Castle High

27. Noēl - I

“Jake, go bring the new table-spread.”

His dad’s voice reverberated from the dining table behind his seat in the living room. He and Dad had awoken at dawn to commence preparations for Christmas dinner. They wouldn’t have made it much of a big deal, if his mother and his aunt weren’t visiting alongside with his favorite cousin. He had been enthusiastic with the preparations all week, but it would seem that the little amount of sleep he had been getting for the past two days ranging from – three to four hours were beginning to take a toll on his sanity.

Leaping up from the sofa, and shoving his Samsung S6 aside – he made a quick dash to the kitchen to follow his dad’s orders. But due to the number of thoughts traversing his mind, he ended up doing something his dad loathed fervently.

Lost in thought, he halted in the center of the kitchen wondering what his dad’s order had to do with his present location. Quickly, he ran back to the dining table and enquired about his pending order.

“Dad, uhm. Where are the table-spreads – you said I should bring?”

His dad was currently on the phone, slandering the customer care service of the outlet –they had ordered Chicken from, asked for a brief pause on the phone before flashing a demeaning glare down at him.

“What do you mean you don’t know where they are! Didn’t I hand it over to you in the evening, yesterday after we returned from the mall?”

Oh!

Jake darted towards the stair-case instantly, and tramped up the stairs swiftly – heading for his room.  After the passing of a brief moment, he was back downstairs with the table-sheets. He stood up straight in front of his dad – who was still on the phone, and held it out to him.

“Oh, so I should lay the table-spread for you also. I didn’t know your job this Christmas was to sit-back and enjoy my services.” Rob’s reply came out in a hoarse and dragged pitch which jolted Jake into a few backwards strides before spinning around and following his dad’s incentive. He wondered why he was being so grouchy on Christmas morning. He didn’t blame him anyway, all over the world – women and moms were the ones who undertook the responsibilities he was taking on, that fact jumbled up with his fatherly responsibilities also.

It was capable of initiating insanity in any sane man.

“You’re laying it inside-out.” Rob’s irritated voice jolted him from behind once more, before a large, brawny set of arms plucked the hems of the garment from his hands and shoved him aside. “Go monitor the Turkey, and try not to do anything that’d get it burnt.”

Nodding in abeyance, he stalked off to the kitchen to undertake his next task but took a detour to the sofa he occupied earlier to grab his phone. Pulling out a kitchen stool by the counter, he dragged it over to the oven and hopped on it. He lowered the knob to a lower speed, before pulling out his phone.

Whoa! Two missed calls.

He hardly received phone calls these days. With the advent of numerous social media platforms and messengers, phone calls weren’t as dominant as they were before. People resorted to cheaper and more convenient means of sending texts messages to one another, making phone calls exclusively for emergencies. He dialed the unknown number that popped up on his screen in the missed calls log, and raised the phone to his ear.

“Dude, it’s Andrew.”

“Oh, hey! Man. What’s up. Is this a new number?”

“This is my mom’s. I don’t have airtime on my phone.”