I open my eyes. Will and Josh are gone. I’m no longer underwater. And the polar bear has turned into my brother, wrapped up in his silver-and-white astronaut-themed snowsuit.
“Why is it so cold in here?” I sit up, stretch, and pull the blankets to my neck. “It’s like there’s no heat.”
“Mom wants you in the kitchen.” Bug’s got this weird, you’re-pretty-much-dead warning in his tone that’s rather off-putting, especially since he just yanked me out of a potentially good dream about number seventy-seven and/or fifty-six.
“But it’s freezing in—” Oh no. No no no! My stomach drops as the red warning strip from the gas bill—shoved somewhere in the bottom of my backpack and forgotten—flashes in front of my eyes.
I throw off my blankets, bolt out of bed, and yank a sweatshirt over my head, almost flattening Bug. In our tiny kitchen down the hall, Mom’s on the phone, pacing, one hand wrapped around a mug. The steam from her coffee is so thick it looks like her hand is boiling the liquid on its own.
“How soon before it can be turned on?” she asks. “I realize that, but it’s Christmas Eve. No. I’ve got two children here. I already—yes. I’ll hold.”
I make for the coat closet and dig out my boots. Strolling down to the service center in my pajamas is not high on my Christmas Eve priority list, but if I don’t kick into proactive overdrive before Mom gets off that call, I might not be alive to see another holiday.
“I c-c-c-can’t believe you didn’t p-p-p-pay the bill.” Bug’s teeth chatter as he tucks his hands inside his snowsuit.
“You’re the one who tried to throw it out,” I remind him.
“Anthrax detection is an imperfect science.”
“You’re not helping.” I pull on my gloves and avoid Mom’s stare. The gas company—and Mom—knows we’re always late, but I’ve never totally missed a last-chance payment before. Not like this. They don’t usually shut off service in the winter. If the pipes freeze, they could burst, and dealing with burst pipes is way more expensive for them than chasing down a few late payments.
They must be really mad at us this time.
“I’m still here,” Mom says into the phone. “Oh, thank God. No, we’ll make the payment today. Okay, Thursday then. Do I need to do anything else? Thanks again—you have no idea—right. Merry—bye.” She sets the phone back into the receiver and lets out a gust of breath. “Should be back on in an hour or two. They’ll call later to make sure it’s working.”
“Mom, I’m sorry. I’ll go now. I had the bill in my bag and I totally forgot. I was busy with—”
“It’s okay.” She downs her coffee, shoves a few things from the counter into her purse, and grabs her keys. “Go on Thursday as soon as they open. And please let me know if you don’t have the cash. I don’t want to find out like this again.”
“Sorry. I won’t—”
“Since you have your coat on, run and get some milk? We’re out, and Trick needs help with the Christmas Eve specials, and—”
“When are you coming home?” Bug’s bouncing up and down like—well, like a kid on Christmas. “Are we gonna do the tree tonight?”
“I’ll probably be pretty late,” Mom says. “Hudson will help you.”
The bouncing stops. I fight off a shiver.
Mom kneels in front of him. “The good news is that Hurley’s is closed tomorrow, and we’ll have the whole day together. Just the three of us.” She looks at me to confirm. I was planning to hit Dani’s for brunch with her parents, but no way I’m risking Mom’s disappointment now. I nod.
“Great. Trick’s coming for dinner tomorrow,” she says. “He’s cooking up a bunch of stuff for me to bring home tonight. Sound good?”
“What about pumpkin pie?” Bug asks.
“We don’t have pie, sweetie. Maybe your sister can do pumpkin cupcakes?” Mom looks at me with the same anguish that flooded her voice with the gas company. It’s quickly becoming her signature scent. What’s on everyone’s holiday wish list this year? Desperation, the hot new fragrance line by Beth Avery.
“Whatever you want,” I tell Bug. And I mean it, too, because if one lousy batch of cupcakes is all it takes to give my brother a merry merry and atone for practically freezing out the whole family on Christmas, well … deck the halls with boughs of frosting, fa la la la la, la freaking la.
They’re showing a retro Smurfs Christmas special on TV, so I leave Bug in front of the electronic babysitter with Trick’s box of robot parts and an extra wool blanket and head out for Operation Find a Store That Isn’t Closed. No way I’ll get anything nearby—all the local mom-and-pops are locked down for the holiday, except of course for Hurley’s. The world could be in the final throes of the apocalypse and Mom would find some way to keep the coffee on in that joint.
“No room at the inn?” I ask the desolate streets as I pull away from our block. “No problem! Come on down to Hurley’s Homestyle Diner, where there’s always room for wayward travelers, especially on holidays when we should be home with our own families, but never mind all that.”
Stupid.
As I crisscross from one side of town to the other, I scan the radio. All the stations are doing that 24-7 Christmas cheer crap. I don’t feel very ho-ho-ho today, but I hum along with Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” anyway, searching in vain for milk. The sky is still for now, and the crisp white sheets left by last night’s flurries have gone gray, mottled and muddied by plows and salt trucks. The houses on this side of town are bigger than the one we share with Mrs. Ferris, but they’re older, more weather-beaten. They remind me of the old people at the diner, carrying the collective failure of this town in the slump of their shoulders, in the weariness of their steps.
I downshift as I cross a snow mound pushed into the intersection by the plows, tires digging through the slush, and then, without thinking, I turn onto Sibley Court.
The house is easy to find.
In three years, the place from the outside hasn’t changed—green-gray with white trim, badly in need of a paint job. A wreath hangs solidly on the front door, tied with a red velvet bow, and through the windows, the warm glow of the living room radiates into the icy cold day. Inside, behind the gauzy curtains, a woman drapes a strand of blinking colored lights over the tree. They put it in the same spot we used to, right in front of the big bay window.
We were pretty Norman Rockwell-y back in the day—at least, I thought so. Dad would take the week off, and even Mom skipped a few hours at Hurley’s on Christmas tree day. While we waited for Dad to do the lights, Mom made cinnamon hot cocoa with whole milk in a big pot on the stove, spiking two mugs with Baileys Irish Cream for her and Dad. Lights twinkling, mugs steaming, Christmas music filling the room, we’d cover the tree in ornaments, Bug toddling around the lowest boughs as we hung each glass ball, each handmade noodle wreath, each piece of tinsel with care. When the last box was finally empty, Dad would lift me up so I could place the blue-haired angel—the one he’d made in fifth-grade Boy Scouts, which, with each passing season, lost as much hair as he did—on the treetop. Bug and I were sometimes afraid of her because she looked so haunted and mean, but it was all part of the tradition, part of our family. Mom would take pictures and we’d drink from our frothy mugs and Bug and I would sing carols and when I look through that window now, tiny colored tree lights blurred by the curtains and the frosted glass, I wonder if I could just walk in the front door, stomp the snow from my boots, stick ole Blue Hair on the tree, and reclaim our old life.
The woman inside stretches on her toes to hang another ornament, and I put the truck in gear and drive on through the slush, all the way across town, all the way back to Blake Street without the milk.
“I wish we could get a real tree,” Bug says. “Then at least we’d have one real tradition, since that whole Santa thing’s a bust. I mean, if parents are gonna make up a cool story, at least do it realistically. Like, have the guy use FedEx or something—no way reindeer can fly with all that weight. Not to mention the Earth is about twenty-five thousand miles around, so to hit every house—”