An ear-splitting beeping caused Grace Allen to wake with a start. Groaning she rolled over, pulling her pillow over her head to muffle her alarm clock. She hated college mornings. They always started too early and interrupted her dreams, yanking her back to reality, and with a god-awful headache to boot. Still unable to ignore the alarm even using her pillow to block the noise, she stretched out an arm in defeat, feeling around on her desk for the offending clock. She found it, snapped the button to ‘off’ and slammed it back onto the wooden desk with a hollow clunk. Then she stretched her legs out, arching her back so that her spine cracked, and yawning rolled onto her back, sitting up. She scratched her head vigorously as was her morning habit, and snaked down the bed a bit to the edge so she could slip her feet out onto the floor. The thick carpet greeted her feet, and she pushed off from the edge of the bed, standing up, stretching again. In the darkness she fumbled around until she found the shelf that her lamp stood on. She touched the base and the lamp illuminated, lighting the darkness with a soft warm glow. It revealed a medium sized room, containing an IKEA wardrobe, tallboy and desk. The carpet was a thick dark pink, complementing the paler baby pink walls, which were broken up by a pretty cream coloured 3D border with pink poppies printed on it. The wall that her window was in was pale lilac to complement the equally pale lilac of the curtains. Her bed was made of maple, and was dressed with simplistic mint green sheets, displaying a sequin and ribbon stitched pattern of embroidered flowers and butterflies on the sheer fabric appliquéd over the cotton duvet cover along the bottom half. She crossed the room to her tallboy and pulled the doors open, fumbling around for a hair band and scrunchie. She extricated them from the bag of makeup sat on her toiletries shelf and put them on top of the tallboy. Next she reached back behind the dozens of bottles and tubes and pulled out a tube of Neutrogena face wash, and her two Body Shop seaweed face creams. She pulled her small purple face towel off the radiator beneath her window, and quietly opened her door, padding out onto the landing on the balls of her feet, dodging creaky floorboards to the bathroom across from her room.
Her bedroom opened onto a small corridor that used to be the wardrobe for her room, but had been rebuilt into a passage to the bedroom of her sisters when the extension was built. The walls of which were pale cream, and bore the same pink carpet as her bedroom. The landing on the other hand was green; a pine green carpet with a pattern of small white geometric shapes every few inches in straight lines diagonally across it and mint green walls. Grace pushed the bathroom door open, and tiptoed inside, putting her armful of belongings on the toilet seat cover before turning to silently close and lock the door behind her. She reached out in the darkness for the little ceramic owl on the end of the pull-cord light switch; and cursed quietly as it bounced off her fingertips and hit the tiled wall with a crack. She caught it on its return swing and pulled it, switching on the light. After a few seconds the ventilation fan kicked in and began to hum quietly from above the room, in the loft. Grace cleared her throat and got on with washing her face, pulling on the grey cotton hair band and clawing her short brown hair into the scrunchie. Turning on the tap, as she waited for the boiler to wake up she scrutinised herself in the cabinet mirror above the basin. Her complexion was much better after swapping from the Body Shop face wash to the Neutrogena one, and she inspected the few small spots that were left on her hairline. Happy that they were slowly disappearing, she examined her eyes. The faintest shadow of dark patches were beginning to show, and she made a mental note to bring her bedtime forward an hour or so, so that she could get rid of them before she turned into a full on panda. She inspected her nose, carefully checking for unwanted hairs and suchlike. Remembering she hadn’t checked her eyes for sleep, she gently removed the dry little molecules of dust and mucus from the corners of her eyes. By now the tap had warmed up and she pulled the plug down with the lever behind the taps, watching as the water pooled in the bottom of the sink, slowly rising, casting a pretty pattern on the ceramic bottom, where the light hit the ripples. Turning off the tap, Grace cupped her hands in the water and splashed it over her face. When she had finished washing with the warm water, as she emptied the basin, she turned on the cold tap, waiting for it to turn ice cold, and splashed her face with it, to clear the remaining grogginess from her head. Patting her face dry with the purple towel, Grace then applied her two face creams, one a generalised spot reducer and complexion improver, the other a ‘Mattifying Day cream’. When she had finished her skincare regime, Grace wrapped her creams and washes up in the small towel, and turned off the light, before unlocking and opening the door to return to her room. She unravelled the toiletries from the towel, and dried off the individual containers so they wouldn’t damage her tallboy, then put them away, sliding the towel back over the radiator. She pressed the space bar on her computer’s keyboard and it hummed as it came out of hibernation mode. She turned the speakers on and double clicked the iTunes icon opening the music program so she could put on some music. She peered out of the window from between the curtains and watched the sheets of rain beating down in the half-light. Grace smiled to herself, thinking about how everyone she knew complained when it rained and was cold, and kept it to herself that she loved the rain and cold rather than tell people to avoid being questioned. She closed the curtain back up again and opened her wardrobe contemplating what to wear. She settled on a pair of dark blue jeans with a boot cut, a baby pink Fair Trade v-neck t-shirt from Marks and Spencer, a black cashmere jumper her mum had given her and her thick fleece lined winter boots. She pulled the various items’ clothes hangers from her wardrobe, hanging them on the handle of her tallboy, and then opened her lingerie drawer. She chose a new pair of girl boxers she had purchased from La Senza, and a pair of pale pink fleecy knee high socks. She turned back to the computer and double clicked the playlist she had titled “Songs from Hayley”. Typically, the song that came on first was “You’re Beautiful” by James Blunt and she smiled at the Cliché then changed it to “Warrior’s Dance” by The Prodigy.
She touched the lamp again, to increase the power of the light so that she could apply her makeup and straighten her hair. She began with the makeup. She didn’t use foundation, as her mum had told her it was bad for girls of her age because their skin was still adjusting, so she used a light powder instead.
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