by Earl Sewell
Whatever. At least he was resigned to the fact that I wouldn’t be returning to Miami for college.
After a few more minutes of conversation, mostly revolving around when Peyton and I would be arriving in Miami for spring break, I hung up and tossed the phone to the mattress.
“David got a full academic ride to Stanford.”
Peyton smiled and pointed to her tablet. “Eddie told me right before he had to go get ready for their game.”
I realized then that I hadn’t heard her say a whole lot about her college acceptances. “What about you?”
She glanced up from the cookbook she was thumbing through. “Me?” She shrugged. “I got Stanford, too.”
“Yay!” I clapped my hands and added, “And...?”
She smiled. “And Cal Poly and MIT and Oxford.”
“Impressive.” I grinned and flopped over onto my stomach. “So any thoughts yet?”
“As a matter of fact, yeah.” Dude...the way she smiled. Something was definitely afoot.
“So which one’s first choice?”
Her expression was serene and about as forthcoming as the Sphinx. “None of them.”
I blinked. “What?”
She shrugged and held up her latest acquisition—Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking—and, oh, my God, she couldn’t possibly mean...
“I’m going to go to cooking school.”
Oh, my God, she did.
Well, then. Looked like my future wasn’t the only one about to get very interesting.
* * * *
ALL I WANT FOR
CHRISTMAS IS YOU
Deidre Berry
A very special thank-you to Tracy Sherrod for her faith in my work, and for asking me to be a part of this project.
Glenda Howard, it was refreshing to work with an editor with such infinite patience and a true understanding that the creative process takes time.
Thanks to Katy Butler with www.thebullyproject.com for providing valuable tools and resources that parents, students and educators can use to recognize, prevent and stop bullying.
Last but not least, thanks to my husband, Richard, for the infinite support and encouragement, and for being on #TeamDeidre for all these years. You really “get” what being the spouse of a writer is all about, and for that I am eternally grateful. XOXO
Contents
Letter
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Dear Santa,
Hey, how are you? It’s your girl, Bree!
It’s been around six years or so since the last time I wrote to you, so I hope we’re still on good terms, and you aren’t too pissed about it. *smile*
Christmas is two months away, and I know you’re super busy overseeing the workshop and spreading good cheer and all, but when it comes to deciding who’s been naughty or nice, will you please consider grading on a curve this year? I ask because I have to confess that I’ve been a teensy bit more bad than I have been good. Not bad in the sense of being belligerent and disrespectful to my parents, but bad as far as my attitude is concerned. It’s all because of my cousin Tiffany, who has quite the bad attitude herself, if you ask me. See, Tiffany moved in with my family a couple of months ago since her and my aunt Linda don’t get along that great, and she’s been a thorn in my behind ever since. First she moves into my house, into my room, and wastes no time moving in on my boyfriend, Lance.
This might surprise you, but I don’t have a mile-long list of things I would like for you to leave under the tree for me. Instead, all I want for Christmas is a new, and very much improved, boyfriend. One who is trustworthy and honest, as opposed to sneaky and conniving. And can you please make sure that he’s scrumptious and hot with enough swag to make Lance insanely jealous? Not that I want him back or anything, but just to make him realize how much of a good thing he had.
Oh, and I know you’re not a magician or anything, but if you can manage to somehow pull a few strings and make my boyfriend-stealing cousin, Tiffany, disappear, I will greatly appreciate it.
Thanks in advance!
Bree Calloway
P.S. *Smooches* to you, Rudolph and the Mrs.
one
Sitting at the kitchen table, I sign my letter, fold it carefully and then tuck it into an envelope addressed to the North Pole. I’m sixteen, so of course I don’t really believe in Santa, but when my four-year-old sister, Noelle, woke me up early this morning insisting that we both write letters to Santa Claus, I didn’t have the heart to say no. Besides, I saw The Secret on DVD not too long ago and learned that it can’t hurt to put things out into the universe and see what comes back.
I slice a banana and make myself a bowl of cereal while Noelle continues to leaf through the glossy pages of the Toys “R” Us catalog. She’s using a red crayon to draw circles around all the goodies she hopes to receive on Christmas morning, which happens to be just about every toy in the catalog. My sister’s wish list is at thirty-four items, and counting. Knowing my parents, chances are high that she will get every single thing on her list. The little girl is so spoiled it’s ridiculous.
“Ooh, look, Bree...” Noelle squeals with delight. “A Barbie Dreamhouse!”
“That’s awesome!” I add the words Barbie Dreamhouse onto her letter to Old Saint Nick and stifle a yawn. Seven o’clock is much too early to get up on a cold Saturday morning, but I’ll do just about anything to appease my baby sister. She reminds me of myself at that age. Happy and excited for Christmas and totally believing in all the hoopla surrounding Santa, his elves and that whole bit. Noelle has no idea that in a few weeks she will receive a reply from “Santa” (aka Mom and Dad) thanking her for the letter and reminding her to be a good girl so that he can stop by and pay her a visit on Christmas Eve. To some, it may seem like a lot of trickery going on, but believing in Santa Claus is part of the magic of Christmas for little kids. My parents did the same thing with me. Plus it makes Noelle think twice before throwing a tantrum because she can’t have her way.
“Bree, shouldn’t you be getting dressed?” my mom asks as she walks into the kitchen. “Rehearsal starts in an hour.”
I wince at the word rehearsal. While I am happy to have snagged the role of Snow Queen in my school’s upcoming production of The Nutcracker, there are some days when I’m just not in the mood for all the practice that is required. For instance, cold Saturday mornings like this one, when I would much rather sleep in late than dance until my toes bleed.
“Actually, I’m waiting on my dance clothes to finish drying. Plus Dad is still outside working on my car,” I say.
“Well, I’m sure there are other more important things you could be doing while you wait for your clothes to dry,” my mother says, always one to have the last word. Forty-one years old, and six and a half months pregnant, my mom is still as feisty as ever. She’s also still as beautiful as ever, and I’m not just saying that because she looks exactly like me, only older.
“We’re writing letters to Santa,” Noelle
interjects on my behalf.
“That’s great, honey, but Santa’s not due to come for a while,” Mom says. “In the meantime, your sister needs to stop lollygagging as if she doesn’t have a thing else to do today.”
“What’s ‘lollygagging’?” Noelle asks, looking up from the toy catalog.
“Wasting time,” I explain, slurping the milk in my cereal bowl.
Mom fills the teapot with cold water and puts it on the stove for her morning peppermint tea. I rinse out my empty bowl and put it in the dishwasher, as my father enters the kitchen from the back porch. Even though he’s bundled up in layers, his dark brown face is red from the cold. Winters in Buffalo, New York, are no joke.
“Sorry, Bree,” Dad says, knocking snow off his boots. “But I think she’s a goner.”
“You mean you couldn’t get my car started?” I ask fearfully.
My father shakes his head and looks like he’s grieving. “I thought it might have just needed a new battery, but it looks like the whole electrical system is shot.”
I palm my face and sigh. Oh, no, not my baby! My 1999 Volkswagen Jetta is almost as old as I am, but I love that car. I bought it for eight hundred bucks with money I saved from working part-time at Target last summer. Dad had warned me it was a piece of junk, but I was so looking forward to the freedom and independence that comes with having my own form of transportation that I didn’t listen.
The thought of going back to riding the bus and bumming rides fills me with dread and gives me an instant headache. In my mind, being without my car would be the equivalent of going back to slavery after you’ve already been freed. Not good.
“Well, can we at least take it to a mechanic to find out for sure what’s wrong with it?” I plead.
“Bree, that thing was a lemon from the word go,” my mother chimes in. “And at this point there’s no use putting more money into it, because the repairs will probably cost more than the car is worth.”
This is the worst possible news I could have gotten today, as if what happened to Ms. Tucker last week wasn’t bad enough. Last Thursday afternoon, we were in the dance studio taking a ten-minute break when Ms. Tucker stumbled back into the room with glassy eyes and flushed skin.
“Is she drunk?” I whispered to my friend Jade.
But when Ms. Tucker clutched her chest and collapsed on the floor, we all realized it was a gravely serious situation. Everyone scrambled to their cell phones to call 9-1-1. By the time the paramedics arrived, I was beside myself with worry and fear. Ms. Tucker was still breathing, but her face had gone from beet-red to a deep shade of purple I have seen only on an eggplant. We later got word from Mr. Canady, the principal, that Ms. Tucker had suffered a heart attack. She survived, but won’t be back to teach until sometime next spring.
“Why don’t you call Lance and have him come take a look at it?” my father suggests, like that’s really a viable solution.
Lance. My ex-boyfriend. We dated for almost a year, but thanks to his shenanigans with my cousin these past two months, we are now officially a thing of the past. Lance comes from a family of mechanics, and despite his colossal failure as a boyfriend, he is a whiz when it comes to working on cars. Still, I wouldn’t ask him for a favor if he were the last person on Earth. No way.
“If you want Lance to take a look at it, have Tiffany call him—he’s her boyfriend now, not mine.”
My father looks at me as if I have suddenly grown a third eye and says, “Wait a minute...what?” As if it’s all news to him.
“Dad, I told you about this mess two weeks ago,” I say. “It must have just gone in one ear and straight out the other like everything else I talk to you about.”
“It must have, but fill me in again,” Dad says. “I’m all ears this time.”
My parents give me their undivided attention as I recount the day when I found out that Lance and Tiffany were creeping around with each other behind my back. It all started when Lance accidentally left his cell phone in my car. I hadn’t even noticed his phone was there until it rang, and then I looked at the screen and saw that it was Tiffany calling. First of all, I didn’t even know that the two of them had noticed the other existed, let alone that they’d exchanged phone numbers. With that being said, I answered Lance’s phone out of curiosity.
“Tiffany?” I asked. “Why in the world are you calling Lance’s phone?”
She was busted and she knew it, but she played dumb and said, “Oh, I must have dialed the wrong number. Sorry!” And then abruptly ended the call before I could ask any more questions.
Naturally, I asked Lance, “What reason could Tiffany possibly have to call you?”
And he did the typical male thing and turned it all around on me. “What reason could you possibly have for answering my phone?” As if that was the most important issue at hand.
“Tiffany is my friend. Is that against the law or something?” he asked jokingly, trying to make light of a very serious situation.
A couple of days later, I walked into the living room, where Tiffany was on the phone, and I very clearly overheard her say, “Lance, you have got to tell Bree the truth about this situation. Just tell her the truth!”
“No, you tell me,” I said.
Tiffany turned around and stared wide-eyed like she was being visited by one of the ghosts of Christmas past. “Look, Bree, whatever is going on between you and Lance needs to stay between you and Lance.”
“Whatever is going on, you definitely seem to be all up in the middle of it, so stop acting as if I have no right to ask you any questions,” I said.
“Talk to Lance,” Tiffany snapped and then rushed past me out of the room without any further explanation.
Right before I found out what was going on between Lance and Tiffany, he suddenly switched high schools. His family moved from down the street, and it seems to be some top secret as to where they moved.
In the days following our breakup, I logged on to Facebook and changed my relationship status from “in a relationship” to “single.” Afterward, I was instantly bombarded with questions as to what had happened with Lance and why. Without going into too much detail, I just made a generic status update that said: “When someone shows you who they really are, be thankful and move on. But most of all, don’t be foolish enough to give them another chance to hurt you.” I just left it at that because I realized that I was doing exactly what I hate, which is when people use Facebook as a forum to air play-by-play details of their love life, including makeups, breakups and all the in-between.
And as a wise person once said, “Ain’t nobody got time for that!”
two
I finish telling my side of the story and am relieved that my father is totally on my side.
“I thought letting Tiffany live here until she sorts things out with Linda was a good idea, but I didn’t know she had it in her to be that evil,” Dad says, shaking his head in disbelief.
“You don’t know Tiffany like I know Tiffany,” I scoff.
“Well, I talked to her about that situation,” Mom says. “And she told me that it’s all a big misunderstanding.”
“And you believed her?” I ask. “Seriously? How can you believe anything that comes out of her mouth when she’s been known to lie before she tells the truth?”
“Where is Tiffany, by the way?” Dad asks. “I have a few questions to ask her myself.”
“Earl, let it go,” Mom warns. “It’s girl stuff, and trust me, it will pass.”
“Tiffany’s not here anyway,” I reply. “She didn’t come home last night.”
“She didn’t?” my parents ask at the same time.
“No,” I answer. “She didn’t clear it with you first?”
My mother’s hesitation lets me know the answer is “no.” Tiffany has stayed out once again, only God knows where,
without permission. I swear, that girl gets away with so much around here. Let me try pulling even a fraction of the stunts and scams she pulls on a daily basis, and I’ll wind up getting the wax knocked out of my ears and then put on punishment until 2028. Or worse.
* * *
“So, are the rehearsals for your little school play coming along all right?” Dad asks as he drives me the ten-mile distance to McKinley School of the Arts. It’s his day off, but he’s dropping me off at rehearsal, on his way to the UPS facility where he works as a supervisor in the shipping department to help fix some sort of computer glitch.
But the fact that my dad referred to the biggest role of my life so far as “little” really bothers me, because it proves how disconnected we’ve become. We used to be so close when I was younger. Now that he’s in his forties and middle-aged, he can’t seem to remember anything anymore and/or fails to realize the significance of things that are vitally important to me. Like the role of the Snow Queen.
The Nutcracker is one of the oldest and most beloved holiday stories of all time. It’s about this young girl named Clara, who gets a wooden nutcracker toy for Christmas and later learns that the doll was once a real-life prince who was turned to wood by an evil Mouse King. Clara sets out on a mission to help the prince become human again, and as a result her adventures take her into a magical kingdom filled with battling mice and toys that have come to life. In the end, Clara gets her prince and learns that anything is possible if you believe. It’s a wonderful story. And I’m proud to be a part of the production, but, man, is it a lot of work.
The best of the best from all disciplines in the school are in this thing, and it is in fact a very big deal.
McKinley has the distinction of being ranked third for best performing-arts schools in the entire country, so big-name talent scouts, casting agents, managers, directors and choreographers have been known to attend our school productions. More than a handful of stars have been born on that auditorium stage, so the stakes are high. I’m a dance major, and this is my junior year. If I’m a huge hit, there is no telling what doors will open up for me or how far I can possibly go.