Dear Lottie

Chapter 8

At twenty minutes past eight in the evening, there was a loud knock at the door. Laya answered it. "Lottie!" She called. Laya didn't like Skye, she thought her clothing was horrible and her brown, patchy red hair looked un neat. Personally, I thought it was cool. This time, she was wearing a large band tee and baggy jeans with her hair in a slouchy bun and her purple converse with a cute blue satchel dotted with strawberries. "Hey, you wanted to talk to me?" I smiled and pulled her inside, calling to my mum, "Mum, we're going to go warped tour web surfing upstairs!" This, we were definitely going to be doing, but we would certainly be talking as well. I logged on and loaded the internet whilst Skye looked through all my CDs. "I love Declan." I blurted out to her. She looked surprised, like she had never expected it or seen it coming. Unlike Jemma did. That was Skye though, she wouldn't see a frisby coming towards her until it broke her nose. "What?!" She gasped. Her hazel eyes were seriously going to pop out of her dazed skull. "I love Declan." I repeated, calmer this time. Her next response was closing her eyes tightly. And then flailing her arms about everywhere. "Woah woah woah. You can't love Declan. You always told me that was rule 1 in your little list, to assure you have a safely close friendship." I sighed, hanging my head in shame. I waited for a few minutes, continuing to hang my head. "I know." I muttered. Skye jumped forward, pushing me to the very side of the chair, and sat down. I could feel her sorry eyes looking at my sad ones. She wrapped her arm around me and held me tight. "It's okay, you'll get over it honey." She rested her chin on my head and rubbed my arm.

"Oh! There's one in America... In... LA!" We had long gone past being upset over Declan. Now, we were munching on Haribos and Skye was perched at my desk, desperately looking for Warped Tours to go to. She decided the one in July was too boring, there was no bands we liked and we only had a month to go before we could get into anything else. She began hitting the mouse off the desk in frustration "too expensive... Too boring... Too far away... Really?...wow...sold out..." She had a list of a lot of different warped tours and after two minutes, I lost it with her. I pushed her off my desk and took over the surfing. I knew In This Moment were performing in London for their tour, and that I really wanted to see them again. For both them and London. When she saw me type it in, she immediately reacted. "Again? We went to see them last summer!" She threw her Haribo fried egg at me in anger and jolted back, kicking her legs about. "Yeah, and they were awesome. But I was thinking what if we could see them, but see and do some other stuff for a while...stay for a week or two, book a hotel room? Whenever we go to concerts or tours, we never stay to rest. It's always, drop, see, scream and go." She sat up at this remark and scratched her head in thought. "You genius!" She jumped up to hug me when her phone rang. She answered it after our tight embrace to find it was her mum, asking her where the hell she was and that tea was going cold. Skye left at that and I sat back, taking it in. She said she would pay me back the money for the tickets and we would roughly half money for everything else.

I checked the dates. 20th July. If we went down on the 19th, we would have time to get ready, sleep and eat. Then we could stay for another week. Taking it to 26th July. The 27th was Declan's birthday and fuck it all, I was going to do anything to miss it. I can't be around him for a full 22 hours (i'd probably spend the other two hours passed out after drinking, after all, i was 18 now). So I did the unexpected, and pushed it for two weeks. That would increase the bill by £420, but it was acceptable I guess.

Laya came into my room at 9:30pm to say good night and that Mum was waiting for me with a hot chocolate and another episode of Breaking Bad. She climbed into my covers and stroke up conversation. "How's life?" I turned my computer off and looked to her. "Life is brilliant. Me and Skye have just booked tickets to stay in London for two weeks in July!" She sat up, looking sad. I hated seeing Laya sad. Her mousy brown hair seemed to grow dull and her hazel eyes dropped. "You're missing my birthday?" She muttered, through a choked up throat. "Woah! Hold on chicken! I would never miss your birthday! We are leaving for London three days after, so we still have three days to celebrate your 14th!" She smiled sweetly and leaped onto my lap for a hug before trotting off to bed. Shortly after pulling a Coldplay band tee with linen shorts on, I headed downstairs to tell Mum the news... And to watch Breaking Bad!