Power of the 8 Elements

Chapter Forty Nine

Celeste POV:

Several weeks and months passed after Terry and Terri's parents' funeral and my mother's wedding finally came. I guess you could say that I wasn't as happy as I should've been. More attention was being drawn from me and put into the wedding and everyone else. I was proud of my mother. My crazy abusive father—whom I have no memory of—was out of my life for good. But I wished that someone would talk about something other than the wedding. A part of me felt that it was rude to have a wedding after the funeral, but the two of them seemed to be fine with it.

My mom had gone through a lot of trouble. Ending school early and giving everyone no homework in the last couple of weeks. And when she did that, everyone was thanking her instead of me. Did Mom forget that she wouldn't be marrying Proteus if I hadn't given her the idea of dating a dark one! I wasn't angry with Proteus. I couldn't be angry with Proteus.

Mom bought me, Rune, and my older sister Silver these silver bridesmaid dresses. Rune was going to be the flower girl, and she had taken her job all too seriously.

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Today was the day of the wedding, and Mom wanted everything to be perfect. Literally everything. She wanted the flowers that Rune tossed down the aisle to be authentic, perfect, and have no signs of wilt on them whatsoever. She wanted them to be pink and purple and if they had any signs of other colors she'd toss them in the trash. She had Rune, Silver, and I go out every day, pick flowers, return home, and then sort the dang things for freaking hours while she tried on wedding dresses and decided which colors to pick for a theme.

She had asked for the best hair stylists and makeup artists. And she was paying them, like, two thousand dollars. Terry agreed to do my makeup, and she said she was really good at it. Which she was, since she did her makeup all the time. It seemed I'd forgotten how to put on my own makeup since I couldn't even put on mascara without messing up. The things that fighting crime does to you!

"Sweetheart, you look so good in your dress," Mom said, looking at me. It took her a while to realize that the dress I was wearing was not the dress she'd bought.

And I had a perfect reason for not wearing the previous dress. It was an A-line dress with a shade of pink that was the color of my hair. I chose not to wear it because I wanted a dress that had colors that were different from my hair.

"Uh, Cel, honey, that's not the dress your sisters are wearing," I said.

"I know," I said.

Rune was standing next to me and putting on a fuzzy, clean, white sweater.

"Well, don't you think it's nice?"

She looked around at the dark purple dress that blended into a magenta at the ends.

"It's absolutely lovely. I really like it, but it's not the dress I bought. How much did it cost?"

"One thousand, nine hundred, ninety-nine dollars," Rune said, "I saw it on the price tag in the trash."

My mom furrowed her brow and faced me angrily, "$1,999? Are you insane?!"

"Mom, how is this amount of money insane when you're paying those hairdressers two thousand dollars just to put your hair in a bun?!"

One of the hairstylists entered the room holding bobby pens and some hair oil.

"Sorry," I said, "But it's true!"

She nodded like she understood and then left.

"When you get married, you'll understand!"

"Exactly, when I get married I'm going to make my children spend a trillion hours sorting azalea from wisteria!"