The World According to Lily: Lily's Not-So-Happy New Year (#1)

Chapter 1: Lily's Lousy Day

Chapter 1: Lily's Lousy Day

Monday, 11th January

7:30 AM

Picture the scene. You're lying in bed, barely awake, wrapped up in your soft blanket staring out your bedroom window. It's lashing raining and the sky is so pitch-black you'd think it was still half three in the morning. You see a little robin perched on a branch of a tree minding its own business and then whoosh! It suddenly gets blown away by a strong gust of howling wind. It probably should've had its umbrella up. You'd rather listen to 'Friday' repeatedly for twenty hours than go into the not-so-great outdoors. But you have to (go outside, I mean, certainly not listen to that load of noise for a whole twenty hours), because, very shortly, you'll be on your chilly and tiring trek to the place where you spend six years of your existence "learning" stuff that won't count for crap later in life; school.

         Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Come on, admit it, you've experienced it at some point in your life; the Christmas Break ends for yet another year and you've got to haul your bum out of bed for the first school day of the New Year. Unless you are home-schooled, of course, then you'd only have to hop down the stairs and you’re already in school, like the Amish. They don't have to go out in unbearably cold conditions simply to get an education. The lucky wagons...

         I turned over and checked my alarm clock. I had another twenty precious minutes of sleep to kill. At least there's one thing about today I can appreciate...

There we were, me and him, sitting in the front seats of the car watching the sun set for another day. The sky was bright orange blending into magenta, then red, then dark blue. I rested my head on his shoulder as he put his arm around me. It was probably one of the best moments of my life, up there with when my entire family went to Disneyland Paris when I was ten and watched the fireworks above Sleeping Beauty's castle. It felt like it was just the two of us in the world. "It's beautiful" I say softly. "Nowhere near as beautiful as you are" he replied. His English accent made a herd of butterflies stampede through my tummy. I looked into his dazzling green eyes. He slowly closed them as he leaned in closer, and closer, and closer...

8:30 AM

“Lily!” Nanny yelled up the stairs. Her voice can be surprisingly thunderous at times. "Will you ever get up for feck's sake! 'Tis half past fecking eight!" I jumped. I wasn't watching the sunset with Mr. Drop-Dead-Gorgeous. Nor was I about to lock lips with him (sob!). Instead, I had drifted off on a cloud into a complete fantasy and had woken up to hear my grandmother cursing so much she'd give Eminem a run for his money. And I had only fifteen minutes to get ready for... shudder... school. I would be mauled if I show up late. And it was still freezing cold. And raining. I might have had to hang myself. I leaped out of bed and into the bathroom. I cleaned my face in freezing cold water (the central heating where I live is useless, by the way) and threw my uniform on. It wasn't till I looked into the mirror I realised that there was a huge poo stain on my St. Brendan's jumper. Biscuit, my pet rat... er, I mean, dog... had been doing his business in my room. For the fifty trillionth time. I might as well be living in a pig's sty. I looked at my watch. I was due to leave for Eejit Headquarters in five minutes. Make that four. Oh God. I would be late if I didn't hurry up and probably run the risk of decapitation. Oh Goddy God God. And I would have to face Ian McCormick, the most beautiful boy in the universe (next to Harry Styles), looking like a tomato in a school uniform. Oh God Goddity God God God. I threw off my poo-stained jumper and legged it down the stairs to the kitchen. I saw Nanny putting a cute woolly hat on Ryan, my eight-year-old brother, who had had his breakfast and all, ready to go. Dad was slipping his coat on, ready to go to work in the local pet shop. Mam had already left for work at twenty to eight. She's a secretary at LarchwoodSecondary School for Girls, which is more like a borstal than a school, if you ask me. I heard a girl who goes there got suspended for four days for shifting a fella from St. Joseph's outside the school gates. If that happened outside St. Brendan's, the teachers would probably wolf whistle and jeer. Trust me. "Lily, would you look at the fecking time!" Nanny said, pointing to the clock. "You have to leave in three minutes and you haven't even had your breakfast! Where's you jumper?"