My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories (12 page)

“Scared me to death,” I said.

“You tried to cat sit and watch TV at the same time, didn’t you?”

I gave her a sarcastic laugh. “Seriously, though. Thanks. I don’t know what I would’ve done.”

“No worries.” Haley’s hair was wet, which confused me. And her eyes looked puffy. She reached down for the plate of lasagna. “Even if it
was
just a big ploy to get me back down here.” She handed me the plate.

“And thanks for this.” I stood there holding it, staring at the floor. “About last night, Haley. I’m really, really sorry—”

“I know you’re probably starving,” she said, cutting me off. “But is it absolutely crucial for you to eat right this second?”

“Now?” I said. “Not really. Why?”

“Put on your heaviest coat and rain boots and meet me downstairs in five.”

*   *   *

The clouds had finally cleared, and the sun was low in the sky. The outside air was crisp. I could see my breath as I followed Haley up the buried sidewalk. We were moving slowly because a thick layer of snow blanketed everything. “I seriously love being the first one to walk in it,” she said, crunching into a sea of untouched white.

“Same with me.” All I had on was a pair of shell-top Adidas, and my socks were already soaked. My Padres sweatshirt was way too thin. I had to bury my hands deep inside my pockets to keep them warm. But trekking through fresh snow in Brooklyn was pretty cool. Usually it turned into a nasty brown slush within minutes of falling.

When we got up to 7
th
Avenue, we looked up and down the empty street. “Tonight we have it all to ourselves,” Haley said.

“Where we going anyway?”

“Prospect Park. I have a feeling it’s gorgeous up there right now.”

All the shops and restaurants were closed, their graffitied storefront gates lowered and bolted shut. Trash bags were still piled high, buried under mountains of snow. The plowers had yet to come through so you couldn’t tell where the sidewalks ended and the street began. Not that there were any cars on the move. Or pedestrians, for that matter. Haley was right, we were the only two people out braving the post-blizzard conditions.

Halfway up the next block, we heard music coming from the open window of somebody’s brownstone. A corny Christmas song that didn’t even seem that corny. “Wanna stop and listen for a minute?” Haley asked. “It’ll feel more like Christmas.”

“Sure.” I brushed off two spots at the bottom of the stoop, and we sat down. It felt strange being so close to her. I thought about bringing up last night again, to try and clear the air, but the timing didn’t seem quite right. So I kept quiet, both of us listening to the music and thinking our own thoughts. The sun had ducked behind a row of brownstones to the west of us, and the wind had picked up slightly, but for some reason I no longer felt as cold.

Haley bumped her knee against mine. “I have to admit something to you.”

“One last round of the getting-to-know-you game?”

She grinned a little and shook her head. “No, we’re done with that.” She picked at a loose string near the pocket of her coat. “So, you remember when you came up to check out my shower?”

I nodded.

“Well, a funny thing happened that night after you left. It miraculously started running again.”

“Wait,” I said, slow on the uptake. “But you still came down to use Mike’s—”

“Oops.”

It dawned on me what she was saying. She’d used the shower as an excuse to … keep coming down to see me. “So, your pipes aren’t frozen anymore?”

“I don’t know if they ever were.” She reached into her hood and pulled out a few strands of her damp blond hair. “I had just finished showering when you knocked on my door. My mom would kill me if she knew I was sitting out here with wet hair.”

We heard little-kid laughter in the apartment with the music, and we both looked up. But you couldn’t see anything. It sounded like a boy.

“Oh, and one other thing,” Haley said. “I called home earlier today. And I officially stopped being a coward.”

“What do you mean?”

“I told Justin what I told you last night. That I had a ticket to come home, but I couldn’t bring myself to get on the plane.”

I decided it wasn’t my place to say anything. So I just listened. And nodded.

“And I’ll tell you something,” she said. “That wasn’t fun at all. We spent half the day crying to each other on the phone.” She stopped picking at the loose thread and stuck her hands in her coat pockets. “But breaking it off was the right thing to do.”

“It’s hard,” I said.

“Tell me about it.”

It felt wrong to be excited in the wake of some other dude’s misfortune. But excitement was exactly what I felt. Because if Haley was no longer taken …

Maybe …

We were getting up to leave when a new song started playing. “Here Comes Santa Claus.” Me and Haley looked at each other and cracked up, and we both sat back down. And through my laughter, I imagined the boy in the apartment above us, sitting near the radio with his little sis and his mom and dad. I wished I could tell him to remember every single thing about today. Not just whatever presents he got but his family, too. His mom. Because one day he’d be far away from home, sitting on a snow-covered stoop with a girl he might like, laughing, and he’d want to picture how they all used to be.

Elves.
Elves in motion are otherworldly. They are long and lovely and lean; when they dance they are whirling dervishes that sparkle and gleam like sun shining on snow. I should know. I’ve been watching them my whole life.

The decorations committee has gone all out for the Snow Ball this year. Which I suppose they do every year, but this year feels especially tinseled. Twinkle lights cover every inch of the Great Hall, so many that we don’t even need overhead lighting. There’s a huge spruce in the center that goes all the way to the ceiling, and from its branches hang wooden carvings of every elf who’s ever lived at the North Pole. Just the elves, though.

Around the perimeter of the Great Hall, there are lots of smaller Christmas trees close to eight feet tall, all themed. There’s a paper-crane tree from Japan, a Dutch tree with dangling wooden shoes painted in all different kinds of colors, a Day of the Dead tree from Mexico, which is covered in tiny sugar skulls. There’s a 1950s tree, which might be my favorite. It has a purple-and-pink poodle skirt around the base.

All the teen elves have paired off for the Snow Ball. It’s the most romantic night of the season. The last hurrah before things really kick into gear with the holidays. It’s like prom for elves. Not that I myself have ever been to a prom, but I imagine this is what it must be like.

Boys and girls all dressed up, dancing.

Tonight Elinor is wearing a white dress with silver spangles. Under the lights, her hair looks white too. So does Flynn’s.

The dress I’m wearing is made of the same cranberry red fabric as Papa’s suit. We match. A pre-Christmas gift. My first year at the North Pole, my dress had puffy sleeves and a lacy white pinafore. This year my dress has a scoop neck and cap sleeves and a full skirt. It came with a white fur muff as well. It’s a doll’s dress, not a fifteen-year-old girl’s.

Oh, Papa. Can’t he see that I’m growing up?

Everyone at the North Pole knows the story of how Santa found me. Fifteen Christmases ago, he was delivering presents to an apartment complex in Seoul, South Korea. He loves the big apartment complexes because he can zip from floor to floor and be done in a jiffy. When he returned to his sleigh, there I was in a basket with a note that said,
, which means,
Please take care of my daughter.
Santa didn’t know what to do. Every time he put me down, I cried, and he still had all of Asia to get to. So he took me along. He said I slept the whole way. Santa had every intention of bringing me back to Korea before morning, but by the end of night, he just couldn’t. I grabbed hold of his pinky and wouldn’t let go. And so here I live, at the North Pole, a place no human girl has ever lived before.

*   *   *

I’m standing with my back pushed up against the wall, and my tights itch, and I’m wishing someone,
anyone,
would ask me to dance. Even out of pity. That would be fine. I catch Flynn’s eye while he’s spinning Elinor around. She looks good in his arms. She looks right. If it were me dancing with him, I would only come up to his chest. I wouldn’t be able to dance cheek to cheek.

I hang by the refreshment tables. They are my safe zone. For the first twelve days of December, dessert is themed. It’s a tradition, one of many. On the first day of Christmas, a partridge in a pear tree. This year, they did chocolate partridges stuffed with chestnut cream and drizzled with a tart pear syrup.

The chocolate partridge reminds me of the wooden bird in my coat pocket.

When I was eight, a robin got stuck in the Great Hall. It flew in an open window, and it couldn’t figure out how to fly back out. It kept flying up to the ceiling. I tried to shepherd the bird out the door with a Quidditch broom—the number-one requested present with six-to-eight-year-olds that year, though I think kids were hoping it would actually fly. None of us could figure out how to help the bird. But then Flynn climbed up on the banister, and the robin flew right up to him. He caught the bird and carried it outside, cradled in the palms of his hands, and the robin flew away. For days it was all anyone could talk about.

So for Christmas that year, I gave Flynn a bird I carved out of wood. I tried to do a robin, but I just couldn’t capture its likeness. So instead I did a chickadee with a glass eye, carved out of pine. I was nervous to give it to him.

Because the thing to understand about elves is that they aren’t usually into presents. They make things, they create, they labor, but they don’t like to receive. It’s not in their nature.

There was a good chance he wouldn’t accept it, but when he opened up the box, he stared at the chickadee for a long time. I watched as he held it in his hand, turning it over, feeling its weight. Was it good enough? I’d practiced other birds as well, but this was the only one I thought worthy enough of my friend. And then he said, “No one ever gave me a gift before.”

I let out the breath I was holding. “So you’ll keep it?”

“I’ll keep it.”

I’ve given him a bird every Christmas ever since. This year, I finally got the robin right. Black walnut, painted holly-berry red.

*   *   *

I’m pouring myself another cup of raspberry-ginger punch when I hear Elinor say, “It’s sad that Natty didn’t have anyone to come to the ball with. I doubt she’s ever even met a human boy before.”

“Yes, she has,” Flynn says. “That guy Lars, remember?”

Their backs are to me. They don’t know I’m standing in earshot. I could still slip away without them knowing.

Then Elinor says, “Oh, Flynn. It’s so obvious she made that up to make you jealous. She’s always had a crush on you.”

My vision goes blurry, and I drop my cup of punch. Red liquid streams all over the refreshments table and some splashes on my dress.
How could she say that?
Never mind the fact that she’s right, I do have a crush on Flynn. Always have.

“She didn’t make it up,” he says, and his voice rings out loud and clear like a bell. “I checked it out. The databases haven’t been completely updated so I looked in Santa’s actual logs. There really was a boy named Lars.”

“You’re just saying that to be kind,” Elinor says. “We all know Natty tells stories.”

My cheeks burn hot. I
used
to tell stories. For attention. Like the time I told everyone I got lost in a blizzard and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer came and rescued me. But I don’t tell stories anymore. Aren’t people allowed to change?

I clear my throat before I can stop myself. They whirl around in one motion, as if it were choreographed. Elinor has the grace to look ashamed. She’s worried I’ll tell Santa. I won’t. I’m not a little baby tattletale anymore. I can handle myself. My heart pumps so hard in my chest, I worry that everyone can hear it. So I speak loudly. “I don’t ‘tell stories,’ Elinor. And I
wasn’t
lying about Lars.”

*   *   *

Two years ago, because I begged and pleaded, because it was my Christmas wish, Santa took me out with him on Christmas Eve.