Chapter 57

Friday finally comes and the whole day in school, the girls and I haven’t stopped talking about tonight. I literally can’t wait.

As soon as I get home from school, I get in the shower and wash my hair with my favourite conditioner. It makes my hair smell like strawberries.

I just put my hair in a messy bun before redoing my make-up lightly and packing my bag for the night. I change into my black disco pants and a plain white oversized tee which I tuck in, and when I’m ready, I go on my laptop for a bit to pass time until it gets to 5pm.

I take the 10 minute walk to Leila’s house, and when I get there, she takes me straight in the living room where I see blankets everywhere, a laptop, loads of make-up and nail varnishes, facial stuff, DVD’s, a camera... Literally everything.

“Oh my god” I gasp, scanning my eyes across the cluttered room.

“I set it up, do you like it?” she giggles.

“Leila, it’s a tip!”

“So? We have everything we need in here. And we’re home alone for the night,” she raises her eyebrows, smirking. “Lucy, we can literally do what the fuck we want. We’ll set the room out better when they all get here. You’ll love it” she winks, nudging me slightly.

“Ok, but I’m not helping clean anything up. The whole house is in this room” I laugh, stepping over the piled up duvets to find a sofa.

“There’s only one thing we don’t have...” she trails off.

“What?”

“Sweets and alcohol” she starts thinking.

I moan, “Can we not drink tonight?”

“I was thinking the same to be honest” she laughs. “We’ll just have loads of energy drinks yeah?”

“Yep!” I say, popping the ‘p’.

“We’ll go to the shop when they get here. They’re never on time” she rolls her eyes and I start laughing.

Once everyone is here, we instantly grab the money that Leila’s Mum left for us and go to the shop. We spend at least £30 on junk food and about £10 on energy drinks.

We get back to Leila’s house and instantly start playing music and start dancing, singing and jumping around her living room. We put mattresses on the walls and start bouncing off them which is probably the funniest thing I’ve ever experienced.

“Liv, you never straighten your hair” Lois says while playing with Olivia’s hair.

“I hate it straightened” Liv scrunches up her nose.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen it straight in my life” Lois laughs. “Can we do it!?” she gasps.

“What? Straighten it?”

“Yeah!”

Olivia starts moaning, “Fine”

Everyone starts cheering, making me laugh. I’ve never seen her with straight hair so this should be interesting. I can’t believe these girls have known her for goodness knows how long and they’ve never seen her with straight hair...

Leila gets out her hair straighteners and sit’s Liv in front of the mirror. Lois sections her hair and carefully straightens it.

“Oh my god you look so different!” I gasp at the finishing product. She looks stunning but so different!

“It’s so nice!” Leila compliments. I’m used to seeing Olivia with blonde ringlets but her hair is now pin straight and looks much darker than usual.

“You should have it like this for school!” Charlotte nods but Liv shakes her head.

“I hate it” she laughs. After persuading her to come into school one time with her hair straight for about five minutes, she finally agrees to do it and we instantly drop the conversation.

“Lucy, you should do something with your hair” Charlotte says, half way through plaiting it.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugs “dye it”

“I want ombre hair” I tell them.

“You’d well suit it!” Lois gasps.

“Thanks,” I laugh “but Mum won’t take me to the hair dressers” I roll my eyes.

“Oh my god” Leila gasps.

“What?” my eyes light up.

“We should do it for you!”

“No way! I’d end up going ginger” I shake my head.

“No you wouldn’t! We dyed Lois’s hair blonder in summer and she’s alright” she shrugs.

“I reckon we could actually do it” Lois laughs. “You’ll be alright. Leila’s done it loads”

“I don’t know” I frown. I would let her but I’m scared of how it’ll turn out.

“My Mum has bleach upstairs. She always dyes her hair” Leila shrugs. “How about we do it for you and see how it goes. If it fails, we’ll pay for you to get it stripped tomorrow?”

Everyone looks at me with hopeful eyes. I’m shitting myself right now but I’ve wanted to ombre my hair for so long and now I have the opportunity, I’m not turning it down.

I sigh, “Fine”

“Serious!?” Leila gasps and I nod. “OH MY GOD! Let me get the bleach!” she squeals, running off upstairs. Those words terrify me.

I sit in the kitchen with a towel wrapped around my shoulders while Leila scrunches bleach at the ends of my hair. I’m shaking, praying that it’ll go well. I swear to god, if I turn ginger or green or something, I am going to kill them.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” I ask for probably the 5th time in the past 15 minutes.

“Relax! I’ve done it loads of times before” she shrugs. I know that’s probably the biggest lie she’s ever told but I’m going to let it go seeing as I’m trying to convince myself everything’s going to be ok and I won’t turn out with a weird hair colour or with no hair at all. “Right, I’m done”

“Serious?”

“Well, you need to wait half an hour. Then I’ll wash it off and then it’ll be done” she nods and I start moaning. “Stop moaning, it’ll be worth the wait.”

“It better be” I warn her.

“Shall we watch Elf while we wait?” Charlotte suggests and before she gets a reply, we all run into the living room and jump on the massive pile of quilts on the floor. You can’t even see the floor, it’s just a massive duvet thing.

I decide to put a timer on my phone for my hair because everyone’s getting too carried away with Elf to even remember I have bleach on my hair. My Mum will probably kill me when she sees it but I’ve been asking for ages so she’ll have to put up with it. I can’t take it back now...

My loud timer starts to ring on my phone and everyone’s heads shoot over to me.

“Time to wash it off!” I squeal and they start laughing.

We go up to the bathroom and Lois starts to wash out the dye. I’m leaning over the bath tub while she does it which is literally killing my neck. I’m in so much pain.

“I think it’s done now” Lois nods after she’s washed and conditioned it.

“You don’t seem to sure” I reply.

“Fucking hell Lucy” she laughs, “Do you think it’s done?” she asks everyone.

“Yep” everyone says in sync.

“Just checking!” I sigh and she starts laughing.

“Right, you’re not allowed to look in the mirror ok?” Olivia demands.

“Why? Has it gone wrong!?” I gasp in horror. I swear to god if they’ve-

“Lucy, it looks great!” Leila reassures me. “We just want it to be a surprise”

“Ok” I nod. They cover up almost every mirror in the house and when they’re done, I make my way into the living room. I sit in front of the TV and continue to watch the remainder of Elf while the girls sort out my hair.

I strain my ears over the loud hair dryer and when it stops, my whole body relaxes. They put a few products on my hair to make it look ‘extra perfect’. Leila’s words...

They then straighten it but mess it up slightly.

“Ok you can look now!” Olivia smiles widely.

“I’m scared” I half smile.

“You’ll love it Lucy!” she reassures me. I walk over to the mirror with Leila’s hands over my eyes and when she removes them, I’m literally speechless.

“Oh my god” I gasp. “I fucking love it!”

“TOLD YOU!” Leila laughs.

“Thank you so much!” I squeal and hug them all. I absolutely love it. The ombre comes up just below my shoulders and what I love most about it is that it’s not too perfect. The ombre isn’t just in a simple line. It has different lengths which looks absolutely amazing. This has probably ruined my hair so much but I absolutely love it. The first thing we do is put a picture on Instagram...

The rest of the night is spent watching Christmas films, doing each other’s make-up and now we’re about to do a face mask because Leila says she never uses them.

I obviously choose the pink one, Leila and Charlotte have white, and Liv and Lois wear the chocolate one which I can’t stop laughing at. They look hilarious.

We even go the extra mile by putting cucumbers on our eyes and sitting in complete silence with only a quiet bit of Christmas music playing in the background. The only light in the room is from the muted TV behind our little beds we set up which we’re lying on in our pyjamas. It’s just a duvet really but it’s so comfy.

“Guys, we haven’t decorated yet” Leila says in a monotone voice, not moving her mouth.

“We’ll do it later” someone sighs. I don’t recognise their voice because they’re not moving their mouth. If they do, the mask will just crack...

I start laughing at the serious silence and after a while, Lois starts joining in. It kind of has a domino effect because eventually, the whole room is in tears of laughter and my whole face mask has cracked. I have tears streaming down my face. I just wish I could explain what I’m laughing at...

“Why are we laughing!?” Olivia breathes.

“I don’t know!” I cry. When we finally calm down after about 15 minutes of trying, we all take off our masks and start doing each other’s nails, Christmas themed of course.

“Why are we doing this when it’s only like, mid November?” I ask.

“I don’t know, get’s us into the Christmas spirit” Leila jokes but no one laughs. It’s just silent until Lois bursts out laughing, setting everyone off again. I’ve worked out that it’s those energy drinks. I’ve had at least 5 and I think they’re definitely more fun than alcohol.

“Guys, we’re doing this more often” Olivia laughs and we all agree.

We end up getting the Christmas tree every single piece of decoration she has in the house. We all decorate the tree and when it’s finished, Charlotte teaches us all how to make paper snowflakes which we just plot randomly around the house. The whole house looks amazing!

We turn out the lights and just gawp at all the ‘illuminations’ we spent hours doing.

“I’m proud” I nod, smiling at everything.

“Same” everyone agrees.

We take billions of pictures with Leila’s camera and make a few videos pretending to be YouTuber’s. I know we’re all 15 but we like to pretend we’re 7.