Double Back - Mistwater Chronicles #1

Chapter Thirty-Six

Hey guys!! Hope you enjoyed your Valentine's Day xoxo. I had off Presidents' Day on Monday and then Tuesday we had a snow day. I meant to update yesterday but honestly I just forgot to do it, so I decided I'd post now because tomorrow I am SUPER busy. Ack.

Also: Wattpad is changing their ratings from PG/PG-13/R to just everyone can read them and Mature (17+). I decided to mark this story as mature, due to the fact that they curse a decent amount and there is some abuse in this story. It's not as bad as other stories may be, but there are definitely some darker themes underlying here.

Btw Tessa's dress is ^ or to the side.

thanks!

xoxo,

morgan

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And suddenly, it is Christmas.

The six days before the day flew by, mostly with me doing hurried shopping for gifts. I got Amber some really nice drawing pencils for her sketching - she loves to draw outside of work - and wrapped them while she was at work and hid them behind the bookshelf.

Tatiana was easy. I got her a lot of nail polish, as she loved painting her nails, and also a surprise. I promised her I'd come see her for Christmas and try and see if I could get the nurses to let her off for good behavior and to spend New Year's with me and my friends. And lucky for her, they agreed. I had a sparkly purple gift bag for her with the nail polish and an Amber-approved outfit out of her clothes for Tatiana - the two had the same body type, both tall and willowy - for her to borrow for the night.

But I didn't really know what to get for Zack. He said he would be happy with anything when we talked on the phone this week, but I feel like anything is too vague. When we had ice cream last week he said new running shoes would be fine, but I don't know what size shoe he is. And he already has a lot of Broncos stuff.

However the one thing I never run out of is pictures. But that still feels too impersonal, too...wrong. It's just not the right thing for me to get him.

But since I was running out of time, I had to settle for that. He told me more specifically that he wanted something of me, so Amber and I went out to the park down the street from her apartment and took some. I had to spend a good half hour explaining how to use the camera, but once she figured it out, she got a good one of me laughing hard at something she'd said to distract me.

You're too stiff, she'd said. Jesus Christ, Tess, loosen up. And so I had, when she'd started talking about this one time her and her brother went to a party and had to run from the cops and Ollie had broken his ankle from falling down the hill. Because I was ten times more comfortable behind the camera than I was in front of it, but we'd made it work.

So I took that picture, developed it, and framed it and wrapped it. That I just left on the kitchen table, since Amber already knew what it was.

But anyways, it's six o'clock and Zack told me to try and get there by seven so I'm in the middle of picking out what I want to wear when Amber starts asking me about her gift.

"Oh my god, fine," I say, huffing as I throw the two tops I'm deliberating between down on the bed. Walking into the living room, I grab her gift from behind the bookshelf and walk back into the bedroom to see her bouncing excitedly on thebed. "Merry Christmas, you little shit."

"Aw, thanks," she replies, and then whips out a gift wrapped in gold paper and almost chucks it at me. "Oh my god, these are nice pencils, Isa. Thank you so much!"