Dinglehoppers

Twenty

20. Write a chapter in which your character gets the name “Cinderelly” or “Mowgli”. Why?

                                                            ☀ ☀ ☀

“When you find out you can live without it, go along not thinking about it.”

-Baloo, The Jungle Book.

 

To Ellie, Boxing Day was technically a day when you could get ‘absolutely great’ discounts on things that people didn’t care to buy or had already bought enough of for Christmas.

When her grandma was still alive, they would both spend the day hopping from one mall to another and buying everything they most definitely did not need.

Now, Ellie still went out during Boxing Day, but not to as many places as she used to before her grandmother died.

It was kind of a tradition, and she wanted to honor it. Besides, Celia, Paige, Ed or even Danny would keep her company sometimes.

Right now, it was a day after Boxing Day, and she felt empty because she’d missed it this year.

Why?

Yesterday morning she’d woken up barfing half of the contents out of her stomach.

Her parents kept saying it was her fault for eating almost all the food at the Christmas dinner the day before.

But… the food was sooo good! How on earth was she just going to limit herself to tasting and drinking and trying a couple of things instead of having a little bit of everything?

After all, it went to the same place, didn’t it?

Still, all those things were completely useless since her stomach had been a bitch and decided that the whole mix wasn’t a very good idea.

So there she had been, on December 26th lying in her bed with a bucket by the side in case she wanted to puke her guts out again.

She hadn’t really wanted to buy a lot of things, just maybe a new cage for Jellybean, but still.

She felt like she had missed out on a lot.

Christmas day had been great, though. She loved to see the expression on everyone’s faces when they opened up the presents from her to them.

It gave Ellie a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

Somehow, she’d convinced her dad –with a lot of effort- to frame the poster she’d gotten Lionel for Christmas. Sure, he’d asked who it was for, and she’d told him the truth.

He had given her a weird look, but agreed after she’d nagged him for two days in a row.

When she got it back framed and beautiful, she’d purchased cute little Mickey Mouse wrapping paper, and had gotten to work.

Earlier, she’d considered just showing up at his door and handing him the thing, but:

1.- It was pretty big and heavy, and she didn’t want her dad or brother showing up with her at his doorstep. That would be lame.

2.- She wanted to make it more mysterious.

So, when she left the framed poster on the Osiris’s front door at 5 pm on Christmas day (next to a basket of cookies she’d baked and two boxes of chocolates for Jim and their dad), she hadn’t even written her name on the card.