Once upon a story

Chapter Twelve

My eyes locked with the forest and I stayed there fascinated by how the trees danced in the breeze and the animals that lives among them seemed to be so perfectly balanced in nature. The thoughts of wild animals brought my investigation back to the front of my mind; I jumped from the window and pulled the curtains shut sharply. I turned around and switched on the plain light-switch as a knock sounded at the door. I slowly pulled it open and came face to face with a huge roll of carpet. Quickly I side stepped out of the way as a group of people trundled into my room lead by a very smug looking Toff.

“What’s going on?” I ask trying to not sound hysterical “Toff! What is happening right now?”

“Ok, that great everyone. Thank you. I’ll call you back if needed.” Toff shouts and is replied with a collection of grunts and ‘good luck’ wishes. Once there is only the two of us left in the room I face him with my hands firmly on my hips.

“Care to explain?” I ask raising one eyebrow

“Well” he begins with a smile “as you may be staying here for a while I figured we might as well decorate your room.”

“And when my room stinks of paint, where can I sleep then?” I ask turning away from him and looking through the items that were carried in.

“Oh, right, yeah” he replies and I could imagine him nervously scratching his neck as he thinks of an answer,

“Look, don’t worry. It will be fun!” I say with a smile. I am unable to tell him all of the reasons why it is a very bad idea that swirled around my head. The first step was covering all of the furniture in painting sheets and pulling them from against the walls. I decided to keep the ceiling and three of the walls the plain off white colour and just do a design on the far wall opposite the window that has my bed headboard against. One thing I have always wanted is to have a red, white and blue themed room and it seems that for the first time I really can. The first step was to measure the wall out into sections, what I wanted was to have the wall stripped in those three colours. One large blue, a thin white, a large red, a thin white, a large blue, a thin white etc. this meant that we stuck masking tape to where the white stripes would be and leaved the blue and red clear to be sprayed after. I was surprised to see what a time consuming task this was due to the fact that I had to redo most things Toff did as he was, and I say this in the nicest way, completely useless. Finally we were ready to spray the paint onto the walls, each of us had changed into different clothes or at least we were both dresses in Toffs working clothes. I kept my shorts on and wore a t-shirt of his over the top as I had no clothes let alone ones that I could paint in. With our full bottles of paint and masks covering our faces we slowly worked our way across the wall. Once we were done I was desperate to peal of the tape but the paint could run if we did so I left it and busied myself with the next task. Toff had found me a couple of book selves that would look good up on the wall across from the window so the whole thing was more equal and generally less bare. These we also sprayed with paint, one red and one blue, and drilled the holes in the wall ready to hang them up later. It was at this point that Toff claimed he couldn’t breathe and both made me open my window and dragged me downstairs to get a drink.

The kitchen was much more crowded this time and I found myself hiding behind Toff and cursing my horrid appearance. It seemed that everyone staying in this place was beautiful and toned and tanned and just generally perfect and then there was me with my shower bed hair, covered in paint, dirt and blood wearing a huge men’s t-shirt and cowering behind someone I barely know. I was lucky in that Toff never strayed from my side as if he could feel my unease and nervousness. He poured us both a glass of vibrant orange coloured juice and grinned while handing me the cool liquid.