Achieving Unbroken

-Chapter 56-

Achieving Unbroken
Chapter Fifty Six

—

"In these coming years
Many things will change
But the way I feel
Will remain the same"
The End Of All Things | Panic! At The Disco

—

Jason
[Saturday, February 23rd, 2019]

"SURPRISE!"

Ho-ly shit.

In front of me, holding my hands, is Lilla; and she is beaming at me with hope. Mom, and Mama and the twins and Dad and Carl and Penelope are all standing behind her along with both sets of my grandparents and friends from school and other family members—all with the same smile on their face.

"Oh my God," I finally look around the backyard, seeing how they strung lights and and set up the outdoor furniture. "This is insane—who did all of this?"

All eyes shift to the girl in front of me.

"Lil?"

"I— I may have had a hand in it," she tells me, shooting me another nervous smile.

"It was her idea!" Somebody yells, presumably Peyton. The two of us chuckle.

"Your idea?" I pull her hands towards me and smirk. She squirms.

"Kind of."

God. Is there anything she can't do?

"But! But, your family helped me out so much."

The whole thing makes me grin. This kind of happiness used to be rare, but now it's more and more common, and I can't help but blame that on Lilla.

"This is amazing," I look at her to say it, but then look at the crowd of people. "This is amazing!"

The whole backyard erupts into cheers and screams of happy birthday. Lilla clasps my hand and pulls me into the madness, and I barely have time to put my arm around her before family members are taking away my ability to breathe with their hugs.

When Penelope brings me into the house, I get to see the mountain of presents that have been stacked on the dining room table, the black and gold balloons in every corner of the downstairs, and especially the trays off food that Penelope was a slave to for the past few hours.

That's another thing that she emphasizes Lilla's help with. And after talking to Mom, Dad and Loraine, it sounds like they were the ones "helping" and Lilla took the lead on this.

"She wanted to do something sweet for you," Vince explains to me as he sips on a Cherry Coke. "She's an annoyingly good person. Get her to rob a bank or something."

"Spray paint some weird shit about Kinley in the cafeteria," Patrick offers. The guys and I all laugh.

They continue coming up with crazy conspiracies of things that Lilla could do, but I keep thinking about the first thing he said. That she wanted to do this for me.