The Lift (A One Direction Fanfiction)

Chapter Ten

I stare at the text for another few seconds to make sure I didn't somehow become dyslexic overnight. I check the time the text was sent. 11:00 pm, my time. Niall's in Ireland now for Christmas with his family and to my knowledge, he is about five hours ahead of me. Damn, he sent this at 4:00 in the morning? Was he absolutely drunk off his ass?

Call me a prude if you want, but I've never had more than a sip of wine in my life. To add to this embarrassment, I had this sip when I was only in seventh grade. My friend Taylor had invited me to her Bat Mitzvah and it was the first one I'd ever been to. After a particularly long and confusing service (I'm not well-versed in Hebrew, mind you) there was a luncheon for all the people there to enjoy. On a table near the desserts were two trays, both scattered with tiny cups of purple liquid. I asked another kid about my age what it was and he said it was grape juice. I happily reached for a cup on the tray to the left and gulped back the liquid. I almost immediately convulsed with disgust at what I had accidentally drunk; it was, I discovered soon after, a tiny plastic cup of Manischewitz wine.

I couldn't believe no one had stopped me, an innocent thirteen-year-old, from drinking that wine. Ever since that horrendous experience I've been too repulsed by alcohol to even consider trying it again.

It is this memory that runs through my mind as I close my phone and head out my room, not replying to Niall. He's probably really hung-over right now. I don't want to bother his recuperating mind with a skeptical text. I'll catch him later.

Right now, I have boxes to savagely rip open.

There will be no survivors.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I stroll back gleefully into my room about an hour later, arms overflowing with my wonderful bounty. My feet are adorned with the pair of socks Katie got me, the right one blue with penguins and the left pink with grizzly bears. My grandmother's gift of a red crocheted sweater keeps me a bit warmer in our not-so-heated apartment. I lightly toss the non-delicate presents from various relatives onto my bed and begin to hang up the clothes I received.

After doing this, I place the newest hair straightening device onto my bedside table, courtesy of my mother. She's always trying to control my wild mane but it follows the motto of Miley Cyrus.

It can't be tamed.

Sorry.

I hang up the photo my father very generously mailed to us about a week ago, says my mom. It is of him and Bill Nye the Science Guy. Apparently Dad bumped into him on the street one day and he knew I would want a picture, seeing as Bill's videos were the only way I would learn science as a child. My dad had it framed in light green and shipped to us since he could not spend the day here. It makes me very excited to see him again next week.

I lie on my bed and open the tiny purse given to me by an aunt, examining it thoroughly. This is a fancy shmancy thing, Aunt Muriel. My relatives are so rich compared to us, with their big mansions and beautiful pools and caviar.

Okay, not that rich, but pretty darn close.

It doesn't bother me though. I don't like spending time with my cousins because being so wealthy has made most of them unbearably greedy. There are a few down-to-earth ones but they're not around my age and live far away. Most of the time I forget I even have cousins.

I look out the window and stare at the swirling flurries of snow that have just begun to fall. There better not be another power outage. They're always hitting our apartment especially because while the rest of the town is on the same grid (and a superior one at that) we have our own system, one that fails often, even in the nicest of weathers. It sucks because once the electricity in the apartments goes down, everything goes down with it: WiFi, phone signal, anything that connects us to the outside world.