Jingle Bells and Parallels

15. Alan

Chapter 15

~Alan~

       "Remind me, what do we do for this phase again?" Brandon asked as we walked into the Christmas store.

       "Tell the workers that some of the stock here are of really poor quality," I said.

       "Right, because that's going to go well," Brandon said.

       "Then we exaggerate the truth," I said. "Do this magical thing called lying. Come on." I pulled Brandon to the closest employee of the store I could find. "Excuse me?" She looked over at me. "So recently, I brought a Christmas tree topper from here. A star, to be exact. And it feel apart as soon as I got home."

       The worker furrowed her eyebrows. "It just fell apart?"

       "Yeah, just like that," I said. "And I come here every year to get decorations. I know everything here is of amazing quality. There's no way it could have just fallen apart like that."

       "Can you show me the star you bought?" the worker asked so I led her to where the tree toppers were and grabbed the star that Orchid told me was of horrible quality. "It was this one."

       I handed it to the worker and she examined it. "That's very odd," she said. "I personally stocked the shelves and the starts definitely weren't like this. We never accept something so cheaply made and sell them at a high price."

       "Exactly why I thought I'd tell you," I said.

       "I was even in here sometime last week and I was looking at the star," Brandon said. "It was made like it was every other year and not like that."

       "We just thought we'd let you know," I said. 

       "Thank you," the worker said. "I'll have to look into this. Do you need a refund for the star you bought?"

       Since I didn't actually bought a star, I had to continue with me lie. "Oh, no, it's okay. One of my brothers are extremely artistic and was able to fix it. Thank you, though."

       That was all of phase two so Brandon and I left the shop. We just had to wait for the shop to realize their merchandise was replaced before we began phase three.

       "Should we try going back to the North Pole?" Brandon asked.

       "I don't think Santa will want us there today," I said. "We'll just going to have to wait until our next shift to see if we're still working there."

       "Good, because I kind of don't want to go back to work today," Brandon said.

       "And I need to get home," I said. "Knowing my dad, he's waiting to lecture me for continuing with this whole thing."

       "Then shouldn't you avoid going home?" Brandon asked.

       "I just want to get the lecture done and over with," I said. "Any chance you can give me a ride home?"

       "Yeah, of course," Brandon said.

       We left the mall and headed to the parking lot where Brandon's car was. Once we were inside and driving to my house, I ended up asking Brandon something I didn't even plan on asking. It just ended up coming out.

       "Hey, Brandon?" I asked.

       "Yeah?"

       "How did you figure out that you were bisexual?" I asked.