rare. |a.k.|

ten|christmas

"We're home!" I yelled into the house, Bandit coming to greet Awsten and I.

"Hey, so I started cooking dinner and-"

"What the hell is that?" Jack cut off Lorie, laughing and pointing to my penguin.

"A penguin!" I said enthused. I was genuinely happy about it. "I'm gonna go put it in my room."

I ran past Jack and Lorie to go upstairs. My phone started going off like crazy. I pulled it out of my pocket and read all the comments and messages I'd got. Some were nice and some were not so nice.

"What makes you think Awsten's gonna like you?" some girl commented on an Instagram post. I rolled my eyes. Kids are just jealous these days. I read a couple more before realizing they were pretty much all bad ones. I slipped my phone back in my pocket, thinking about those comments. We just had a conversation about it, I didn't need to be worried, but God was I ever.

•••

I sat on the floor in front of the couch with Awsten. We were passing out presents to all four of us. We had a pile for everyone, and I insisted on doing it like this because this is what I always did growing up. After we separated all the gifts we had to go eat dinner. I unfortunately didn't eat much. I was too busy thinking about those dumb hate comments. They shouldn't bother me. They're not true.

I felt Awsten nudge me, so I turned to look at him and he seemed concerned. He watched for Lorie and Jack to be distracted before turning to me and mouthing "Are you okay?"

I nodded and mouthed "Just not hungry."

"Bullshit." He mouthed back and frowned at me. He grabbed my arm and pulled me with him.

"Wait, where are you-" Lorie was saying before the door shut.

"What's wrong." He looked me dead in the eyes.

"Nothing. I already told you I'm just tired."

He shook his head and grabbed my shoulders.

"You said you weren't hungry, now you're tired? No Charlie. Tell me."

I sighed.

"People. They're stupid and negative and it shouldn't bother me but it does."

He furrowed his eyebrows.

"What have they been saying?"

"That uh," I cleared my throat. I felt tears sting my eyes. God this was humiliating. "Nothing, whatever. I'm okay Awsten, really. Thank you though."

I pushed past him, walking back into the dining room. Lorie wiggled her eyebrows and me and I shook my head.

"No." It came out more stern than I expected.

A few minutes later, Awsten walked in, looking at his phone. He looked kinda pissed off. We finished eating, and I was kind of ignoring him. I knew he saw what people were saying because I felt holes start to burn into the side of my head from him staring at me. When everyone was done eating, we spent another two hours cleaning up the dishes. It was around 7 o'clock when Lorie disappeared into her bedroom, and when she came out she was all dressed up.

"Woah, aunt Lorie, what's this?" I said, kind of in shock.

"Church?" She said like it was obvious.

"Oh, yeah." I stood up, grabbing Awsten's arm and bringing him with me. I couldn't avoid it anymore.

"Alright, here's the deal," I said once we got upstairs, "I know you saw what people were saying. But I don't want to talk about it, okay? Remember when I said you need nice clothes?" He nodded. "Yeah, this is their time to shine." He slightly smiled at me, obviously still upset about earlier. But eventually he walked into his room. I went over to my bag, pulling out my slightly above the knee black dress. It wasn't puffy, but flowy. It was kinda nice, it was comfortable and formal. I put on my black pumps and started braiding my hair. I had this all planed out.