The Perfect Summer

Chapter 1: Ali and Serena

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All chapters which have been edited will have indents...just to let you know why some do and some don't! Hope you enjoy it :) xx

Update: wattpad has decided the my story is so perfect that it needs no improvment ;) jk...yeah wattpad isn't letting me edit any of this story so for any huge mistakes you find - sorry.

   “I’m so beyond excited!” I squealed down the phone to Serena. There was something about the thought of going on a vacation without your parents that bought joy and gleam in its path. It was a chance to have bonfires on the beach and stay up way after midnight watching the stars glint in the dark oceanic sky with the ocean right in front of you, and being content in knowing that it was going to be the best summer you ever had - at least until the next one rolled around.

    At least, this was how I dreamt that my summer was going to be like in Serena’s Parents’ beach house. A whole summer away from my annoying older brother and sister. No one to boss me around, or babysit me about every decision I made.

    The chance to go was the best seventeenth birthday present I could have asked for, and there was no doubt in anybody’s mind that I wouldn't pass up this opportunity. Not after I had been begging to go for the past three years. The word ‘no’ soon became redundant and the most commonly used word in my parents’ vocabulary.

   I paced around the room, the excitement causing a nervous itch to roam through me, and somehow jumping up and down like a little child was the only thing that was calming the adrenaline that was pumping through me.

   Unlike me, Serena had the popular girl attitude. The girl who was stubborn and spoilt enough to get what she wanted. It wasn’t exactly a bad quality in her, but it made me extremely jealous at times. Like the time she came back one summer with a whole load of stories about the guys she had met, and conveniently hooked up with and all the parties she had attended. Getting wasted and then climbing back into the beach house through the small window of the kitchen where she would promptly drop herself into the sink from the loose footing after shots of vodka.  

   You would actually expect Serena to be the popular kid, with her luscious blonde hair and sea deep blue eyes that went on like the ocean was running wild. With or without make-up her beauty stood out from every other person in the crowd, and not just because of how tall she is. 

    I guess her crazy life away from home had sparked my first interest in wanting to go so badly. I was inevitably using this summer as a chance to escape the mundane life I had made for myself and run free for a little while. Maybe even changing the fact that I have had no boyfriends, and have only been kissed twice – both of which were done while the guy was completely drunk and didn’t even remember me the next day.

   "I can't believe it Alison. I need to come over right now and we need a whole summer plan," Serena laughed hysterically, as if she had just made the joke of the century. "Hold on I will be right over,” she said before the line went dead. I put the landline phone down, and laughed at the sheer joy of it all – and secretly glad that Serena was – or at least seemed as ecstatic as I did.

   I mindlessly roamed to the kitchen – settling on a red apple from the brown bowl in the middle of the wooded table.

   Heading back to the room, I sat cross-legged on the bed pondering and imagining what the summer would be like.

    I had decided to paint the walls of my room yellow; the colour made me smile. My room was rather small but I still liked it. My bed was placed in the far corner near the window, and by the window was an Eiffel tower that Victoria, my friend got me when she went to Paris last summer. I had a light brown desk and a closet with a mirror on one side of my room. I had a bedside table drawer and that was about it, but it looked pretty after weeks of hard work getting it that way.

  I stood in front of the mirror and stared back at myself. It was clear that I was no Victoria secret model, but there was nothing that really stood out to me, and that was precisely the problem. I was just plain and ordinary. Serena liked my high cheekbones but I only saw them as something that jutted out a little more than the rest of my features.

   Grabbing the coke from my bedside table, I took a long gulp – taking in all the sugar, and feeling on a bigger high than I already had felt. I applied a little dab of pink lip gloss when Serena barged in, as if it was her room.

   “Ooh, give me some,” Serena said, holding out her hand for the lip gloss without so much as a hello.

    She plopped herself down on the rosy pink sheets of my bed and started rambling on about her life. Soon enough, we started talking about what we were going to pack, and all the boys that would be there for the summer, and soon enough we knew that we would need: summer dresses (lots, we would go shopping tomorrow), sandals, towels, sunglasses and much more.

    Serena went home earlier than usual cause of some kind of family commitment. Well, that’s how she put it. It was actually her Auntie coming over for the weekend. I skipped dinner and went straight to bed, and as I went to sleep that night I thought of all the fun we would have together, going to the beach, tanning, and living in the beach house I had heard so much about. If only I knew how badly my summer would turn out.