THE PAINFUL TRUTH

Chapter Twenty- The Secret is Revealed

Stella's POV

Minehead town centre is unrecognisable with the Christmas decorations. What had been an ordinary street with the grey, brown or white houses and the regular shop fronts has been transformed into an exquisite work of art. It must have occupied lots of the decorators' time but in the end, they have done a magnificent job and I'm positive that I'm not the only person with this opinion. This evening, it seems like the whole population of Minehead was exploring the Christmas market stalls.

Each market stall varied in the items they were selling: personalised Christmas decorations, personalised stockings, cookies of different flavours, hot drinks, handcrafted jewellery, cakes, giant pretzels, doughnuts, jumpers and many more. The enormous Christmas tree towered over the town centre, lit up, along with extra lights scattered across the market place.

Even though it was one of those freezing days(usually I would stay at home and avoid going out in the cold), the warmth of happiness coursed through my body, which was also helped with the hot chocolate I bought. I bought extra food samples and have saved them for my foster siblings because they had desperately wanted to tag along so I had made it up to them by promising to bring back some samples. If it had only been Storm and I going, I would have brought Jake, Josh and the twins but I couldn't risk answering the questions that I was going to be asked by Sophie and Emma.

I smile I place my present for Kate in the bag amongst the many other items I had bought. It's a bracelet that I know she would love.

"Nice bracelet," Storm comments, sneaking a quick peek.

"It's a prezzie for Kate," I state.

"She's going to be a lucky one this Christmas!"

"Speaking of prezzies, are we going to do Secret Santa this year?" Emma jumps in.

"Yeah, why not? To make it even better, we have one extra person this year," I just about manage to comprehend what Sophie says because she has a cookie in her mouth, which is why a few crumbs fly out of her mouth.

"For goodness' sake, Soph! Can you eat like a human and not like an animal?" Emma remarks, scrunching her nose in disgust and visibly avoiding to get sprayed by the crumbs sprayed out of Sophie's mouth.

"Technically, Em, we are animals because we evolved from monkeys," Sophie argues.

"Well, sorry that I didn't pay attention in Science!" Emma huffs.

"Speaking of school, we only have a month left until the Christmas holidays!" Storm averts the subject of the conversation.

"Amen to that!" Emma praises.

"Oh yeah, I need to finish my project for English!" Sophie remembers.

"I'm almost done with mine," Storm says.

"Same," I agree.

"Do any of you have something to write on and something to write with?" Emma immediately changes the subject; her typical tactic when she can't join in the current conversation(she's in a different English class).

"What would you want them for?" Storm asks, her voice dripping with disbelief.

Emma hates writing. Her, the pen/pencil and the paper don't get along: that's why she tries to avoid doing it as much as possible.

"We can pick out the people we're going to get a prezzie for Secret Santa today and aim to buy it and give it to each other in two weeks time," Emma suggests.

"Sounds like a plan," I say as I search through my little bag that holds all my essentials and find a pen and pass it to Emma. With the paper packaging that had recently held our pretzels, we rip off four pieces that have enough room to write our names on and Emma writes all of them down before tossing them into an empty bag, which had previously contained our doughnuts. Shaking the bag vigorously, she repeats the action several times to make sure that our names have been jumbled up.

"I'm going first!" Storm insists, reaching out her arm to the bag. You could hear all of us hold our breath as her arm came out of the bag. One look at the name she has and she raises her eyebrows before tucking the piece of paper into one of her coat pockets. Sophie goes next.

"I feel like this person is both easy and hard at the same time," she voices her thoughts aloud.

"How can someone be both easy and hard? They're either easy or hard?" Storm contradicts.

"Soph, you can't give us any clues about the person you have!" Emma admonishes," Don't ruin it like you did last year!"

"Hey, it wasn't my fault last year! Storm forced it out of me!"

"That's because you're so easy to force answers out of!"

Emma holds up both her hands as a signal for everyone to stop talking.

"Sophie, don't spill anything! Storm, don't force any clues out of someone!" Emma says," Stella, it's your turn."

I reach my arm into the bag, my fingers trembling with agitation as two pieces of paper brushed against my fingertips. I pick the first one I touched and pull it out to find the name who I will be buying a present for:

Emma

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I slammed door shut, ensuring that the wintry chill outside didn't enter the warm house. How luxurious it felt when you come home to find that the heater has been on after just experiencing the low temperature of the outside world! Before I can shrug off my shoes, Jake, Josh, Evie and Ellie are by my side.

"Have you brought us some food from the market?" they all chirped in unison.

"For goodness' sake, haven't any of you heard of a 'hello'? It's used to greet people, especially when they have just come home!" Kate's voice carries along the corridor.

"Hello! Do you have any food from the market?" my foster siblings all say at once, none of them hesitating to jump to the point of why they're bothering me.

"Oh gosh! I forgot!" I lie, bringing my hand to my forehead as if the thought had slipped off my mind.

I must be better at acting than I thought because as soon as those words leave my mouth, Jake, Josh, Evie and Ellie's faces drop as if I've just told them that Santa doesn't exist.

"W-w-what?" Josh is the first person to recover from the shock," You promised us, Stella!"

I can't keep it any longer: my face breaks into a smile.

"Yes, I did promise you all and in case you didn't know, Stella Johnson never breaks a promise!"

While I say this, I reveal the bags of food and my foster siblings' faces light up like the lights on the Christmas tree in the town centre. I chuckle as they search the bags to view the variety of options they have. At one point, Kate has to intervene when Jake and Josh start to have an intense argument, both of them wanting the same item.

"I think that if I bought those children food for their Christmas presents, they would be even more thrilled than if I bought them toys," Kate murmurs, cleaning the counter.

"We're doing Secret Santa this year," I tell her.

"Nice! Who do you have?"

"Emma."

"What are you going to get her?"

"Well, I certainly can't get her food."

Kate chuckles.

There's silence. Suddenly, a notification from my phone almost makes me jump out of my skin; Kate has a hand over her heart as if she was about to have a heart attack. I unlock my phone to check what had popped up on my phone: Emma had posted something on Twitter.

Probably just one of the countless photos we all took together at the Christmas market.

When I open up Twitter, I find that Emma has posted a photo but not the one I had expected. In fact, it's a photo I hadn't seen coming.

All the blood drains from my face. My hands start to shake; I want to try to inhale and exhale to calm myself but I feel like I'm restricted.

"Stella! Are you ok? You look pale!" Kate's voice sounds distant even though she's right here.

My phone slips through my hand...

...and crashes onto the floor...but the state of my phone is nothing compared to the state of my whole world.