Holiday Away

Chapter 6

We left the mall three hours later.

I wish I could blame our time of departure on the holiday season, or even the change in weather, but Eleanor was the one to carry that honour, all by herself.

She insisted we checked out three different clothing shops, all of which she left without buying a single thing. That wasn't even the bad part, no.

In each of the unfortunate stores my bubbly buddy stepped in, she would spend a good amount of time browsing through dresses, and tops, and skirts and, winter coats. Killian and Jacob abandoned me to my fate, as the former stepped out to answer a phone call and the latter just... disappeared.

It didn't bother me as much as what Eleanor did though. Not in the least. My friend still held the title as queen of the unexpected.

When my eyes roamed through the shop as I pressed myself against the wall--in an attempt to be as inconspicuous as possible--I saw my friend pick up a dress, check the size, and place it against her chest. She even went as far as trying on  the damn dress--which was a more than perfect fit that complimented her figure perfectly--then put it back up once she changed out of it.

On all those occasions, which I gradually lost count of, because they kept happening over and over and... over again, she would end up speaking to the store attendants. Still, Eleanor didn't buy a single item.

It was something I couldn't do. I always felt like I had done something illegal when I walked into a store and left empty-handed. But today, Eleanor and I sauntered out of Nordstrom, where a long line of people were waiting to pay for their items. We shuffled out of Macy's, where there wasn't nearly as much room to even consider spreading out your arms without poking out three pairs of eyes, hitting away a good number of goods people carried against their chests, or accidentally touching those chest. And we skipped out of Forever 21, where the customers looked at us twice as long.

As expected, the twins weren't awfully crazy about the time we returned but they didn't comment much on it. They gave us the eye. It was similar to the one my mother used anytime we got a visitor at home, the same one that had you teleport out of the room in a millisecond.

Eleanor and I got in the back, and we shared a bar of the Kingsbite chocolate, even though the twins told her she could get a stomachache from it.

"Is this car even moving?" Killian groaned, knocking his head against the window lightly. We had been stuck in a traffic jam for a while now, flooded by a mass of vehicles and constant blaring horns which made their way into your thoughts, breaking an invisible fourth wall.

I sighed out my answer as I felt the car inch forward. An inch was a move. "Yes."

Eleanor glanced back, holding the back of the seat for balance as she squinted into the darkness. "I can still see the bus stop we were at thirty minutes ago," she groaned, sitting back down with a frown.

Jacob's eyes met ours in the rearview mirror as he stared with disdain. "This is all your fault, so I don't see why you should be the one complaining. I didn't ask you to play around with stuff at the mall for four hours."

"I wasn't playing," Eleanor retorted.

Killian sat up as he stretched his neck to look at his sister. "You didn't even buy shit."

Crossing her arms, Eleanor leaned back into the seat, admittedly accepting defeat. "That doesn't mean I was playing."

A beat or two passed.

"You see," Jacob grumbled. "Because of you we're caught in the snow."

I didn't realize there was snowfall until Jacob's spoke out, so I lifted my head from where it lay on my hand, and looked out the window.