got an iPhone.

Eleanor slides over her bag of presents to me and I do the same for her. I smile and open the bag, pulling out a pink jumper. I hold it up and see the front of it says ‘ON WEDNESDAY’S WE WEAR PINK’.

I laugh, “Aw thank you Eleanor!”

“Welcome” she shrugs and watches intently as I look through the rest of the bag. I pull out a beautiful black playsuit that has a tiny bit of glitter on it and the shorts look tight.

“I love it, oh my god” I gasp, looking at it with a massive grin. I pull out another thing from the bag and see it’s a phone back with a picture of me and her on it. It’s from the night before I left Cheshire when we had a leaving party with everyone from our school year at Eleanor’s house. I have my arm on her shoulder and I’m facing her, laughing, while she covers her face slightly with her hand, looking back at me. I’ve never seen this picture before but I absolutely fucking love it. “WE LOOK SO CUTE!” I squeal, putting it on the back of my phone immediately. Oh my god, I can’t explain how much I love it.

I open the final thing in the bag and see it’s a candy floss machine. I start laughing because she knows how much I like candy floss.

“I think you know why I got you that” she sighs, jokingly.

“The fair” I burst out laughing. I made her buy me loads of candy floss at the fair basically.

“And the cinema, and the carnival” she counts her fingers.

“Thank you so much” I squeal, giving her a hug. “Now open mine” I gesture to the bag and she starts laughing. I look at our parents and just see them gathered around us, ‘aww’ing at every present they see us opening. Parents...

She opens the box that has her Naked 1, 2 and 3 palettes in and immediately starts squealing.

“OH MY GOD I LOVE YOU!” she screams, throwing her arms around my neck. I literally ordered this last minute because there was a deal on them... But I won’t tell her that.

She has the same expression when she opens the dress and heels I got her. And the box of nail varnish.

“Thank you so much” she gives me another hug.

“You’re welcome” I nudge her.

We spend the next few hours eating breakfast, trying loads of new make-up on each other, getting changed into loads of different outfits, decorating my room slightly and setting up my new speakers around my room. Well, my Dad is setting up the speakers anyway.

“Dad, that’s not even” I look at the speaker in one corner of my room that looks a bit lower than the rest of them. He frowns at me slightly before raising the speaker slightly and drilling it into the wall. I now have a speaker in each corner of my room. Hell yeah! I have a feeling that they’ll regret getting me these.

“Ok, try them” he sighs in relief and climbs down from his ladder. I look down at Eleanor who’s sat in front of my mirror, applying her eye shadow from the pallets I got her. She looks back up and smiles mischievously. I go on my laptop and get up ‘All I Want for Christmas is you’ on YouTube and blast it out as loud as possible with my new speakers. The room is literally shaking and me and Eleanor just sit there laughing. We start dancing around the room like maniacs and when the song finishes, we look around the room and see that my Dad isn’t even there anymore. We burst out laughing and blast a few more songs for the hell of it. It’s Christmas so we won’t get told off.

I get the laser beams out of the box and plug them into my wall, creating a little disco in my room.

“HELL YEAH” Eleanor screams over the music and I just laugh, continuing to dance like Beyoncé although I probably look like an embarrassing Dad at a wedding.

“LUCY!!!” I hear someone behind me scream into my ear.

“Woah, why are you shouting?” I frown at my clearly annoyed Mum once I’ve turned down the music.

“I don’t care if it’s Christmas. If you continue to play that music that loud, I’m going to pull them out of the wall myself” she points her finger at me, trying to sound threatening but me and Eleanor just look at each other then back to Mum and burst out laughing. “At least play something good!” she moans.

“Like what? Justin Timberlake?” I huff, rolling my eyes, knowing that Mum has a huge thing for him.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t mind that” she shrugs. “But seriously, the house is shaking. I’m not even exaggerating. I don’t mind you blasting music but when my cup of tea doesn’t stay in one place on the table, that’s when it’s time to turn it down”

“Ooh, sorry”

“Hmm” she frowns, looking at us both then walking out of the room. As soon as she leaves, me and El pull a face at each other before blasting ‘Rock Your Body’ by Justin Timberlake.

We get tired by the end of the song and decide that we need a time out. I turn off the speaker and run downstairs to see what else I can do.

Time flies by way too quickly and before I know it, it’s already 1pm. I mean, I’ve been awake for seven hours already...

I grab my phone to text everyone to see what they’ve got and stuff. I immediately see that I have 5 missed calls from Conor so the first thing I do is call him. He answers on the second ring.

“Hey baby!” he cheers.

“Hey! You having a nice Christmas?” I ask, smiling like a mad woman.

“It’s going great, how’s yours?” he chuckles.

“Yeah, it’s amazing! What did you get then?”

“Fuck loads of Xbox games and shit”

“Your language is getting worse. And so is your social life by the sound of things” I sigh and he starts laughing.

“What did you get?”

“I got loads of clothes and make-up and I got laser beams and surround speakers and stuff” I giggle.

“Girls” he sighs and I can tell he rolled his eyes.

“You won't be saying that when you want to blast a bit of Drake” I roll my eyes and I can practically feel him smirking.

“LUCY!” Jack screams through the phone.

“Hey Jack! You having a good day?” I laugh.

“Yeah, it’s well sick. What about you?”

“It’s great” I giggle.

“Aw! You sound so cute!” he coos and I roll my eyes. “Are you coming over?”

“When?” I frown.

“Now, I guess”

“Um, yeah okay” I shrug.

“Good, see you in a bit!” he ends the call immediately. I shrug and run over to my Mum.

“I’m going to Jack’s. I’ll be an hour, tops!” I shout, putting on my parka jacket and trainers and shouting for Eleanor.

“What?” she snaps.

“You coming to Conor’s?”

“I’m in my pyjamas” she frowns and I shrug.

“It’s only Conor”

She shrugs, “Ok, one second”

She starts putting on her coat and shoes so I take the opportunity to get all of the Maynard’s presents.

“See ya, Mum!” I call.

“Wait!” she shouts and I moan. “I’ll drive you there, you can’t carry those big bags around to his house”

“Ok” I shrug.

“Lauren, you coming!?” Mum shouts.

“Hold on!” Lauren calls.

“Mother, this isn’t a family gathering” I moan.

“You just called me mother. What the hell is wrong with you?” she frowns, just as Lauren comes through the room.

“Let’s go” she smiles and we all walk out to Mums car. I put my bags into the boot and we all drive to Conor’s.