• It was here. It was finally here. Christmas. It had felt like it would never come but it had. It was finally here. Justin leaped out of bed and jumped first onto Alex’s bed and then on Artemis’ bed shouting “Wake up, wake up! It’s Christmas!”

    “Ug, already,” they groaned as they simultaneously threw their pillows at him, “what time is it?” Justin answered that it was nine o’clock in the morning. When they heard what time it was they immediately got up because everyone knew that the maids would be bringing around the presents between nine and nine-thirty and they wanted to be awake when they came. Fifteen minutes later (it seemed more like an hour to Justin), the maids arrived and handed them their bags full of presents. As soon as the maids were gone, the boys happily started ripping into their bags of gifts and tried to guess what each one was.

    *

    Alaya slowly opened her eyes and scanned the room. The sun was up already. She glanced around the room again and smiled happily that she was the first one awake and would have some quiet time to herself for once. Then she glanced at the clock.

    “Oh my gosh! Wake up everyone,” she cried, “it’s almost nine-thirty and we have to be at the door when the present carriers come or else we don’t get our gifts!” There was a mad scramble as the three of them (Becca, Alaya and Mairi) jumped out of bed and hurried to make their beds and get to the door before the maids arrived. ‘ What if they’ve already come and we weren’t at the door’, Alaya thought miserably. She voiced her thoughts aloud to everyone. They all stared even more anxiously at the door, willing the maids to come.

    Eventually they finally heard a knock at their door. They opened it and sighed with relief. It was the maids. They quickly thanked them and rushed back into their room. Becca waddled over to the corner of the room where her bed was, sat down and started going through her bag of gifts. Alaya considered doing the same (except for the waddling part), but she changed her mind when Mairi motioned to her. They started going through their presents together, exclaiming at each one. Her aunt and uncle had gotten her an I-pod and a laptop to do some of her assignments. Her brothers had also gotten her really cool gifts. Mairi’s gift was also nice. Eventually she came to Justin’s gift, but she put it back in the bag without opening it. ‘I’ll open it later along with some of my other gifts’ she thought, ‘maybe when Mairi’s not around’.

    At about ten o’clock they headed down to breakfast. It was a glorious breakfast with all of everyone’s favorites. Alaya and her brothers were very happy that they got to stay over Christmas break. Afterwards, everyone went back to their rooms. The boys invited the girls to come hang out with them in their rooms. All accepted except Alaya.

    “I’ll be along later,” she promised, “I’m just going to get a few winks of sleep and clean up the room a bit.” Everyone sadly said goodbye to her and headed towards the boy’s rooms. It was true, she actually did want to clean up and sleep a bit. But the main reason she wanted to be alone was so that she could unwrap Justin’s gift without anyone else around. It turned out that Becca was in the room, but Alaya didn’t care much. She rummaged around her bag, looking for the gift. When she finally found it, she plopped down on her bed and started to open it. But then she saw the note on top and stopped to read the note first. The note said:
    Dear Alaya,
    Here is something I really think you need. Hope it helps.
    Cheers, Justin

    She quickly ripped into the package. Then, she stared at it with dismay. She couldn’t believe it. It must be some kind of joke. She searched everywhere for another note; something to tell her that it was a complete and utter joke. But it wasn’t. This was what he had actually given her. It was a bar of soap.

    *

    “I wonder how long she’ll be”, Justin wondered aloud.

    “Hmm? Who?” Alex asked, “Oh, you mean Alaya. Probably an hour plus, girls always take a long time to do stuff.” Justin decided to go and find her while she was alone, he wanted to talk to her and give her something.

    “I’ll be back in a bit.” Justin stated, standing up quickly. Everyone stared at him quizzically. “I’d just like to go for a nice walk in the cool air. Alone.” He added as Mairi stood up to go with him. She slowly sat down with a sour look on her face. Justin slowly meandered around the halls, eventually reaching Alaya’s dorm room. He knocked his special knock and waited. Eventually, he heard the sound of heavy foot falls on the other side of the door. It opened a crack and a round face peered out at him. He jumped back in surprise; he hadn’t expected to see Becca at the door.

    “Who is it?” he heard Alaya ask from the back of the room.

    “It’s Justin.” Becca replied. He heard them exchange a few more words before Becca turned back toward him. “She doesn’t want to see you right now.” And with that she shut the door. He tried knocking some more, but no one came back and opened the door for him. So he left. He continued his walk. He had gone about half-way around the school before he finally stopped. He looked up and noticed that he was in front of the forest. He peered deep into the forest and could have sworn that he saw something move. As he slowly crept away, the forest gave him the creeps, he figured that it was probably just a wolf or some other wildlife creature. Little did he know how wrong he was.