Straighter than Parallel Parking

≈ t w e n t y - f o u r ≈

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{ Chapter Twenty-Four: For Everyone Should Hold the Pen to Their Own Story } 

JAMES NOW HAS BLOND AND PINK HAIR. Although many are going to reach out with the most blatant curiosity — and for all good reason, really — he'd like to erase the course of events from his mind instead. 

When Janice first brought up the gigantic beauty salon (James has a sister, so he knew of this horror first hand), her brothers had choked on their laughter, clearly underestimating how diabolical their sister was. But when Janice brought up something about "squirrels and nuts from 2007", the boys' looks shrivelled up and dried.

"That good for nothing witch," mumbles Karlo, his face still throbbing from the waxing of his side burns. "Wait until I catch her asleep. Where's the shovel in the shed when you need it?"

"You mean good for nothing snitch," murmurs Alejandro angrily (though he secretly admires himself in the mirror over the new ear piercing he got on his left ear). "Last time we include her in a prank with her around."

"James," Aàron says, his eyes still tearing from the eyebrow threading. "You should have escaped when you had the chance." 

"All she has on me is that I promised to bond with you guys. 'Sides, my hair looks great." James, still freaking out about how gorgeous the pink looks in his hair, can't take the suspense any longer. "But what did you guys even do?" 

After spending an excruciatingly lengthy time having mutual emotional blackmail (they almost threaded off James's peach fuzz!), the quartet had grown a respect for each other.

Having your nails filed does to most.

Janice pipes in, currently retouching the auburn in her hair. Her sadistic side gloats in their makeovers. "I'll take over. So you see, on November some-important-number, 2007—"

"Dear, could you turn your head?" the salon lady interrupts.

After readjusting her body, she starts again. "Where was I?"

"Cheesy backstory to an epic future downfall, hon," the lady helpfully chirps.

"Right," Janice remembers, "Anyways, it's winter of 2007. The power's off, because some crappy tree fell onto our power line, the heating barely worked even with the backup generator, and if that isn't bad enough, a couple of our relatives stayed over. Swear the only air you could breathe was body odour, natural unusable gas and a whole lot of noise."

"They really put the definition of diablo in the Diablo line," Aàron interjects the detail.

Janice nods wholeheartedly, immersing herself in her words. "Exactly. So we're all freezing our asses off, and, unlike Olaf, warm hugs aren't cutting it out for any of us because we'd rather go all gigantic snow monster. The parents are hardly ever in the room, doing whatever adults do outside. Maybe get wood for the fire place, I don't really remember since I mostly slept the entire time. 

"The boys — lucky me, most of my cousins are male, too — were bored. They didn't have a playstation to kill each other with, so they thought of doing something even more unnecessary and stupid. "

"Like trying to compliment you, Jan?" Alejandro snickers, yelping when Janice pulls his still ripe ear. "Okay, okay, ouch! Cut to the chase already. What she's leading up to is that we decided to pull a prank to kill our time."