Last Christmas (Book 1 in the Christmas Series)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

"That's...big," Granny said.

"It has to be. The tree is the centrepiece of the decorations, you know that."

"We'll see. Kenzie has planned a colour scheme for this year, so it doesn't look like a mess of colour."

"A colour scheme, eh? Lay it on me Kenz, what'cha got?"

"Blue and silver."

"Icy colours? More of a Jack Frost colour scheme than a Claus colour scheme."

"You don't have a colour scheme."

"True. Well, we'll give it a go! If it doesn't work, then it's back to my favourite type of chaos."

Grandpa took less convincing then I thought he would and as we set about decorating the house, my mind stayed focused on what he had said about the colours. It seemed as though I couldn't do anything without it somehow linking to Jack Frost in some way or another. The Halloween costume, the drawing the colour scheme, all of it linked back to him. Everywhere I went there he was, in the weather outside, the Art tasks we were being set. I couldn't even go online without seeing a drawing of one of his animated personas. The world loved the adorable Jack from Rise of the Guardians, but they hadn't seen the real thing.

I couldn't seem to escape him.

Pushing Jack from my mind, again, I snatched up decorations from my piles and began putting them on the tree. Blue and silver baubles dripped off the branches, tinsel wrapped around the tree like webbing. I even managed to dig out some icicles that wrapped around the tree and glinted in the light like a frozen spider web. We even went as far as spraying the edges of the tree with fake snow to add to the effect, seeing as Grandpa wouldn't buy a fake one. According to him, fake trees were worse than sugar-free sweets, though I didn't understand the comparison.

With the tree decorated and shoved in the corner, with a lot of effort, Grandpa and I headed to the front of the house to work on the light display that they had every year. Most of the time it was a light up Santa on the roof and electronic reindeer on the small patch of grass we had at the front of our house. The reindeers we were keeping, they were silver so went with the theme and would look great with the snowflakes Granny was hanging up in the window. To accompany the reindeers, Grandpa unpacked some light up silver presents to scatter all over the grass and some string lights to wrap around the bushes and trees.

"It's much more mellow then what I would have gone for," Grandpa said.

"You would have all of the outside decorations out if it were up to you. I don't think Mrs Webster would be too happy about it."

"We've been putting up those decorations for years and she's never complained."

"First time for everything," I said, walking around the bush with the string lights.

Mrs Webster was their elderly neighbour from across the road. She was often caught peering out of the window and watching us whenever Niska and Joel came around. If there was one thing she hated more then anything else in the world, it was teenagers. She wasn't too happy the first time she saw me come out of the house and she wasn't happy the other fifty times she saw me. The spectacular light show Grandpa would have put on would have been the tip of the iceberg. I expect the only reason she put up with the light show as much as she did was because she didn't have to deal with teenagers.

"I'm not going to get my Santa on the chimney this year, am I?"

"You might. Let's just see what we've got first. Maybe a splash of red will add to it. I'm only trying to think if the aesthetics here."

"You have an attention to detail, Kenz, I can't knock that one. We should go and help your Gran inside, gives you something to do whilst you think about my chimney Santa."