The Child Who Holds the Power

Chapter 10

Chapter 10

I didn't have much time to think about why my parents had been hiding so much from me or even what people were still not telling me. School became hectic with exams and excitement about the upcoming Halloween dance. I was getting quite excited myself even if it was about a week out and I still didn't have a costume. Josh told me that he'd gotten one but refused to tell me what it was.

Being a little less than a week out from the dance I was actually starting to get a bit worried about not getting a costume in time. Since I'd volunteered to help organise the dance I hadn't had time to find a costume after school. Carly, Courtney and I had been so busy with the dance committee that none of us had found a costume yet.

With no time after school that only left weekends which were filled with homework, assignments and attempts to catch up with my friends in Australia. Occasionally I even managed to squeeze in some movie watching time with Josh. I knew that the rest of the dance committee had already gotten costumes and I was freaking myself out because I didn't even know what I wanted to go as.

One afternoon leading up to the dance the rest of the committee told the three of us to go shopping. At first we thought they meant for decorations, but they told us to go costume shopping for ourselves. The three of us took the afternoon off and piled into Courtney's expensive car. Courtney was sixteen so she was the only one out of the three of us who had a licence. That and she insisted she knew all the best shops to go to since she the most fashionable person she knew. I had to try to not roll my eyes at that. 

I had been living in America for nearly a month, but I was still not used to people driving on the opposite side of the road. Every time we turned a corner I felt as though we were going to crash into another car. I had the feeling that Carly suspected I might start freaking out about Courtney's driving and consequently she stuck me in the back seat of the car. Luckily, we didn't have to go far before we hit the first costume shop.

I thankfully got out of the car and followed the others into the shop. As soon as we walked in I knew we would be in here for a while. The shop was absolutely massive and was divided into three sections – kids, mens and womens. We made a beeline for the womens section, stopping occasionally to point out funny costumes or to pick a weird costume accessory.

We laughed, joked around and tried on a stack of different costumes. Carly picked up one and immediately fell in love with it. It was a purple and black lace fairy costume and when she tried it on it looked stunning. She was so thrilled it was hard to believe that she wasn't bouncing off the walls out of excitement.

Courtney, I swear, tried on every costume in the place and didn't find anything she liked. She literally tried on over 20 different costumes and even though everything she put on looked amazing she didn't get any of them. I couldn't talk, I tried on a couple costumes but none of them seemed to stand out to me. I deliberately avoided any costume that remotely resembled a witch. Though I did try on a bee costume, a Robin Hood costume, a pirate costume and a Snow White costume but didn't like any of them.

After an hour we decided to move on to a new store. Carly didn't try on any more costumes and started taking pictures with here iPhone of all the different costumes we tried on. They had a whole section for just Disney costumes and Courtney tried almost all of them on. She was serious when she said in the car that she wanted to be thorough and make sure she got the best costume. I was starting to lose interest and was feeling a little depressed because I honestly didn't think I would find a costume I liked.

I tried on two costumes; the first was a Tinkerbell costume and then a Little Mermaid costume which looked absolutely ridiculous on. After that I got bored and walked over to the window and sat down in the window seat. I silently watched the cars go by and listened to Courtney and Carly laugh at each other.  I looked at my watch, 4:30pm. Josh would still be at football practice so I couldn't call him just for the sake of hearing him speak.