by Jo Knowles
For Noah, from Ryan. Merry Hanukkarismas. You know what I mean.
“You?” I say to him, completely shocked. “I thought you got Max! You had his card!”
“I found it on the floor. Tricked you pretty good, huh?”
“Thanks!” I say. “You’re, like, the best Secret Santa ever!”
He smiles. “Draw me something sometime, OK?”
“Sure!”
Ryan opens his present from Sam. It’s a black sock with a picture of an emu glued on it. “Wow,” he says to Sam. “You really went all out.”
“It’s an emu/emo Christmas stocking!” Sam says excitedly. “Get it?”
“You know I don’t celebrate Christmas, right?”
“Just look inside.”
Ryan reaches in and pulls out a gift card to his favorite comics store. “I forgive you now,” he says. “Thanks!”
“Where’s Noah?” Ms. Cliff calls from the other side of the room. She’s standing next to Sadie and some of her friends. She holds up my present. “Look what Noah Morin made for Sadie, everyone. Noah, this is beautiful!”
My cheeks burn.
“Thank you, Noah,” Sadie calls from across the room. Then she blows me a kiss.
Ryan stiffens beside me like someone just insulted him.
“Way to go, Noah!” Sam says.
Everyone starts talking again like nothing happened.
“Overachiever,” Ryan mumbles.
“What?” I say.
“Never mind.” He picks up his emu/emo stocking and sulks off.
Even though I’m really embarrassed, I’m also proud that Ms. Cliff and Sadie like my present. It’s a drawing of Sadie sitting in one of the beanbags, holding Curly. I remember seeing them like that one time, and it just seemed like a really nice moment for both of them.
“Hey, Noah,” the Tank says when we’re helping to clean up the wrapping paper and things. “That’s a really beautiful portrait you made for Sadie.”
“Thanks.”
“I mean it. What a thoughtful gift. I had no idea you were so talented!” He pats me on the back. “Have a great break, OK? Do something fun.”
“I’ll try.” I feel kind of weird, getting attention for a change. As people walk past, they say nice things to me about the drawing. It’s like all of a sudden they see me differently. Like suddenly I’m worth paying a little more attention to. It feels weird. And maybe a little good.
Ryan spends the rest of the day ignoring me, and Sam spends it telling me I really need to get up the nerve to ask Sadie out. But just when I think maybe I should, I see her and Tate kissing under a fake sprig of mistletoe he holds above their heads.
Never mind.
It’s a relief to go home.
Christmas Eve is my favorite night of the year. My parents always let Emma and me open one present. When we were little, the presents were usually some fun toy that we could secretly play with during the candlelight service at church. Nothing big, but something special. As we’ve gotten older, they give us sort of lame things, like pajamas with a Christmas theme. But even though they’re silly, we put them on and decorate cookies and stay up late, pretending we still believe in Santa Claus. We also go to the evening service at church because my mom loves singing all the old Christmas hymns, and how they turn out the lights and sing “Silent Night” as everyone lights tiny candles they hand out at the beginning of the service.
We’re all ready to go except Emma, who is taking forever in the bathroom. My parents pace the hall in their nice Christmas Eve clothes while I fidget with my tie because I hate how it feels to have my shirt buttoned up against my neck.
“Emma, for the tenth time, you need to hurry up! We’re going to be late!” my mom says.
I catch my dad making a sort of cringed expression. The longer she takes, the more on edge they seem to get. This whole scene feels familiar in the worst way.
My mom reaches for my dad’s hand as they stand outside the bathroom door. The Captain paces the hall nervously and whines.
But Emma doesn’t come out.
We wait five more minutes. Then ten. She doesn’t respond.
“Emma,” my dad says. I can hear the impatience and worry battling inside his voice. “I’m going to give you one more minute, and then I’m going to bang this door down if I have to.”
My mom leans against the wall and looks up at the ceiling. I wonder if I got that from her. I wonder if she’s saying a prayer. I wonder if she’s wishing we went to church more, to improve her chances of having her prayer come true. I know what she’s praying for, so I add my own to it to improve our chances.
Please, God. Please don’t let her be sick again.
My dad jiggles the door handle one more time.
My mom seems to sink into the wall.
I walk over to them and knock on the door myself.
“Emma? It’s me. If they go away, will you open up?”
I motion for my mom and dad to step away. I hear the faucet turn on, then off again. The toilet flushes. Everything is in the wrong order. I press the side of my face against the door.
“Can you hear me?” I ask.
The sound of bare feet on tile comes closer to the door. The door jiggles a little, and I know she’s pressing her head against it on the other side.
“Emma?”
She jiggles the doorknob in response.
“Will you come out?”
She scratches her fingers along the door, like a cat.
I turn toward my parents. Go away, I mouth.
They nod and go to their bedroom.
“They’re gone,” I say quietly. “Now, open up.”
I hear a click and know she’s unlocked the door. Slowly it moves inward, and I slip inside.
Her hair is wet and smells like puke, even from a few feet away.
She’s wearing only a T-shirt and leggings. I feel my own stomach heave when I see her: the true shape of her that she’s been hiding under her sweaters for months.
“I’m sorry,” she says, looking at the floor. “I didn’t want to eat so much for dinner, but I knew it would make Mom and Dad happy to see me do it. Only, I . . . it made me feel so sick. I — couldn’t keep it down. I couldn’t —”
“Emma,” I say, “why did this happen again? Why didn’t you try to stop it?” All these feelings I’ve been trying to hold back start to rise in my stomach, then my chest. All the worry I kept buried there is like a tidal wave rising inside me, waiting to explode out of my mouth, but I don’t know if it will be in the form of crying or yelling. How could she do this again? Why?
She sits on the edge of the tub and hides her face in her hands. “I don’t want to be like this! I can’t help it!”
Her knuckles are raw. I bite my lips shut to keep the wave of rage and fear inside my mouth. Why can’t she help it?
“I’m sorry,” she says again.
Her body starts to shake. I go over to her and put my arm around her.
“No,” I say. It’s all I can let escape me. No. Not this again.
She leans her head into me and tries to hug me, but she slips onto the cold floor.
“Mom!” I yell. It’s just one word, but it’s so loud and has so much fear in it that my parents come running, horror on their faces before they even see Emma on the floor.
There are lots of “oh, Emma’s” and “oh, baby’s” and other things I can’t hear. Can’t listen to. The fear and panic from the people who are supposed to be in control is too scary. I get up to leave, but as I step into the hall, heavy footsteps follow. My dad is carrying Emma like she’s as light as a baby in his arms.
“Noah, get some blankets and meet me at the car,” my dad says.
My mom rushes past and into Emma’s room in search of some clothes.
In the car, my mom sits in the backseat, cradling Emma in her arms. I sit up front with my dad. We drive through town, past our candlelit church. If I rolled down my window, I bet I could hear them singing “Silent Night.” My
chest feels tight and achy and almost empty now that the wave has escaped. I don’t even think I knew just how much worry I was holding inside until I let it all out. But I don’t feel relief. I just feel . . . a different kind of terror. All our fears came true. It didn’t matter how careful we were. How hard we tried to do everything Emma wanted. How much therapy Emma went to. We couldn’t stop it from coming back. My heart presses against my chest with each beat, like it does when I’m nervous. Only a million times harder.
When we get to the hospital, my parents get Emma checked in. Then my dad comes to wait with me while my mom goes with Emma, who looks like a ghost already. The waiting room is empty. There’s a TV screen on the wall that’s on but muted, so you can see the newscasters talking but you can’t hear what they’re saying. One of them is wearing a Santa hat. If Emma saw, she’d make a comment about how insensitive that is to people who don’t celebrate Christmas, and then I’d make a comment about how she needs to lighten up. And then my parents would tell us to stop bickering, and everything would feel normal. But instead I just stare at the Santa hat and watch the person talk with no words coming out. And I think, Emma was right. Santa hats are offensive.
I feel like I’m going to throw up, but I know I can’t. I fiddle with my tie, which feels like it’s choking me.
My dad leans forward and grabs the sides of his head with his hands, cupping his ears as if the sound of the TV is not only on but too loud. Finally, he leans back in his chair and turns to me.
“Did you know it was this bad?” he asks. “Tell me the truth.”
My heart twists in my chest. I know he wants me to say no so he can say no, too. And then he won’t feel guilty for not stepping in sooner. For not saying enough is enough with all her rules about food and how increasingly nutty they were getting. Not that it would matter. You can’t force someone to eat. And even if you could figure out a way, they can just puke it up.
My dad stands and walks across the room, then comes back again. Back and forth, like he’s trying to walk away from the truth.
“I thought if we just did what she wanted and followed her rules, she’d eat. She’d be OK. I’d do anything as long as it meant she’d eat . . .”
He walks across the room, then comes back again.
“I thought with all the cooking and meal planning, she was in control. She even seemed happy. Didn’t she seem happy to you?”
He looks at me to say yes, to agree with him, but I can’t.
He sits and grabs the sides of his head again. “Oh, God,” he says. A sob escapes from somewhere deep down in his chest, as if his own heart squeezed out the pain.
“Why?” he asks the empty room.
Why?
But the room doesn’t have any answers.
Later, a doctor comes out to tell us what’s happening. They put a tube in her arm to hydrate her. My mom refuses to leave her side. She can spend the night with her. They’ve admitted her to care and will transfer her to the psych department in the morning.
Merry Christmas to us.
“Would you like to discuss the details in private?” the doctor asks my dad.
“There’s no one here,” my dad says, looking around the empty waiting room.
The doctor motions to me.
“How bad is it?” my dad asks.
“She’s severely dehydrated. And”— he pauses —“as I’m sure you know, dangerously underweight.”
I detect an accusing tone, and I can tell my dad does, too. He starts to reach for his ears again, then stops.
“Why didn’t her therapist tell us how serious things were getting?” my dad asks. “I thought she was doing OK. Not great, but OK. We were trying all these recipes together!”
I don’t point out that trying new recipes isn’t the same as eating.
“She’s been making herself vomit regularly. We can discuss the damage caused to her —”
“Don’t,” my dad interrupts. “I — I don’t think I can hear it right now. Just tell me how long it will be until she’s OK. Can she come home soon?”
“It depends on how she responds to treatment.”
“Well, she’s not going back to her regular therapist — that’s for sure,” my dad says.
“We need to get her back to a stable condition,” the doctor says, ignoring him. “Then we can evaluate her mental state. Right now, we don’t really know what we’re working with.”
“You’re working with my daughter!”
The doctor nods calmly. “I know that.”
My dad gets up again and starts pacing. The reporters on TV are laughing. The guy with the Santa hat shakes his head so the pom-pom on top flips from side to side. The woman shoves his shoulder playfully.
My dad is crying.
The doctor looks at me and smiles like an idiot. I know he’s trying to be reassuring, but he must know he can’t be, so why bother?
“I’ll go check on your wife and daughter now, but if you have any questions, you can call me.” He hands my dad a card. “You should probably go home and get some rest.”
“I want to see Emma before I go,” my dad says.
The doctor nods. “I’ll take you.”
“Noah,” my dad says, “will you be all right here?”
“Can’t I go?” I ask.
“I think it would be best if you stayed here,” the doctor says. “She’s sleeping now, anyway.”
“I’ll be right back,” my dad says. He follows the doctor out of the room, leaving me alone.
The newscasters are showing a fake satellite on a screen with Santa and his sleigh zooming above the planet. I glance around the empty room. I don’t remember when I stopped believing in Santa Claus. It might have been the same time as when I stopped thinking there was really a God, not that my family has ever been very religious. When I was really young, I thought God and Santa were kind of the same guy. Some supernatural being that could see you and know when you were misbehaving. You were supposed to be good for Santa and good for God. One gave you presents, and one gave you heaven. To a kid, those things seemed kind of equal.
But everyone stops believing in Santa at some point. So what makes God so special? At least you could rely on Santa coming to save the day once a year. You had real evidence of his existence. But God? What did God ever do to provide any proof that being good would pay off someday? It seems I know plenty of good people who never got a thing for it. If anything, God was a much bigger disappointment than Santa ever was.
I lean my head back against the wall and close my eyes. Out in the hall, a nurse wishes another nurse “Merry Christmas” as she leaves her shift. She’s wearing a bright-red coat and a green scarf. “Hope you get caught under the mistletoe!” she calls cheerfully.
“You too!” the other one calls back.
I don’t know how anyone could be cheerful in a place like this. Where my sister is lying in bed, trying to disappear.
“Noah.” My dad squeezes my shoulder. I didn’t even hear him come back. “It’s time to go.”
“What about Mom?” I ask.
“She’s staying.”
I follow my dad out to the parking lot. The sky is perfectly black, with the stars shining especially bright.
I bet the Christmas carolers back in our neighborhood are walking down our street right now, talking about what a perfect Christmas Eve night it is. How beautiful. How peaceful. Maybe they’re joking about mistletoe, too. Maybe they’re looking up in the sky for Santa’s sleigh. I imagine him flying overhead, just like on TV. But instead of landing on our roof and leaving a bunch of presents, he flies right past our house without stopping. No Christmas for us this year.
Ho, ho, no.
Every Christmas morning, I’m the first to wake up. I lie in bed listening to the quiet, imagining the magic waiting for us downstairs. I picture the stockings stuffed to overflowing, each on a chair or the couch — our designated present-opening spot. When I can’t wait another second, I get up, throw some warm socks on, and head fo
r Emma’s room.
She’s always sleeping with her face to the wall, so I reach over and shake her. “It’s Christmas!” I yell. “Time to get up!”
She likes to moan and groan and act like she’s too tired, but she gets up pretty quickly and finds her slippers, and then the two of us go to my parents’ room. My mom has to go down first to turn on the tree lights, and then she calls to tell us everything’s ready and “Santa came!” and “Oh, boy, was he good to you this year!” and all that stuff. Emma and I race down the stairs side by side. Sometimes we even hold hands. My dad follows, telling us to slow down or we’ll take a nosedive and ruin Christmas. Then we get to the bottom of the stairs, and the living room feels all magical, like maybe it really was Santa Claus who left all the presents, not my groggy-eyed parents at one in the morning when we finally fell asleep. We find our stockings and ooh and aah over the stuff spilling out of them, but we have to sit and settle down and then take turns pulling things out to make the morning last and last. It’s the very best part of Christmas.
When I wake up, I look at the Super Ball marks on my ceiling and listen to the quiet, imagining the magic waiting downstairs. Then I remember that there probably isn’t any.
The Captain thumps his tail when he realizes I’m awake. He jumps up on my bed and licks my ear. I roll over to make room for him. He stretches out along my side, pressing against me. In all his excitement at being allowed on the bed, he lets out a whistler and I have to tuck my head under the covers for a while until it passes.
“You really do know how to smell up a place,” I tell him.
He thumps his heavy tail.
We wait for a while, then finally get up. The Captain follows me to Emma’s room and whimpers for her. I sit on her neatly made bed. It’s always neatly made, as far as I can tell. I look around, wondering when I came in here last. Maybe it was a whole year ago — since last Christmas. She’s taken down some of the band posters she used to have. Now the pale-green walls are almost bare except for her favorites, neatly hanging there like an art display. On her nightstand there’s an old family photo of the four of us from before we had the Captain. From before the first time she got sick. We look so young and normal.