KAT
LUKE IS DUE TO ARRIVE IN EDMONTON AT 13:57 ON FLIGHT AC 2157 ON THE last day of school before the holidays. In geography, I watch the clock and say a silent prayer that the plane’s landing gear doesn’t stick and that the runway isn’t icy and that visibility is clear enough. I hate planes. When we moved here, Dad flew out first for work and to help Granddad, and I drove in the moving truck with Mom. I wish Luke could have driven instead of flown. One blazing inferno . . . two emergency exits . . .
When the clock ticks to 1:58, then 1:59, then eventually around to 2:30 and my phone still hasn’t buzzed with horrified messages saying, “Oh no, Luke’s plane has crashed and he’s dead,” my heartbeat slows to a normal speed, and a grin creeps onto my face.
For the rest of the school day and my entire bus ride home, I sing in my head, to the tune of “O Christmas Tree”: O Luke is home. O Luke is home. It’s Christmas break and Luke is home.
When I get home, I barrel through the front door, get directed downstairs by Mom, and find him in the basement bedroom, where I bury him in a bear hug. Neither of us are big huggers, but I don’t care.
“Hiya, champ,” he says as I pull away.
“Hiya, sport,” I say right back. “I bet I’m taller than you now.”
“You are not. There’s no way.” He drops the shirt he was folding and turns around, back to me. I whirl around and we stand back-to-back, smacking each other on the head as we try to measure. We end up having to call Mom down to judge; it’s that close. In the end, though, at least according to Mom’s nonexpert judgment, he is still half an inch taller than me, which, though I wail at the injustice of it, is actually just fine. I would happily stop growing; if I get much taller, I’ll start standing out.
For supper, Mom serves up a feast almost as elaborate as we can expect for Christmas dinner in a few days. Except with ham instead of turkey and with applesauce instead of cranberries. And no stuffing, of course, since it would be weird to stuff a ham.
Luke keeps tossing glances at Granddad as they both shovel down their mashed potatoes. Granddad looks stronger to me now—not strong, just stronger. More like a ravenous zombie than a fleshless skeleton. And he doesn’t wobble so much when he walks. But Luke didn’t see what he looked like three months ago, hasn’t seen him for probably a year, since Granddad last visited us in Ontario. I’ve gotten so used to zombie Granddad, I can’t remember what he looked like then, but judging by Luke’s raised eyebrow, I bet it was not like this.
Aside from that, though, and aside from the fact that we’re all in Alberta instead of Ontario, everything is the same as it was before Luke went away to school. Dad asks Luke what book he’s reading—a murder mystery, of course. I beat both Dad and Luke to complimenting Mom about the food, stealing all the points for best manners. Luke glares at me. Dad is oblivious. Luke tells a bad joke. Mom tells a worse joke. Granddad tells a good joke, which is different from before because Granddad wasn’t at our family dinners in Ontario, but I’m so used to Granddad being around now that it feels the same.
Luke asks Dad about his work and actually listens to Dad’s answer. I was worried that university life and independence were making Luke selfish and unreliable, but he’s back to the same old Luke.
“Hey, Luke,” I say, changing the topic, “how many of your friends did you end up testing?”
Luke chews and chews, swallows, takes a huge gulp of water, then finally looks at me. “What?”
“My project. Did you do all five?”
“Your project?” He stabs another piece of ham with his fork.
“Yes, you dunce, my science project.”
“Kat!” Mom says.
Luke’s eyebrows rise in understanding, then fall in something else. Something not good. He swears.
“Luke!” Mom says. She hates swearing.
“What?” I say. “What happened?”
“I completely forgot,” he says. “Sorry, champ.”
“But you said—”
“Yeah, I know, but I had that exam and stuff. It was a busy week.”
I stare at him, unblinking, waiting for the “Ha-ha, I fooled you. I actually tested fifty-seven people!” But it doesn’t come. University’s changed him after all.
“Sorry,” he says again. Then he shoves the mouthful of ham into his mouth and starts chewing again, as if he hasn’t just told me that the world is ending. I can’t believe him. I wish Meg wasn’t still grounded so I could call her and complain about what an idiot he’s become.
One cumulous clouds . . . two lightning strike . . .
“What’s this testing?” Granddad asks. “I’ll be a lab rat if you need one.”
Granddad, zombie lab rat, doing a speed run in LotS—I can’t help but smile just a little at the thought. I scrape my heart off the ground and gather its remains into a bloody pile, press it back into my chest. Meg said she would do fifteen; that leaves only five for me. I can do five, I can.
“Thanks, Granddad,” I say. Also, I kick Luke in the leg under the table. Just once. But hard.
MEG
ON CHRISTMAS MORNING, A SHARP PAIN IN MY SHINS STARTLES ME AWAKE. When my eyes flicker open, Nolan’s face is inches from my own. His dark-brown eyes stare right into mine. “It’s Christmas,” he whispers, like a creepy but excited little doll. Then I register the singing.
I roll over and sit up. Kenzie is jumping up and down on the bed, sometimes landing on the mattress, sometimes on my shins. Her Little Mermaid nightgown flaps up and down as she sings, “Christmas Christmas Santa frog. Christmas Christmas Christmas dog.” I grab her and pull her onto my lap, and Nolan and I both tickle her bare feet as she squeals.
Then we all tiptoe—not so quietly—past Mom’s room and downstairs to survey the loot. Nolan’s and Kenzie’s eyes light up as they spot the tree and all the presents beneath it, but my gaze catches on something else—a glint of green. My phone is on the coffee table, sparklingly beautiful. Mom’s finally returned it to me. I snatch it up. It’s only six thirty a.m., but as Nolan and Kenzie crawl around, practically drooling as they examine the heap under the tree, I type out a Merry Christmas message to Kat and then to Grayson.
I drop down onto the floor beside Nolan, and he nuzzles against my arm like a cat. Kenzie violently shakes a Santa-covered box. I think I love the halflings most on Christmas. “Should we open our stockings?” I ask, and they both nod frantically like little woodpeckers.
Later, after Mom comes downstairs and we all have breakfast—leftover Christmas ham from last night and poppy-seed cake, as always—we sprawl out on the living room floor with our mugs of hot chocolate and tear into the colorful heap. I open a jar of skateboard wax and some funky neon wheels that look like candy Life Savers from “Santa.”
Then Mom tosses me a blue bag with green tissue jutting out the top. It bounces into my lap with a crinkling of paper. For a moment, I catch the faintest whiff of sawdust before the scent is overwhelmed by ham and pineapple and candy canes.
“From Stephen,” Mom mouths uncomfortably at me. My stomach churns, but I ignore it. I will take whatever Stephen has given me. I will take it, I will enjoy it, and I will not say thank you. I rip the tissue out, dive in with my hand, pull out a fluffy white lump. It stares up at me with adorable glass eyes.
Kenzie bounces over, pressing her face into its fake fur. “Aw, polar bear,” she purrs.
Stephen-the-Leaver and I spent so much time watching the polar bears, that day at the zoo. The baby polar bear was the cutest. Over and over, she would gleefully clamber onto the barrel, then slip off with an epic splash. I could almost hear her laughing along with us, along with me and Stephen, except then he wasn’t Stephen, he was “Dad.”
“I don’t want it,” I say, shoving the thing off my lap.
“Mine,” Kenzie says, claiming it with a smothering hug to her chest.
“Fine, whatever, just take it away.” I climb up off the floor and onto the couch beside Mom. In a few days, the halflings will scamper out the door, off to celebrate a second Christmas with Dad—their dad, not mine. I rest my head on Mom’s shoulder. “Can I go to Grayson’s tomorrow? Helen said—”
“Helen?”
“Sorry, Grayson’s mom. That’s what I meant, sorry. Grayson said that his mom said that I could come over anytime over the holidays.” I hurry onward before she lectures me about how she’s fine with me dating a white boy as long as I don’t pick up any disrespectful habits, like calling adults by their first name. “So can I?”
Mom kisses me on the forehead, right along the hairline. “All right,” she says, giving my shoulder a squeeze. At least my grounding is over.
KAT
CHRISTMAS AFTERNOON IS THE EYE OF THE STORM, HALFTIME IN A basketball game.
Christmas morning is a flurry of wrapping paper, spinach frittata and fruit salad, arguments over who gets to open their presents first—or in the case of me and Dad, who gets to open their presents last. This evening will be another flurry, this time of turkey and Christmas pudding and a family game of Clue.
The afternoon—the in-between—is peaceful nothingness. No traditions or festivities. Just a moment to breathe. Dad reads his new book. Mom scurries about in the kitchen. Luke taps away on his phone, probably chatting with his secret girlfriend. Granddad slides a rook forward three spaces. It bumps a pawn, and the gentle clatter as it topples over sounds like the rattling of bones in Granddad’s fingers. His face and shoulders have fleshed out in the past few months, but his fingers are still just skin wrapped around bone.
He rights the pawn and nods at me, a silent “your turn.”
My phone chirrups as my knight charges into the fray, and because it’s Christmas, I allow myself to pick it up and read the text.
My grounding is over!!!!!!! Its a Xmas miracle! :D
“What are you grinning about? Some boy writing to you?”
“What? Granddad. No, of course not.” Boys don’t write to me. Which is good, because I think I’d die of a heart attack if one did.
“Well you’re grinnin’ like a raccoon on garbage day.”
I laugh, a breathy laugh that is no sound, just air. “It’s just Meg. She’s not grounded anymore.”
Granddad sets down his pawn with a thud. “Well, let’s go then.” His chair’s shoved backward as he lurches to his feet.
“Go where?”
“To Meg’s. You’ve had that package sitting there for weeks.” He points with his thumb. “It’s about time we delivered it.”
Meg’s Christmas present sits on the table by the door—a blue, misshapen, snowman-covered lump. I probably should have put it in a box before wrapping it, but that always feels like cheating. It arrived a few weeks ago, but with Meg grounded, I couldn’t go to her house, and I didn’t want to take it to school and have her open it with Grayson and Roman and any random passerby looking on, even though that’s what she did with mine.
Granddad is at the door already. He walks now as if his hip is his own, instead of comprised of some foreign material cemented onto his bones like there was a crack in his foundation.
“We’re going for a drive,” he calls into the kitchen. “Back in time for turkey.” He slips his coat on, fishes keys out of the pocket, and jangles them in my direction like a lunch bell. “Let’s go, slowpoke.” Then he picks up my gift and disappears out the door, leaving me to scurry after him.
MEG
STUPID POLAR BEAR. KENZIE KEEPS HUGGING IT AND PETTING IT AND pretending to feed it candy canes.
“I’m going downstairs,” I declare, snatching up my new fluorescent wheels and the wrench that came with them. In the laundry room, my board is in its usual place, but wheel-less. The metal rods stick out like stubby arms and legs. I examine the new wheels in my hands. The wheel nuts are inside their imitation candy Life Saver doughnuts. Mom must have done her research and had the nuts from my old wheels transferred over at the shop.
The wheels go on easily with a few twists of the wrench, and within minutes the board is in the middle of the laundry room floor, balancing on its shiny new rollers. I hop aboard, shift my weight, pop an ollie. Or at least try to.
My knee bashes into the washing machine as my phone rings. I curse, loudly, rubbing the bruise-to-be.
“You are always in the way!” I kick the machine. “Ow!” Stupid, hulking thing. I pull my phone out of my pocket.
Stephen-the-Leaver is calling.
I could answer it. Could listen to him wish me a Merry Christmas. Thank him for the gift. And then what? Then he’d pick up Kenzie and Nolan for Christmas in a couple of days and they’d get to spend a second Christmas with their dad, and I’d have a stupid stuffed polar bear to stare at alone in my room, remembering when he was my dad, too.
“Stop calling me!” I shout at the ringing phone. “I don’t want to talk to you.” I jab the ignore button. Then, when that doesn’t feel like enough, I stab about in the menus until I find the right option. And I block him. “Now you can never talk to me,” I tell the phone. If he wanted to talk to me, his not-my-real-daughter, he should have told that to the judge.
I kick the washing machine again. Even though it’s only a halfhearted kick, it still hurts.
I abandon my skateboard to the washing monster and trudge out into the rec room, where I sprawl on the floor, limbs stretched out into a star, eyes fixed on the ceiling.
Stupid Stephen-the-Leaver ruining Christmas.
I roll over onto my stomach and rest my chin on my hands. From here, I can see under the couches. The carpet needs vacuuming. A hundred-year-old Cheerio has made its home under the couch beside a Barbie hairbrush. At least that means we probably don’t have mice.
I sweep the rest of the carpet—with my eyes, not a broom, though there’s enough grunge under the couch that a broom might be surprisingly effective. The shabby brown rug stretches to the back of the room, under the shelving units piled with toilet paper and packages of noodle soup, where it curls up against the wall. Curls up, away from the floor.
I hop to my feet, grab at a fortunately-not-that-heavy shelving unit, and pull. The shelf lurches away from the wall, dragging the carpet with it.
The carpet isn’t glued down! Or nailed, or whatever it is that construction men normally do with carpets.
When Mom clomps downstairs in her slippers a while later, I am shoving the last shelf back into place.
“Meg, the door is—What’d you do down here?” She surveys my handiwork. The couches still face the TV, but I shoved them back to clear more floor space. I’ve returned the shelves to their proper places against the walls, though the toilet paper and Mr. Noodles are still in mounds on the stairs, where I displaced them temporarily. And the totally unnecessary rug is rolled into a long brown log, pushed up against the side wall.
Sweat prickles along my hairline, and I swipe it away with my pajama sleeve. “I want to skateboard,” I tell her. The gray cement floor boasts patches of discoloring and rug residue, but it’s no rougher than the currently-snow-covered-and-unusable pavement outside. Better, probably.
Mom doesn’t descend any farther into the basement, just hovers on the stairs, blinking. Her black hair’s pulled back into a puffy bun, but the penguin-patterned robe hanging loose off her shoulders cancels out any severity in her expression. On Christmas Day, we wear pajamas. It’s basically an unbreakable rule.
“Meg—” she starts to say.
“It’s not like we even use this space much,” I say, cutting her off. I am not having my past hour of hard work erased. No one ever seems to think my ideas are good, but this one is. “And I’ll stop bashing dents in your washing machine. I’ve probably taken years off its life already.”
“Meg—”
“And that carpet was disgusting anyway. There’s probably fungus living in it. Or parasites. Or fungus-eating parasites.”
“Meg! I just came down to tell you that Kat’s at the door.”
“And exercise is healthy, and—wait, what?”
“Your friend Kat. She’s at the door.”
“Oh. Our front door?”
“Yes, our front door. She’s waiting for you.” She turns and glides back upstairs, penguin robe flowing behind her. At the last step, she calls over her shoulder, “Just clean the toilet paper off the stairs, please.”
I dart up the stairs three at a time. I haven’t seen Kat since our last day of school, which was basically an eternity ago. I burst out the basement door, dart down the hallway, and suffocate her in a hug.
“Oof,” she grunts. “You’re squishing your present.”
I pull away. “Merry Christmas!”
“You too. Nice pajamas.”
She looks surprisingly put together for Christmas Day. Hair smoothed back into a flawless ponytail, dark jeans, cheeks flushed pink—though that could be from the cold and not from the tiny bit of blush she sometimes wears. She could be hiding a pajama top under her fluffy coat, but considering the look of the rest of her, probably not.
“You’ve seen these before,” I say, holding out an arm to show off the lime-green frogs hopping around a light-blue background.
“Not at three in the afternoon, though.”
“Dude, it’s Christmas. It’s basically a sin not to wear pajamas. You should go home immediately and change.”
“Okay, I’ll just take this and go then.” She tucks her mangled package under her arm.
“Fine, maybe not im-me-di-ate-ly,” I say, stretching out the final word.
She grins and thrusts the bundle into my arms. The snowman-patterned paper crackles in protest as the parcel squashes against my chest for the second time. Like a pillow. Or a stuffed animal. Or Stephen’s polar bear.
“What is it?” I say, a little too loudly. A little too much like a frothing-at-the-mouth rabid person. Maybe I shouldn’t be wearing pajamas. It’s just one more thing that might convince someone to cart me away to a madhouse. Or the hospital or whatever.
She raises a single eyebrow. “I’m not sure that you understand how this whole gift-giving thing works. . . .”
“All right, you’ve twisted my arm. I’ll open it.” I pierce the paper with a jab, then grasp the torn edge and pull away one long strip after another. They fall to the floor like absurdly misshapen snowflakes.
“Oh my gosh. Oh. My. Gosh!” It’s so much better than a stupid polar bear. It’s better even than a not-stupid polar bear. It’s basically the greatest thing ever.
I let the rest of the paper fall to the floor and hug my own personal LumberLegs to my chest. My very own red-cloaked, elven warrior with tree trunks for legs. The material is soft and oh-so-cuddly.
“Where’d you find him?” Legs has never been big into merchandising. It’s not like you can just find Legs stuff in a store. He’s got a few shirts—all of which I own—in his online store, and that’s it.
“Online. I found this girl who makes them.”
“He’s perfect. I love him. You’ll be the maid of honor at our wedding, right?”
She laughs. “Careful, you’ll make Grayson jealous.” She leans down, gathers the discarded wrapping paper into a neat little ball, and hands it to me. “I’d better go, though. Granddad’s in the car, waiting. I just stopped by to give you that.” She moves toward the door.
“You saved Christmas,” I tell her.
She pauses with her hand on the doorknob and looks me in the eye. “Did it need saving?”
“I’ll tell you later. Go home and put on some pajamas. Like seriously. Now.”
She laughs again, then disappears out into the cold. I toss the wrapping paper back on the floor and give Legs another hug.