Your sick son is calling to me from his sickbed. I must anon. Merry Christmas, parents. I love you. Please let’s not move to Fiji.

“We love you!” they squealed from their side of the world.

I signed o and walked toward my brother’s room. I stopped rst at the bathroom to extract a disposable mask and gloves from the emergency

preparedness kit to place over my mouth and hands. No way was I get ing sick, too. Not with a red notebook possibly coming back my way.

I went into Langston’s room and sat down next to his bed. Benny had decided to be sick at his own apartment, which I appreciated, since

tending to not one but two patients on Christmas Day might have tipped me over the edge. Langston hadn’t touched the orange juice or saltines I

left for him a few hours earlier, the last time he cal ed “Lil l l l l l l yyyy …” to me from his room, at about the approximate time when on a

normal Christmas morning we should have been ripping through our gifts.

normal Christmas morning we should have been ripping through our gifts.

“Read to me,” Langston said. “Please?”

I wasn’t speaking to Langston that day, but I would read to him. I picked up the book at the point where we’d left o the night before. I read

aloud from A Christmas Carol. “ ‘It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is

nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour.’ ”

“That’s a nice quote,” Langston said. “Underline it and fold down the page for me, wil you?” I did as instructed. I can never decide what I think

about my brother and his book passage quotes. Sometimes it’s annoying that I can never open a book in our home and not nd some part of it that

Langston has annotated. I’d like to gure out what I think about the words myself without having to see Langston’s handwrit en comments, like

lovely or pretentious BS next to it; on the other hand, sometimes it’s interesting to nd his notes and to read them back and try to decipher why

that particular passage intrigued or inspired him. It’s a cool way of get ing inside my brother’s brain.

A text message came through on Langston’s phone. “Benny!” he said, grabbing for it. Langston’s thumbs went into hyper-motion in response. I

knew Mr. Dickens and I were nished for the time being.

I left his room.

Langston hadn’t even bothered to ask if we should exchange presents. We’d promised our parents we would wait for New Year’s Day to do our

gift exchanges, but I was wil ing to cheat, if asked.

I returned to my own room and saw I had ve voice mails on my phone: two from Grandpa, one from Cousin Mark, one from Uncle Sal, and

one from Great-aunt Ida. The great Christmas merry-go-round of phone cal s had begun.

I didn’t listen to any of the messages. I turned my phone o . I was on strike this Christmas, I decided.

When I told my parents last year I didn’t mind if we celebrated Christmas late this year, I obviously hadn’t meant it. How had they not gured

that out?

This should have been a real Christmas morning of tearing through presents and eating a huge breakfast and laughing and singing with my

family.

I was surprised to realize there was something I wanted more than that, though.

I wanted the red notebook back.

With nothing to do and no one to hang out with, I lay on my bed and wondered how Snarl’s Christmas was going. I imagined him living in some

swank artists’ loft in Chelsea, with a super-hip mom and her super-cool new boyfriend and they had, like, asymmetrical haircuts and maybe spoke

German. I imagined them sit ing around their Christmas hearth drinking hot cider and eating my lebkuchen spice cookies while the turkey roasted

in the oven. Snarl was playing the trumpet for them, wearing a beret, too, because suddenly I wanted him to be a musical prodigy who wore a hat.

And when he nished playing his piece, which he composed for them as a Christmas present, they cried and said, “Danke! Danke!” The piece was

so perfect and beautiful, his playing so exquisite, even Snarly Muppet seated by the hearth clapped its Muppet hands, a Pinocchio come to life

from the sound of such sweet trumpeting.

Since I couldn’t speak to Snarl myself and nd out how his Christmas was going, I decided to get dressed and take a walk in Tompkins Square

Park. I know al the dogs there. Because of the prior gerbil and cat incidents, my parents long ago mandated that it was bet er for me not to have

my own pets since I get too at ached. They compromised by al owing me to take on dog-walking jobs in the neighborhood, so long as they or

Grandpa knew the owners. This compromise has worked out nicely over the last couple years, as I have got en to spend quality dog time with

loads more dogs than I would have got en to know if I’d had my own, and I am also quite wealthy now.

The weather was weirdly warm and sunny for a Christmas Day. It felt more like June than December, yet another sign of the wrongness of this

particular Christmas Day. I sat down on a bench while people walked by with their dogs, and I cooed, “Hi, puppy!” to al the dogs I didn’t know,

and I cooed, “Hi, puppy!” to al the dogs I did know, but to those dogs, I pet them and fed them bone-shaped dog biscuits I’d baked the night

before, using red and green food coloring so the biscuits would appear festive. I didn’t talk except as necessary to the humans, but I listened to

them, and found out al the ways in which the Christmases of everyone else in the neighborhood were not sucking this year like mine was. I saw

their new sweaters and hats, their new watches and rings, heard about their new TVs and laptops.

But al I could think about was Snarl. I imagined him surrounded by doting parents and the exact presents he wanted today. I pictured him

opening up gifts of moody black turtle-necks, and angry novels by angry young men, and ski equipment just because I’d like to think there’s a

possibility we might one day go ski ng together even though I don’t know how to ski, and not one single English-Catalan dictionary.

Had Snarl gone to Dyker Heights yet? Since I’d turned my phone o and left it at home, the only way to nd out would be to go see Great-aunt

Ida, who was on my talk-to list for the day.

Great-aunt Ida lives in a town house on East Twenty-second Street near Gramercy Park. My family of four lives in a smal , cramped East Vil age

apartment (with no pets, grrr …) that my academic parents can a ord only because Grandpa owns the building; our whole apartment is about the

size of one oor of Great-aunt Ida’s house, which she occupies al by herself. She never married or had her own kids. She was a fabulously

successful art gal ery owner in her day; she did so wel for herself she could a ord to buy her own house in Manhat an. (Though Grandpa always

points out that she bought that house when the city was in economic turmoil, and the prior occupants practical y paid Great-aunt Ida to take it o

their hands. Lucky lady!) Her fancy house in her fancy neighborhood doesn’t mean Great-aunt Ida’s gone al snobby, though. She’s so not snobby, in

fact, that even though she has lots of money, she stil works one day a week at Madame Tussauds. She said she needs something to do, and she

likes hanging out with celebrities. Secretly I think she is writing a tel -al book about what happens between the wax people when no one’s

looking.

Langston and I cal Great-aunt Ida Mrs. Basil E. because of the book we loved when we were kids, From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E.

Frankweiler. That book’s Mrs. Basil E. is a rich old lady who sets the sister and brother in the book out on a treasure hunt in the Metropolitan