The First Time

Chapter 18: A Girl's Got To Do What A Girl's Got To Do

"I don't want a lot for Christmas. There is just one thing I need..."

Alex jumped into the car, and despite his foul mood was already singing along. This song was one that our mom always sang during Christmas. It was always normal to break out into complete theatrics once this song came on; one of those times being now. We jammed to the song in his car all the way back to the my dorm building, displaying some killer—as in horrible or amazing, depending on whichever way you heard it—vocals until we ended with the iconic line, "All I want for Christmas is... youuuuuuuu."

We were laughing as we took the bags out of the car, and that's when my phone rang. I checked to see who the caller was, and it was our pilot, Harry. I answered it quickly. "Hello?"

"Hey, Azalia! Good news! The snowstorm finally stopped. Hurry out to the airport, and we'll be off to Boston right away!" Harry exclaimed.

"No way! No way!" I screamed.

Alex, startled by my screaming, asked, "Why the heck are you screaming?"

Ignoring him, I screamed out to Harry again, "Oh my god! This is great! We'll be there in 30!" I stuffed the bags in my hand back into the trunk and had Alex do the same. I ushered him back into the car and hopped back in too. "Drive to the airport!"

He looked at me like I was crazy. "Don't give me orders."

"Don't order me to not give you orders," I responded.

"Don't order me to not order you to not give you orders."

I pursed my lips. "Just drive to the airport"

"Just tell me why you want to go to the airport," Alex said, still not starting to drive. "That's all you have to do. Don't make this hard for yourself, Azalia."

"Just drive to the airport!" I repeated again.

"But why?" Alex proceeded to go into a rant about how I never told him anything, which was completely far from the truth and started saying stuff about how he's the oldest and how he is in charge, which is again, far from the truth.

I completely disregarded whatever he was saying and called Tristan. After the phone took rang about a million times, Tristan finally answered. I let out a breath of relief as he said, "Hey, Z. What's happening?"

"A Christmas miracle."

Tristan, being the only other one who had known the arrangement had picked out, "A Christmas miracle" as the code name. "No way! The storm let out?" Tristan asked. He whooped in excitement in the background. "You know, I bought these really cool gloves because I had a really good feeling that we would be able to go home. They have this built in heater that is—"

"So irrelevant to what is going on right now." I rolled my eyes. "Just get Noah and hurry up to the airport. Since the storm has let out, we're leaving ASAP."

I heard Tristan move hurriedly through his house. "I'm going to get him and tell my mom that we're leaving. We'll be there right away." Along with Tristan being in on the plan, he had informed Aunt Nicole what was going on so she knew why her sons suddenly disappeared. She planned a getaway for her and Uncle Justin somewhere in the world if we were to spend Christmas in Jasper, and we had things planned out so we were able to drop whatever we were doing and head straight to the airport so we could take off immediately.

"Okay, see you there. We're going to be at the same place the jet always takes off." I waited for confirmation from him before hanging up. "Got it?"

Tristan scoffed. "Got it? Of course I've got it." He hung up with no time for me to say anything else.

I glanced at Alex and saw the pieces of the puzzle come together. "Christmas miracle, airport, storm let out... We're going home?" he asked excitedly; hope building up in his eyes.