Barbie In A Perfect Christmas Novels & Stories

The wheat has yet to ripen when my Grandma, Julia Simmon, appears to me in a dream. "There will be a plague of locusts in the autumn. Sell off the produce and raise fish to ensure the family has income." I, Vanessa West, convince my parents to harvest the wheat for grain and feed before irrigating the fields to raise fish. Then, a severe drought strikes and the fish die, leaving my family drowning in debt. We're at a loss to know what to do. Then, Grandma appears in my dreams again. "There are gold bars buried under the oak tree on the hill at our old home. Selling them will sort out our debts and leave you with money to spare." After telling my father, Alan West, this, he digs up a whole crate of white powder. The police happen to be staking out the area. They have him arrested, thinking that he means to buy the drugs. For the amount he gets caught with, he faces life imprisonment. My mother, Hannah Smith, is unable to bear the sight of this and faints on the spot. Again, Grandma appears to me in a dream and offers guidance. "Dr. Hank Vance at Central Hospital can cure her. If you don't hurry, she'll be in danger!" Desperate to save my mother, I threaten Dr. Vance with my life, and he agrees to operate on her. Then, my boyfriend gets into a car accident and urgently needs treatment. However, he succumbs to his injuries due to my asking for Dr. Vance. In the meantime, Mom doesn't receive treatment in time. As she is dying, Mom weeps, asking me why I ruined the entire family. Then, she passes away on the operating table. My boyfriend's parents think I am responsible for their son's death, and they stab me 18 times. While being rushed to the emergency room, I see Grandma again. However, she is grinning maliciously as she plunges a knife into my heart, mimicking the stabs I got from real life and giving me a ruptured heart. I died without understanding why Grandma's appearances led to my family's end. I open my eyes and find out that I've returned to the day Grandma told me to sell our crops.

Of the five boys who'd been raised to marry me, Lance Riverford was the one who hated me the most. And yet, he was the one I loved the most. Three times I was reborn, and three times I forced him to be my husband. Each time ended the same way—he and his childhood sweetheart killed me. When I opened my eyes for the fourth time and met that same look of loathing in his eyes, something inside me finally let go. I turned away and chose his rival, Jace Elden, as my husband instead. But at the wedding, Lance demanded with tears in his eyes, "Why did you choose someone else this time? Are you doing this just to spite me?" That was when I realized… he'd been reborn too.

“Who the hell changed the screw tolerance by 0.007 mm?” “I did. Is there a problem?” Kimmy Zabel, our department’s “good-luck charm” and full-time slacktivist, did not even look up from her compact mirror, where she was carefully applying lip gloss. “It just didn’t look right, so I tweaked it. Do you really have to yell at me?” The production line had been running on the wrong spec for twenty-four hours. I hit the emergency stop. Keeping my voice steady took some effort. “These parts no longer meet export standards. If we miss tomorrow’s shipment, even a month of overtime wouldn’t cover the penalties.” “It’s one tiny number. You’re being so dramatic!” Kimmy snapped her makeup case shut. “Anyway, it’s New Year’s Eve. I’ve got a date. I’m not staying here to suffer with you people.” Before she even reached the door, I gestured to the staff to pull the shutters down. “For precision components like these, one number translates into a million-dollar loss. You can take these defective units and explain them to the regulators.”

Caleb Smith's best friend, Kevin Baker, calls me in a panic and tells me that Caleb has been in a terrible racing accident. Without a second thought, I rush to the hospital and donate two pints of blood to save him. As I walk past a hospital room, I freeze. There's Caleb—standing perfectly healthy beside a hospital bed. Kevin throws his head back and howls with laughter. "It's April Fools' Day. We actually managed to trick Winnie Jewel into donating two pints of blood. Too bad that it's useless, though. We might as well feed it to the stray dogs." Vivian Jewel, lying in a hospital bed, looks up at Caleb. "Caleb, don't you think that's a bit much?" A fond smile curves Caleb's lips as he replies, "I can't help it. Where does Winnie get the nerve to take your place? She should have stayed in the orphanage, but since she forced her way back into the Jewel family, she can't blame us for taking your side." Kevin jumps in eagerly. "This year marks the eighth year since she returned to the Jewel family, and the eighth year we've been pranking her." Their undisguised mockery spills out of the room. I pull out my phone and contact my aunt, Gianna Jewel. "Aunt Gianna, I’ve decided. Let's leave the country."

I went on a graduation trip with my boyfriend, Marcus Hale, only to have my shameless roommate, Vanessa Quinn, tag along. On the way to Rybia, our plane was caught in violent turbulence and plunged toward the Egete Ocean. Because of a malfunction, only half the oxygen masks dropped. The spiteful Vanessa snatched the oxygen mask meant for a Rybian socialite, Layla Al-Farouq. Unable to stand by, I shared mine with the woman, saving her life. After the emergency landing, her powerful oil tycoon husband, Khalid Al-Farouq, adopted me as his goddaughter out of gratitude, while throwing the vicious Vanessa into the Kibera Slums. Later, I married Marcus, but on the day we went skydiving, he suddenly unbuckled my parachute and shoved me from ten thousand meters above, leaving me to crash into nothing but broken flesh. "If you hadn’t meddled and saved that old woman, my darling Vivi would still be alive!" Only then did I realize the two of them had been betraying me all along. When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the exact moment the plane first took off.

The intern secretly submitted a voluntary pay-cut application on my behalf. As a result, my salary dropped from $10,000 to $2,000. When I found out and confronted him, my boss and colleagues all defended him. "The company is not doing great right now. Oscar was just trying to save costs for us. Do you have to nickel-and-dime over this?" With my salary so low, I couldn't afford the special medication for my chronic migraines, and one day I passed out at my desk during an attack. But the intern snuck a video of me unconscious and posted it on the company's website. He even whipped up a detailed 100-page slideshow breaking down how I was slacking off on the clock and dumping all my work on him. Overnight, I was labeled a workplace bully. My boss gave me the cold shoulder, and my colleagues whispered about me. Even worse, some extreme "anti-workplace-bullying" activists tracked me down to my home, showed up with two cans of gasoline, and burned me and my parents alive. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on that very day when the intern had submitted my pay-cut form. In this second chance at life, I would make sure everyone saw the intern for who he truly was.

On the day of the company's annual gala, I quit my job and went back to the countryside, using up all my savings to help my best friend raise her daughter. She had died tragically, swept away by the river while trying to retrieve my hundred-million-dollar gala prize ticket that had fallen into the water. Wracked with guilt, I honored her dying wish and married her husband. After the wedding, I sold my blood and even a kidney just to make ends meet, raising my stepdaughter with everything I had. Eventually, she fulfilled her dream of winning the Best Actress Award and was about to marry the richest man in the country. But just as I was preparing to give a speech at her wedding, I saw my best friend, who had been dead for over a decade. She clutched my stepdaughter's hand and accused me of being a homewrecker who seduced her husband, and even claimed I had been the one who pushed her into the river all those years ago. Only then did I learn the truth—she had faked her death all those years ago, just to steal my prize ticket and travel the world, leaving me behind to raise her family. The shock sent me into a cerebral hemorrhage. When I opened my eyes again, I had gone back to the day she drowned.

To cheer up their depressed adopted daughter, Ashley Reid, my parents don't dare to treat me nicely. They've even locked me in a pitch-black room more than 700 times, just to put a smile on her face. At first, they feel guilty toward me. But eventually, even my older brother, Liam Reid, who used to care for me the most, treats it like it's all perfectly reasonable. When Ashley's depression finally starts to ease, I work up the courage to kneel and beg them to seal off that room for good. But at her birthday party, simply because I'm wearing the only T-shirt I own, she starts tearing up and asks my parents if I don't like her. My parents and Liam rush to comfort her and, yet again, lock me away in that dark, endless room. "Summer, you're her elder sister. You have to be more considerate of her feelings." "If you hadn't insisted on wearing something so tacky for her birthday party, she wouldn't have gotten so upset." "You've gotten used to it after all these years, right? One more time won't matter to you." I curl up in the corner, gripping my hair, unable to say a word. Three days later, they finally let me out. They remind me not to upset Ashley again. But I just stare at them blankly. "Sorry, who are you?"

Before we submitted our college applications, the popular girl in our class, the billionaire’s daughter, suddenly said she could get all of us into Harvard or Yale. “My parents donated several buildings to those schools. Getting you all admitted is nothing.” Most of my classmates’ college entrance exam scores were still a long way from those schools, but they believed her. They gave up submitting their own applications and counted on her to pull strings so they could get into college. In my last life, I realized her promise was unreliable. I immediately urged them not to give up on their applications, to keep a backup plan, and I called their parents one by one. But that infuriated the popular girl. She mocked me for being poor and said I did not understand how the upper class worked. She claimed I had ruined everyone’s future. My boyfriend also snapped at me for being jealous. “You’re just jealous that Lissy’s family is rich. You can’t stand the thought of all of us going to Harvard or Yale. So what if you have good grades? You could work your whole life and still never catch up to what her family built over three generations.” For the sake of our three years as classmates, I did not argue with them. But before the deadline, when I found out they still had not submitted their applications, I called the police and exposed the popular girl’s fake identity. The popular girl was condemned by everyone. In despair, she jumped into a river and killed herself. My classmates all said she deserved it and thanked me for saving their futures. But at our class farewell dinner, my boyfriend poisoned my drink, and the entire class watched coldly as I writhed in pain. “At worst, we would have lost our chance at college. Lissy lost her life!” When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day the popular girl claimed she could pull strings for us.

When the college admission notice arrived, I suddenly developed a high fever and was bedridden. My sister encountered a kidnapping on her way to help me collect the notice, and her life was uncertain. My parents hated me deeply. After tearing up my admission notice, they forced me to give up my studies and work in a factory. Later, I experienced a kidnapping as well. After narrowly escaping, I hid in an abandoned factory and sent them a message for help. My dad called me and shouted at me without restraint, “Lena, are you even human? How could you play such a joke on us on Jessica's memorial day!” “Do you have any idea how much your mom and I wished it had been you who died back then?” In my last moments before death, their insults echoed in my ears. I was tortured and killed, turned into a monster, and my body was thrown into a stinking ditch for three full days. Even my father, the most experienced forensic expert, couldn’t recognize me. When my sister returned home with the guy she eloped with years ago, my dad had just restored my appearance through technology. They knelt before my decaying corpse and cried until they fainted.