Settling Slowly

Chapter 17 - Zoey, this is not a good idea

That weekend Mum and Dad went on a romantic week away as it was their anniversary. I was wondering why they were celebrating it since their wedding was around the corner, but whatever. They took Archie to one of our relatives houses meaning that Dan and I had the house to ourselves for a whole week. School being in the way was a little annoying, but that didn't mean we couldn't invite friends over.

As soon as they left on the Friday evening Lexie and Sergey, Scott, Evan and Luke arrived. Half hour later Brandon and Liam turned up and just after them Sergey came though the back door saying that Grigory wasn't able to make it as he was behind with marking and lesson planning.

"Food's up!" Dan called from the kitchen.

"What is it?" Luke asked.

"Lasagne, pizza, Chinese nibbles, ribs, onion rings, chips, pasta –"

"Extra sauce for Zoey," Dan interrupted me as we all walked into the kitchen and handed me the pan he'd made cheese sauce in.

I ginned and began eating what was still in there with the wooden spoon he'd made it with. "Thanks man. Oooh, there's noodles as well!"

Thus began the mad dash of getting food. Brandon hadn't bothered to get up from his seat in the lounge because it wasn't like he could carry a plate and use crutches so Scott piled his plate high with a bit of everything. Dan, Liam and I balanced our plates on plaster casts and carefully filled them up. When we got back into the lounge Lexie sat on Sergey's knee on the sofa next to Brandon, I sat on Dan who put his plate on the arm of the sofa and I used a TV table, Evan and Scott squashed in together in the chair and Luke and Liam sat on bean bags by our feet.

You've Been Framed! was on the TV. It was watched in anything but silence as we laughed at pretty much everything we saw even though we'd all seen some of the clips of people falling down the stairs or failing at BMX stunts before.

"Zoey!" Dan suddenly exclaimed and whacked my arm. "It's our clip!"

I looked up from the crispy top sheet of lasagne I was trying to cut with my fork. Dan was rewinding the TV so that we could watch the glory of us scaring the crap out of Dad from beginning to end, uninterrupted.

It was glorious.

Before Christmas, Dan had found an old doll of mine and turned it into a disembowelled nightmare monster complete with terrifying face. He'd put water on the eyes and put it in the freezer. The first person who'd found it was me, though I hadn't been filmed whilst crapping myself and screaming like a little girl. We had however, put the doll back in the freezer and made Dad go in there to see what he was going to do for dinner all whilst Lexie was filming it.

Quite predictably he'd jumped back three feet, screamed like a little girl and swore until he was bluer than a tropical ocean. I'd turned it into a video which I put on my public Facebook wall and had Tweeted it and linked it to Tumblr. It had gone viral after about a month and now it was on TV.

Even though we'd all seen the video numerous times since the incident we all burst into fits of laughter and couldn't so much as breathe for five minutes. I ignored my phone which was ringing with a text until I could breathe properly which took about ten minutes.

The Video is on YBF!
Thanks kids! -_-

I burst out laughing again and showed my phone to Dan.

I thought it was supposed

to be a romantic get away.

Why are you watching YBF?

We only just got here.

It's on in the lobby.

"Oh man!" I grinned. "It's on in the hotel lobby!"