England's Finest Rebel

Chapter 23

I woke up with a groan and a banging headache, and from the sounds of it, everyone else was in a similar state to myself.

“I say, we all go back to sleep, but in beds, and get up to party again” Carter whispered, and that was met by groans of approval. I didn’t understand what he meant by ‘in beds’ but I soon understood him when I sat up and saw I was on a sofa and some people were on the floor.

“Guys, before you go, I’ve got some Advil” Chrissy whispered, so like zombies, we all moved, or rolled in Carter’s case over to where she was, and grabbed our pills. Swallowing them dry, I went into the other suite with Jess and we both crashed onto plush single beds, drifting into the happy, painless world of sleep.

The next time I woke up, it was dark, and my hangover was completely gone.

“Guys!” I yelled “Get up! It’s time to party” I finished. Throughout the top floor the sounds of people getting up could be heard all around. Once everyone was up we sort of congregated in the biggest suites living area.

“Well, let’s start and get ready then!” Jack mumbled; clearly he wasn’t used to night after night of partying. We wandered our separate ways and began to shower and get ready. This evening I was dressed in a short, puffy, sweet-heart neckline red dress with knee high boots. The other girls were in similar dresses, except in different lengths and colours; clearly the dress code had been planned way before we found out we were going to Vegas.

“Maybe we should go easy on the drink tonight” Parker began. “I don’t mean to be a party pooper, but tomorrow we do have to drive back home” he reasoned, but Jess had a better idea.

“Why don’t we party just as hard tonight until the early hours of Sunday morning, sleep through Sunday, party a little bit but don’t drink on Sunday night and then drive back through the night to get home on Monday morning?” she asked. It seemed like a good idea, if we did things Jess’s way, we’d have more time here and we’d be able to party more. I nodded in agreement and was soon followed by the rest of the crew. It was settled then, we’d drive back through the night.

We left the top floor of the hard rock hotel just as there was an announcement over the speakers “the flying Elvis’ will be landing in five minutes”

“Man, we have got to see this.” Jack laughed out. “I mean, flying old blokes, dressed as Elvis, it’s going to be awesome!” he continued.

“Yeah, we have to see this, let’s go” Alexis agreed, so we all followed them outside into the warm Californian air where we were met by a cordoned off area for the ‘flying Elvis’s’ to land so we hurried over to get a good spot. We were all lined up against the railing and Chrissy had her camera out, taking pictures of us all laughing and joking around.

“There they are!” someone near us shouted, immediately we all craned our necks to see the first Elvis falling from the sky, shortly followed by more and more. I tried to count them all, but there were too many. Each Elvis had a light up suit on, and they formed a star shape in the sky.

It was a spectacle to see, it was stunning. They looked like angels falling from the midnight sky. Their parachutes were deployed and there freefalling slowed down to a gentle landing. We saw them all land, one by one dropping down from the sky onto the crash mats strategically placed around the cordoned off area.

“Can we go play poker now?” Carter whined once they’d all landed.

“Sure” and so off we went, back into the casino.

“We should stay together tonight” Jack suggested, so that’s what we did; played poker against each other and drank champagne.

I won the poker, all eight games we played and I still refused to tell the crew my secret.

“To the club!” I yelled after handing all of the chips back over to the croupier. We traipsed off drunkenly into the night club underneath the hotel where we were met by the stench of sweat and alcohol; just how a club should be. As soon as we had been to the bar, I left with the girls to the dance floor where we partied the night away. After a while the guys joined us at the middle of the floor where we were surrounded by other people dancing and we continued to drink and dance.

We didn’t play any drinking games, but one of the boys had got the barmen to keep bringing us cocktails and beers so our once tasteful dancing soon turned into slut drops and falling over each other which the guys found hilarious. The tables soon turned though as they began to twerk to one of Miley’s dance anthems, and to be honest their twerking was worse than our falling over each other.

We were nowhere near as drunk as we were last night, but we still found it difficult to walk ourselves back to the suites without falling.

Crashing onto the bed with my makeup and dress still on I drifted off into sleep.

We were in the car, driving along the road. I was fourteen and had long blonde hair that sat on my ribcage, in fact I was examining it right now whilst my parents were congratulating me on the dance competition I’d just won. I wasn’t listening to them though, I was hoping my crush, Marco, would see the video I was about to post on Facebook.

“Charlotte, listen to us please!” my mother scolded and turned around, she wasn’t driving, so it was fine for her be turning around. I still didn’t listen to her though, I was desperately trying to see if Marco was online and had liked the video yet.

“Charlotte!” my father exclaimed, still I paid them no attention, I was reading the comments from all of my friends, I was popular at school and I knew it. I was pretty much the queen bee.

My father’s torso twisted as he leant over to snatch my phone from me, but I quickly pulled it away from his grasp, smirking triumphantly. I felt the car swerve on the road; I didn’t look up from my phone though. And then suddenly there was a burst of blinding light, and a loud noise. My vision clouded over with black spots and I heard my mother screaming.

I woke up with a sharp breath. ‘It’s okay Charlie, just a dream’ I told myself over and over. But I knew it wasn’t, the accident had happened and it haunted me to this day.