Huntington Avenue | ✓ [PV REWRITE]

Part II: Chapter 25

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Chapter 25 | ❝ What's that supposed to mean? ❞

Tuesday, December 25th, 2018 - 1:51 p.m.

❝HEY, ZACH! PASS me another gingerbread cookie, will you?"

"A please would be satisfactory," Zach joked from the kitchen. Needless to say, he picked up not one, but two gingerbread cookies on his way back to the living room.

Kelsey took one of the cookies from his outstretched grasp. "Thanks," she replied with a smile and then took a bite out of the cookie. The sweetness and warmth of the iced dessert filled her tastebuds with nothing but joy.

"I wonder where everyone else is," Zach commented as he sat down next to Kelsey on the couch. "The party was supposed to start at one thirty."

"Phoebe and Autumn are getting their gifts together, but I have no clue where Harper, Mason, and August are," she stated with a shrug. Her main focus was the delicious cookie that was mysteriously disappearing quicker than it came into existence.

It was Zach's turn to shrug as he picked up the remote off the table with his free hand and resumed the Christmas special of which they were watching. "I don't know, but more cookies and Christmas movies for us," he determined with a smile.

"If you think about it, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is a bit of a dark storyline," Kelsey told him while the movie in question played.

"Really?" Zach asked her in between two bites of a gingerbread cookie. "How so?"

"Well, Rudolph is born with a red nose, which his parents automatically try to hide. Then, when his parents make him hide his uniqueness from his peers, the other reindeer his age find out and bully him for being different. Then, Rudolph meets another misfit who wants a successful career in dentistry that everyone is shunning him for for absolutely no reason and the two run away together with a miner obsessed with gold to an island with a bunch of talking toys and a lion with wings. Then, when Rudolph returns and he's all grown up, everyone tries to cover up their mistakes and use him for profit."

When Zach's eyes blinked in disgusted bewilderment in her direction, Kelsey burst out into a fit of laughter. "Your face!" she cried out in pure entertainment.

"Wow...that's just...wow," Zach exhaled, processing exactly what had just been said to him. "You're not wrong, though."

"Am I right?" Kelsey agreed with a bit of a giggle under her breath.

Zach was unable to formulate a response in time due to a pair of small footsteps racing down the stairs. "You guys are watching Rudolph without me?!" Hayleigh wailed in anguish.

"We just put it on while waiting for our friends to come over," Zach explained. "You can come watch if you'd like."

"Mom and Dad told me to stay upstairs and out of your way like they are, but I thought that was boring, so here I am!" Hayleigh plopped down on the couch between her brother and Kelsey.