As I listened to Frank Sinatra sing a beautiful Christmas carol on the radio, I snuggled with a red velvet cushion on my black leather living room couch. It was the night of Christmas Eve and sprinkles of snow fell in the ground like powdered sugar on strawberries. I live in a suburb in Virginia, where we don't get extreme amounts of snow in the winter, or torturous droughts in the summer. It was just perfect.
As the song winded down to a little piano solo, I got up from the couch and turned off the radio. It was time for me to pick out my church outfit for tomorrow morning. My family and I went to church every Christmas morning. We weren't very religious, but we felt like we needed to be closer to the community and that was our solution. I'd rather be opening up my presents, like every other 17-year old girl in the country, but I guess that wasn't meant to be.
I looked at my closet to consider my options. Sadness creeped into my mood. My clothes were extremely outdated. I needed to go to the mall sometime. My father, who owns five hotels in the area, doesn't like to let me go to malls on my own. He doesn't trust our chauffeur Edward, although I'm not sure why. Edward has been really nice and he doesn't have an attitude. Nonetheless, my father is trying to catch him at something, but that hasn't happened yet.
I was interrupted by my cell phone blasting Gangnam Style. That song was just so dang catchy, I just had to put it as my ringtone. I looked at the caller ID, and it was my father, calling from work. He was working late tonight.\
"Hey, Dad!" I greeted.
"Hello, Diane! Haven't you gone to bed yet?"
"Not yet, I'm picking my church outfit for tomorrow. Why, what's up?"
"Well I have some news..."
"Go on..." I coaxed him.
"Well, I have this important business trip that came up on short notice. Like, really short notice. I have to go to California tomorrow morning. Your mother is coming with me because she wanted to see your grandmother there. Since we only found out about this trip about an hour ago, and we had to book the first flight tickets we could find, we could only get two tickets. This kind of means that you're spending Christmas..er, alone."
"Oh," was my intelligent response.
"Honey, I'm so sorry. I feel horrible that you have to spend Christmas alone. But this trip is really important to the hotels and apparently your grandmother isn't doing too well. Please understand."
"No, it's fine Dad. Don't worry about me. I can take care of myself. When will you guys be back?"
"We'll be gone for a week."
"Well that's fine. Again, don't worry about me.
"Thank you so much for understanding, Diane. I promise to make it up to you when we get back."
"Haha, alright Dad. Well I'm going to bed. Goodnight, and have a safe trip. Tell Mom too."
"Will do, baby. Goodnight and merry Christmas! Your presents are hidden in the basement closet, by the way."
"Okay, Dad. Bye!"
He hung up and I turned my phone off. Well this was going to be an interesting Christmas.
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HI! So I FINALLY finished the first chapter! Little short, but it IS a short story after all. I find that I write better when I'm listening to music. So right now I'm listening to Moments by One Direction on Pandora.
Well you know what to do...
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