Hey guys, let me just start off with how INCREDABLY sorry i am for leaving you guys hanging for so so sooooo long. I feel really really bad for doing that but, I have an explanation! The truth is, alot has been happening and I have been noticing that my confidence level has been dropping an EXTREMLY large amount with in the last few months. I've been coming home and just climbing into bed wanting to sleep all day long so I can be away from everybody and just live in my own little world. My grades have been dropping and my family hasnt been much of a help because they havnt been taking the time to notice my sudden change. But, I am trying to get better and i think being on break is going to be a good chance to be relieved of all stress that I'm under. Its not like I've been completely ignoring this story all together, I've been working on this alot actually since I last updated but, with the way i was i could only work on it for so long before just wanting to stop. But dont worry I am going to try and get back into to good habits again. I love you all so dearly and thank you to all the readers who are still reading my story, it means alot to me and I love you all to peices! xx
Without further a do, here's a new update! :)
Ally’s POV
“How was your first day of school, Ally?”
I looked up and noticed my mom walking through the front door with her black winter coat on and her grey purse dangling from her arm. I was sitting on the couch with my legs crossed; watching random stuff on the TV while occasionally glancing down to read my book for English since that was really the only homework I had gotten today. Father has been at the bar since I got home from school so I’ve just been chilling all day, just doing my own thing.
“It was good,” I responded as I looked back towards the TV for the commercials had just come to an end. She nodded and put her purse on the floor next to the couch before pulling off her coat and putting it in the coat closet that was next to the front door.
“So did you make any new friends?” she asked with a smile as she sat down in the recliner so she could pull her shoes off. I shrugged and looked down towards my lap, fiddling with my thumbs.
“A few.”
She smiled and leaned forward a little, resting her elbows on her knees.
“Well that’s great sweetie! I knew you could do it,” she said happily to which I smiled and nodded while still staring towards my lap. I guess the five girls I met today were my friends now, they all seemed nice and seemed like they wanted to be around me. “Oh and by the way I’ve been asking around at work if they knew anyone who possibly teaches voice at all.”
I lifted my head up in interest at her words and looked towards her, waiting for her to continue on as I bit my lip.
“I bumped into one girl and she said that her ten year old daughter, Elizabeth also takes voice with a girl named Angela. She told me that Angela is really sweet and that her daughter completely adores her so, I got her number if you want me to give her a call?” she asked with raised eyebrows.
I nodded happily, excited that I was going to be starting up voice again. I was worried that it would be a while before we found another descent teacher and I hated going to long without a lesson. I was still bummed about having to do it with another teacher other than Jenny back home. I knew that with this new teacher, I was going to have to start back from the top, which basically meant she would make me sing random warm ups to hear what my voice sounds like, then we would have to sing through songs until we find a good song that suits me, and then we would have to practice it and get it memorized….. That’s too much work for my liking. Besides, no one would know my voice better than Jenny since Jenny is the one who has built my voice up into the way it is now, which is why I’m really going to miss her.
I sighed and leaned back against the soft cushion of the couch as my mom got up and walked into the other room with her phone in her hand so that she could call Angela. I really hope that this teacher is nice and that I will feel comfortable singing around her. The last thing I need is to have some old teacher that has no idea what she’s doing and criticizes every little thing I do even if I know for a fact that it’s right. Its people like that, which I absolutely despise since I always have trouble standing up for myself. Mom always tells me that I need to be more assertive towards anyone who criticizes me but, she doesn’t realize how sensitive I can be towards people who talk to me like that. It’s amazing how fast my confidence level can drop by just the way someone raises there voice towards me.
I got up off the couch after a few minutes and walked into the kitchen where my mom was still talking away on the phone as she leaned up against the counter with her elbow rested on the soft marble pattern.
“Yes she has been taking voice since she was seven years old and she’s fifteen now, so about eight years or so………… We just moved here from New York actually so she isn’t able to take voice from her old teacher anymore……”
I sighed and sat down at the table, sitting on my hands as I swung my feet back and forth in boredom. “So Friday is good then?......... Great, we will see you then………. Okay……. Bye.”
I watched as my mom hung up the phone before setting it down on the counter with a smile.
“Well she said that we can go meet her on Friday as soon as I get out of work,” my mom said with a grin to which I returned.
“Is she nice?” I asked curiously and she nodded.
“She sounds like a very nice lady, Ally, I’m sure you will get along with her just fine,” she said as she patted my back before walking over to the fridge. I rested my elbows on the table and combed my hair back with my fingers as mom pulled some milk out of the fridge.
“How do you like your new job?” I asked curiously and she instantly smiled, her face brightening.
“Oh my god I love it! There are so many nice people there and we all got along just fine. I’m already friends with some of the other nurses there; they are all just so nice.”
I smiled feeling happy that she was enjoying her new job. The last thing I needed was for her to stress over it and absolutely hate it. I knew that she didn’t get along with a lot of the other nurses at her old work so it’s nice to see her warming to her new job already.
“That’s great mom,” I said happily and she smiled.
“Yea and one of nurses who I became good friends with named Marry was talking to me during lunch earlier. She told me that she actually has a son that’s your age and goes to your school, she wanted to know if you had met him yet.”
I sat up a little in my chair with my brows furrowed, wandering who this person might be.
“What’s his name? I asked, wandering if I might actually know him even though I’ve only been going to the school for one day. I highly doubt that I knew who it was since I didn’t learn very many names today but, who knows, maybe I’ll meet this person in the near future. She took a long sip of her milk before setting the cup down on the counter and answering.
“Jesse. Jesse Phillips I think is his last name?”
If I had been holding something in my hand at that moment it would have most likely been on the ground right now as my eyes instantly widened and my heart stopped. She cannot be serous; my mom is fucking friends with Jesse’s mom. That’s just fan-fucking-tastic, why not just put a sign on my head saying ‘embarrass the hell out of Ally’. I just know that she’s going to tell his mom every single detail about me and then his mom will go home and tell him. I can’t have that happen! I know I shouldn’t even be caring because he is just some random person at the school but, I don’t know I just don’t want him to think I’m weird or something.
“So do you know him?”
I whipped my head to the side to see my mom watching me curiously and I knew I would have to think fast or else she would get suspicious.
“N-no.”
Well there goes that.
She tilted her head to the side and furrowed her brows as if she didn’t really believe me.
“You sure? You seem like you might.”
I shrugged my shoulders trying to make it look as casual as possible without overdoing it to much.
“No I don’t think I know anyone named Jesse, sorry,” I lied. She watched me for a moment longer but then sighed and shrugged her shoulders before placing her cup on the counter after she had finished her drink.
“Well his mom told me that he is a wonderful boy and a lot of people at school love him. She said he also has a little sister, Darcy, who I think she said is five. Anyways, I felt so bad for her since she said that she might get called in tonight, she’s not sure yet but she said that if she does she will have to leave Jesse and Darcy home alone for sixth time in the last two weeks.”
This caught my attention and I tilted my head to the side at this information, looking to my mom in confusion.
“What about their dad? Isn’t he there with them?”
Her face fell a little bit with a sigh at my words as she looked up at me with sad eyes, as if what I said had triggered a sudden thought.
“She told me that their dad passed away three years ago of cancer, isn’t that just awful? She told me that Jesse has been practically raising Darcy since Marry is always being called into work at night. That’s got to be so tuff for him and especially Darcy not being able to have a dad and not being able to see her mom much,” she said with the shake of her head as she put the milk away in the fridge. I bit my lip at the new information and nodded, feeling a little bit bad for him. He does seem like a great guy so I’m assuming he must have had a great dad growing up.
Must have been nice.
Although, he deserves to have a great dad to take care of him because of how incredible great of person he seems.
“That’s sad,” I mumbled in agreement towards her before I stood up with a stretch. “I’m going to my room,” I announced and my mom nodded as she sat down at the table with the paper in her hands for her to read.
“Try to unpack some of your stuff while you’re at it.”
I walked out of the room and towards my bedroom, closing the door behind me once I had gotten in there. There were some boxes piled up by my door that still needed to be unpacked so I figured now would be the best time to do it. I pulled the top box off the pile and placed it down on the floor in front of me before peeling off the tape and opening it up. To my surprise though, there was Christmas decorations in their instead of my stuff. I stared at the box in confusion before shrugging, figuring that it must have accidentally been put in my room with all my other stuff.
On the top I noticed some colorful Christmas lights that we never put up and I think have only been open like once. I pulled them out and took them out of the box that they were in before examining them, seeing if they were all still in good shape. They looked to be alright to the eye so I walked over to an outlet and plugged them in, watching as all the colorful lights came to life brightly showing all sorts of colors, lighting up my floor. There was green, red, blue, purple and yellow showing throughout the shiny lights.
I smiled as I came up with an idea and quickly grabbed some clear duck tape and an extension cord. I climbed onto my bed and stood up on it, steadying myself when I got a little unbalanced. I lined up the lights along my wall and put tape over parts of the cord of the lights to hold them up since I didn’t have any hooks of any sort.
The cord wasn’t very long, only about ten feet so it only covered that one wall but, I didn’t mind since that’s all I really wanted it to cover. I quickly grabbed the white extension cord before plugging it into the lights and then into the outlet that was in the corner near my bed. The lights immediately lit up brightly over my bed and I quickly turned off my bedroom light just to see how bright they were. They practically lit up my whole room leaving it a sort of ghostly bluish color. It made my room seem more like Christmas since it lit up my white carpet almost like snow and the soft white snow outside was glistening through the window. It made my room seem cozier in general. (Picture of the lights at the side)
I loved Christmas time; it was my favorite holiday because I loved seeing all the decorations lit up on people’s yards, showing their Christmas spirit in their own little ways. It was the little things that counted for me. The little things helped things seem bigger in perspective for me. My family never did much for Christmas; we just went to my cousin’s house and celebrated over there. I have three cousins, one who is my age named Gavin, one who is eighteen named Alicia, and one who is thirteen named Skylar. Then there was my uncle Chris and my Aunt Sophia. Mom told me that since we moved into a nicer house, she wanted to have them come and celebrate Christmas at our house this year for a change. We were planning on setting up our tree sometime this weekend along with putting up the decorations so that our house could look a little bit more festive for their visit.
I laid down on my bed and grabbed my phone off of my nightstand before unlocking it seeing that I had three missed calls and seven missed messages from Maya.
Maya!!! : Hey Ally, what’s up?!?
Maya!!! : Hello?
Maya!!! : Helloooooo?!?!?
Maya!!! : Ally, answer me! L
Maya!!! : Pleaseeeeeeee!!!
Maya!!! : ALLY YOU BETTER ANSWER ME THIS MOMENT BEFORE I COME DOWN THERE AND SLAP YOU!!!!!!!
Maya!!! : DON’T THINK I WONT DO IT!!
I rolled my eyes at my best friend, starting to feel generally concerned for her before hitting the call button and putting the phone to my ear as I heard a steady ring.
“Well it’s about time you answered me…..” I heard Maya’s voice say through the phone once she picked up with a huff making me giggle.
“Sorry! I was hanging up Christmas lights in my room. My room looks so pretty now,” I said as I looked dreamily towards the lights hanging above my head. I really felt in the Christmas spirit now.
“Oh that’s cool! You should send me a picture of what your room looks like later.”
I nodded even though she couldn’t see me and made a mental note to take a picture later so that she could see my room. “Anyway, I’ve been waiting to hear how you first day of school went! You have to tell me all the details; did you talk to Jesse at all? Did he talk to you? Oh my god, please tell me you guys at least talked to each other!”
I rolled my eyes. Maya can be so dramatic sometimes.
“My first day actually went pretty good I think, I made some new friends who seem nice and my classes were pretty easy today…..”
“Yea, yea, yea, sounds great now tell me about Jesse, did you talk to him?!”
I scoffed when she cut me off, her not even taking notice making me role my eyes as I rolled over onto my side, trying to get as comfortable as possible on my bed, pulling the covers over me to keep warm since it was a bit chilly.
“Yes, I did talk to him and yes, he did talk to me, quite a few times today actually.”
Maya instantly squealed on the other line making me pull the phone away to protect my poor ears from her powerful screeching.
“Oh my god Ally I’m so proud of you, I knew you could do it!” she stated happily making me smile as I started to feel a little proud towards myself. It wasn’t really something that happened every day for me, going and talking to random guys. “So what did he say to you?” She was always one to question people, always needing to know every single detail of what had happened in order to make her content and happy. That was just something about her that I never seemed to understand because I can still live to see tomorrow if I don’t know every single detail. It’s not like I need to know the whole persons life.
“It’s not really a big deal Maya, he just showed me to my locker and we talked for a bit after school, that’s all.”
“Oh my god Ally, details! I need details and then I will know if this should be a big deal or not.” I groaned and buried my face into the soft material of my pillow wandering why I even called her. I should have known she was going to do this.
“Well what do you want to know?” I asked, honestly not really knowing what to tell the crazed girl. She really needs to learn to be more specific if she wants me to be specific.
“What did you guys talk about after school?” she asked casually. I bit my lip and thought about mine and Jesse’s conversation we had. We hadn’t really talked about much, just mainly track is all.
“We mostly talked about track, since he’s on the indoor track team and he was telling me about his injured ankle. I think that’s about it….. Oh! We were also talking about voice a little bit.”
“Has he heard you sing?” she asked sounding generally confused since she knew I wasn’t one to just randomly sing to some stranger. I would rather sing on stage in front of a crowd of people then sing in front of one person. It’s just something strange about me, although not many people feel comfortable singing to one individual person.
“No but my teacher made me sing in front of the chorus class today and apparently people were talking about it after school which I don’t feel very comfortable with. Maya, what if their saying bad things about my voice, you know how I feel about people criticizing my singing.” It’s true; I never want anyone to tell me I have a bad voice. It’s what I want to do in my future so if someone thinks that I’m not good at what I want to do, then what’s the point of even trying. And if I can’t go into music when I get older, well then what else am I supposed to do?
“Ally, you have the best voice I have ever heard and you know how honest I am. Anyone who tells you, you have a bad voice is just jealous of your gifted talent, besides, I’m sure they are all saying great thing. What did Jesse say to you about it?”
“He said that people are telling him that I have a good voice, but I still don’t feel comfortable with all of this, I don’t want people to think I’m a show off and that’s exactly what I told Jesse today. I hate show offs,” I said, mumbling the last part mostly to myself.
“I know you do Ally, and I’m sure that Jesse understood when you told him, what did he say after that?”
I was silent as I remembered those words that Jesse had said to me.
I just can’t believe you don’t realize how amazing you are.
I went over those words in my head as if they were playing on a broken record. They left me in so much confusion that I didn’t even know what to think of it. I didn’t know if I should believe him, I was never a believer when it came to compliments. I try to shy away from them as best I can to keep myself from getting hurt but, this time was different. I could see it in his eyes; it was something I had never seen before and I can’t really explain what that something was.
I quickly shook my head, focusing my attention back on a silent Maya who was still on the line waiting for me to respond.
“I….. I-I don’t remember, I think he had to leave then to go practice,” I mumbled, feeling too insecure about the truth. It was probably him just trying to be nice anyway, nothing to fuss over. It was best if I didn’t say anything to Maya anyway considering how dramatic she can be.
“Oh, well you should still try to get to know him. He seems like a nice guy, one that I would approve of. That reminds me, you need to send me a picture of him sometime!” she said excitedly. “I need to know what this mystery guy looks like.”
I giggled at her words. Of course she would want to know what Jesse looks like, considering how obsessed she is with him and she hasn’t even met the guy.
“Where am I supposed to get a picture of him Maya? I don’t have any way of getting one and I’m not going to take a picture of him, that’s just weird,” I mumbled never finding interest in taking pictures of people without their permission, unless they are a famous person.
“Well you said you met some friends today, so steal their yearbook from last year, find his picture and take a picture of it! It’s as simple as that.” I rolled my eyes.
“Maya, I am not stealing someone’s yearbook. You’re just going to have drive down here and meet him yourself,” I said making her giggle when my door suddenly opened as my mom poked her head in.
“Ally dinner is ready,” she said as she smiled towards the lights I had hung up in my room.
“Okay mom, be there in a minute,” I responded and she nodded before closing the door softly.
“Maya I have to go, but I’ll talk to you later.”
“Okay call me tomorrow,” she said and I nodded before saying bye to her and then hanging up the phone. She’s a crazy girl but, she’s still my best friend.
Hope you enjoyed!
Remember to vote and comment me your thoughts!
Q&A- What is you favorite holiday tradition that you guys do?
Mine is eating breakfast at my house, then eating lunch at my grandmas house and then eating dinner at my aunts house all on christmas. :)