Chapter 1

I, Billie Valentine, woke to the sound of my alarm clock ringing with that deadly piercing sound meaning that my time in bed was over. I abruptly slammed the "off" button down, without breaking the clock, and forced myself out from under the warm duvet onto the floor. My dark brown hair was in "bed head" mode and it was made worse by the grease which made it look wet. I hurried myself to the bathroom and jumped into the shower. After half an hour, I looked decent with clean hair and make-up on. I threw on a navy polo shirt and skinny jeans and also tied my hair back in a high pony tail before grabbing my blue backpack and heading for the stairs, when I realized what the date was. The 1st of December. No. I jogged down the stairs but immediately stopped on the last step when I heard Christmas songs playing. At that moment I probably would have punched the wall. But instead, I gritted my teeth together, clenched my fist and carried on down into the living room. My mum and my younger brother, Andrew, were singing along to the carols that were being played on the radio. I couldn't stop myself from storming in and aggressively unplugging it. Silence. Mum turned around to look at me, horrified. "Billie, what is wrong?" she asked anxiously. "I don't like Christmas, and you know that!" I snapped back. I walked around my brother who looked as worried as mum did, but I ignored him and pulled on my brown Uggs. "Do you think you're on the "nice" list this year, Bill?" Andrew said, obviously trying to make a conversation. I gave him a "will-you-shut-up" stare and pulled my final boot on. He sighed. "Hey!" Andrew shouted and ran up to the window. "Jack Frost is here!" It was snowing pretty heavily, and Andrew, being the stupid 9 years old he is, was jumping up and down excitedly as if he had seen the world's biggest Action Man outside. I didn't get it. It was just snow. What was so exciting about that? Mum was smiling, probably happy that someone in this house was happy about seeing a snow blizzard. "That Jack Frost better not make it icy, last year I nearly fell over because of him!" She laughed, trying to go along with the myth about some boy who wasn't even real just so Andrew had something to be excited about. Okay, that was it. I walked up to him, looked down at his face and shouted, "Will you just shut up?! God sakes! If you talk about any of those stupid people from fairy tales again I will make you shut up!" He was stunned. I could tell that he wasn't expecting that. "Santa Claus and frickin' Jack Frost or any other mythical legends are not real you moron!" I screamed that at the top of my lungs and practically stormed out the house, grabbing my jacket as I slammed the front door shut behind me and angrily stomped through the blizzard to get away from my house. I don't think I have ever felt so bad in my entire life.

If you haven't worked out already, I hate Christmas. So yeah I'm 16 but most girls my age look forward to Christmas, whereas I don't. Also, people my age don't believe in Santa Claus, but they'll still pretend they do for their younger sibling's sake. But I don't. I've just told my brother that Santa isn't real, and that must have broken his heart. Seeing as though he's 9, he believes in other legends like the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and the Sandman. Oh, but let's not forget, he believes in Jack Frost. Jack Frost. I mean come on! Who actually believes in Jack Frost? Well let's say I used to, but not anymore. You see, this time last year I was 15 and then I did believe in Santa, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, the Sandman and Jack Frost. However, something happened to me. I don't know what that was or how it happened, but when I woke up this year on the 1st of January, I didn't believe in them...at all. It was as though something had just "switched off" inside of me.

I shoved my cold hands into my coat pocket and carried on walking, not sure of where I was going or where I would end up. After 15 minutes, I found myself in town. It was a Saturday meaning that every shop on the street was packed and crowded with people buying clothes for winter and people buying food and drinks. I stopped outside of a fairly quiet café wondering whether I should go in and get a drink myself. I delved into my pocket and found a £5 note and pushed open the door. The café was small, but was big enough to fit a good amount of tables and chairs in it. Only a few of the tables at the front of the room were full, but there were plenty other free ones at the back. I walked over to the counter and put in my order. A man, who was probably in his mid-twenties, handed my coffee over. I passed over the £5 note and took the coffee to a small table in the very back corner. It probably would have been boiling, but since I was freezing it wasn't too bad. I had only been out for an hour, so I decided to go and have a look at the shops on the high-street. Most of the clothes in the shops were ridiculously expensive though. There was a nice tie dye shirt that was being sold for £45, but there was no way I could afford something that cost that much! I would have stayed in the shop longer, but Christmas songs were being played and there was no way that I'd want to cause a scene. So instead, I left the shop not because I was fed up of the stupid prices, but because Christmas songs were being played. My God, I'm such a bar humbug!

Okay! So here's the first chapter :D I really hope that you guys like this, so please tell me what you think about it. I know that it's not very long, but I promise that the next one will be longer! This is from Billie's point of view just incase you didn't know, which I know probably most of you guys did aha. But anyways, the next chapter will be out soon and that will feature more characters. Woop! Thanks for reading this :)