Flynn looks up at the sky, at the North Star above us. Polaris, it’s called. A fixed point, more accurate than any compass. You always know where you are when you look up at it. Home. “The north celestial pole is shifting, did you know that? It’s because of the gravitational forces of the sun and moon. Polaris won’t always be what it is now.” I’m about to reply when he asks me, “Do you ever think about the future, Natalie?”
It thrills me to hear him say my name. So much so that I don’t answer so he’ll say it again.
“Natalie?”
“I’ve only ever thought about the future in days till Christmas,” I tell him. No more than three hundred sixty-four days ahead. It never occurred to me that anybody thought differently. Especially not elves. But I guess Flynn is different, and I guess I’ve always known that. It’s why we are friends. It’s why he knew I wasn’t okay, why he followed me out here to check. Whatever we are, we’ll always be friends.
I’m thinking maybe now is the right time to give him the robin. I feel around for it in my pocket. And then he says, “You don’t really belong here.”
His words hit me like a snowball to the face. They sting, but they land true. The robin slips through my fingers and deep into my pocket.
Flynn is still talking. “Sometimes I wonder how different things would be if you weren’t here. Sometimes I think maybe I’d be different.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Like … maybe if you weren’t here, maybe I wouldn’t wonder about what the world is like beyond the North Pole.”
I wave him off. “Flynn, it’s not that great. I saw the world two Christmas Eves ago and I’m telling you, what we have here is better than anything out there. There’s eggnog every day! And candy cane hot chocolate, and those marshmallow cakes with the little red dots.”
“I’m pretty sure they have all that stuff, too. You’ll see. You’re going to go away someday,” he says, and it sounds like a premonition. “You’ll stop believing.”
Tears spring to my eyes. “Not me. I’ll never stop. Never ever ever.”
Stubbornly, he shakes his head. “One day you will, and you’ll forget all about us.”
“Stop saying that!”
“It’s all right. It’s what you’re supposed to do.”
I don’t like the sad look on his face; it weighs on me in a way that is unfamiliar and strange. We’ve never talked like this before. I don’t like the way it makes me feel—too real. Lightning quick, I pull the robin out of my pocket and hand it to him. “Here,” I say. “Merry Christmas.”
He holds the bird up to the moonlight and examines it. “It’s your best work,” he says, and from an elf, there’s no higher compliment. “It’s beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
Faster than I can blink, as fast as only an elf can be, he touches my cheek with his fingertips, whisper soft and cool. He tucks my hair behind my ear. And then, a sharp intake of breath, my own. Is this really happening?
I lean in closer, I close my eyes, and I purse my lips. And nothing.
I open my eyes. “Um … were you going to kiss me?”
“I—I can’t.”
“Why not?”
He hesitates and then he says, “I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
“You won’t hurt me,” I quickly say.
Flynn shakes his head.
I can see that he means to stand firm. The answer is no. So I say it, my whammy, my ace in the hole, the one thing an elf cannot refuse. “It’s my Christmas wish, Flynn.”
He opens and closes his mouth. He tries not to smile. “How is it that you always find a way to get what you want?” Before I can reply he says, “Don’t answer that. Just—close your eyes.”
Dutifully, I do.
“And Natalie?”
“Yes?”
“You aren’t the one I’m worried about getting hurt.”
Before I even have time to think, he tips my chin up, and he brushes his lips against mine. Flynn’s lips aren’t cool the way I imagined; they are warm. He is warm. He’s warm but why is he shivering? When I open my eyes again to ask him, he’s already backed away from me. “I have something for you, too,” he says.
I hold out my gloved hand, and he drops a piece of paper inside, and then he’s gone. Leaving me to wonder if I imagined the whole thing. Living where I live, it can sometimes be hard to tell the difference between magic and make believe.
I open the piece of paper.
Lars Lindstrom
10 Osby
Marigold loved this Christmas tree lot. It was brighter—and maybe even warmer—than her mother’s apartment, for one thing. Fires crackled inside metal drums. Strings of bare bulbs crisscrossed overhead. And, beside the entrance, there was a giant plastic snowman that glowed electric orange. Its pipe gave off real puffs of smoke.
She loved the husky green scent of the Fraser firs and the crinkle crunch of their shavings underfoot. She loved the flannel-shirted men, hefting the trees on top of station wagons and sedans, tying them down with twine pulled straight from their pockets. She loved the makeshift wooden shack with its noisy old cash register. The shack’s walls were bedecked with swags and wreaths, and its rooftop dripped with clear-berried mistletoe like icicles. And she especially loved the search for the perfect tree.
Too tall, too short, too fat, too skinny. Just right.
Marigold Moon Ling’s family had been coming here for years, for as long as she could remember. But this year, Marigold had been coming here alone. Frequently. For an entire month. Because how do you ask a complete stranger for a completely strange favor? She’d been wrestling this question since Black Friday, and she had yet to discover a suitable answer. Now she was out of time. The solstice was tomorrow, so Marigold had to act tonight.
Marigold was here … for a boy.
God. That sounded bad, even in her head.
But she wasn’t here because she liked him, this boy who sold Christmas trees, she was here because she needed something from him.
Yes, he was cute. That had to be acknowledged. There was no getting around it, the boy was an attractive male specimen. He simply wasn’t her usual type. He was … brawny. Lugging around trees all day gave one a certain amount of defined musculature. Marigold liked guys who were interested in artsier, more indoor activities. Reading the complete works of Kurt Vonnegut. Maintaining a respected webcomic. Playing the stand-up bass. Hell, even playing video games. These were activities that tended to lead to bodies that were pudgy or scrawny, so these were the bodies that Marigold tended to like.
However, this Christmas Tree Lot Boy possessed something that the other boys all lacked. Something she needed that only he could provide.
She needed his voice.
The first time she heard it, she was cutting through the parking lot that lay between her apartment and the bus stop. Every holiday season, Drummond Family Trees (“Family Owned and Operated Since 1964”) took up residence in the northeastern corner of the lot, which belonged to an Ingles grocery store. It was the most popular tree-buying destination in Asheville. Lots were everywhere in the mountains of North Carolina—this was Christmas-tree-farm country, after all—so to distinguish themselves, the Drummonds offered friendliness and tradition and atmosphere. And free organic hot apple cider.
Asheville loved anything organic. It was that type of town.
The boy’s voice had stopped Marigold cold. He was unloading slim, straitjacketed trees from the back of a truck and shouting instructions at another employee. Marigold crouched behind a parked minivan and peered over its hood like a bad spy. She was shocked at his youth. He looked to be about her age, but the voice issuing from him was spectacularly age-inappropriate. Deep, confident, and sardonic. It seemed far too powerful for his body. Its cadence was weary and dismissive, yet somehow a remarkable amount of warmth and humor underlay the whole thing.
It was a good voice. A cool voice.
And it was the exact missing p
iece to her current project.
Marigold made comedic animated short films. She’d been making them for herself, for fun, since middle school, so by the time she launched an official YouTube channel last year—her senior year of high school—she had the practice and talent to catch the attention of thousands of subscribers. She was currently trying to catch the attention of one of the many animation studios down in Atlanta.
She did most of the voices herself, getting additional help from her friends (last year) or her coworkers at her mother’s restaurant (this year). But this film … it was important. It would be her mother’s winter solstice present, and her ride out of town. Marigold was cracking. She didn’t know how much longer she could live here.
She needed this boy’s help, and she needed it now.
It was an unusually blustery night. Marigold searched between the trees—free organic hot apple cider clutched between her hands, she was not immune to its lure—and strained her ears over the sounds of laughing children and roaring chain saws. Under any other context, this combination would be alarming. Here, it was positively merry. Or it would’ve been, had her stomach not already been churning with horror-movie-like dread.
“Can I help you with anything?”
There. In the far corner. Marigold couldn’t hear the customer’s reply, but the boy’s follow-up said enough. “No problem. Just flag any of us down when you’re ready.”
She barreled toward his voice, knowing that the only way this would happen would be to place herself before him with as much speed as possible, so they’d be forced to interact. Cowardly, yes. But it was the truth. She hurried through a row of seven-footers, recently cut and plump with healthy needles. The boy rounded the corner first.
She almost smacked into his chest.
The boy startled. And then he saw her face, and he startled again. “You’ve been here before.”
Now it was Marigold’s turn to be surprised.
“That hair.” He nodded at the thick, stylish braid that she wore like a headband. The rest of her coal-black hair was pinned up, too. “I’d recognize it anywhere.”
It was true that it was her signature look. A sexy twenty-something with an eyebrow scar had once told her it looked cute. She felt cute in it. She did not feel so cute in this moment. She felt like someone who was about to upchuck.
“You know,” he said over her silence, “most people only have to buy a tree once.”
“I live over there.” Marigold pointed at the apartment complex next door. “And I catch the bus over there.” She pointed at the street beside the grocery store.
“Ah. Then I won’t stand in your way.” Though he didn’t move.
“I’m not going to the bus stop.”
“So … you are buying a tree?” He looked at her as if she were somehow askew. But at least he didn’t seem frustrated. His brown eyes and brown hair were as warm as chestnuts. He was even larger up close, his arms and chest even broader. He was wearing a red plaid flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, the uniform of Drummond Family Trees. Was he a Drummond or a seasonal hire?
It wasn’t that Marigold didn’t want a tree. She did. She really, really did. But her mother was saving for a new house, and she was saving for an apartment of her own in Atlanta. Her brain scanned for another way around this situation. She needed time to suss him out—and time to show him that she was a totally normal human being—before asking him the scary question. Unfortunately, a tree seemed to be her only option.
“Yes,” she said. “Well, maybe.” Better to qualify that now. “I was wondering if you guys had any … you know. Charlie Browns?”
The moment she asked it, she felt sheepish and ashamed. And then further ashamed for feeling ashamed. But the boy broke into an unexpected grin. He took off, and Marigold hurried after him. He led her to a gathering of pint-size trees near the register. They came up to her kneecaps.
“They’re so … short.” It was hard not to sound disappointed.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But did you or did you not ask me for the Peanuts special?”
A thrill went through her, hearing his voice again at such a close range. Superior and aloof, but definitely with that paradoxical underpinning of friendly amusement. It probably allowed him to get away with saying all sorts of rude things.
Marigold could play this game.
“Charlie Brown’s tree was pathetic,” she said, “but it was almost as tall as he was.”
“Yeah. And he was short.”
Marigold couldn’t help cracking a smile. “How about something taller … but with a large, unsightly, unsalable hole? Do you have anything like that?”
The boy’s eyes twinkled. “All of our trees are salable.”
“Surely you have at least one ugly tree.”
He spread out his arms. “Do you see any ugly trees?”
“No. That’s why I’m asking you where they are.”
The boy grinned—a slow, foxlike grin—and Marigold sensed that he was pleased to be verbally caught. “Yeah. Okay. Maybe we have something over here. Maybe.”
He strode back into the trees and led her down the row beside the chain-link fence. They stopped before a tree that was shorter than him but taller than her. Exactly in between. “This one’s been sitting on the lot for a few days. It has a sizable hole down here”—he picked it up and turned it, so its backside now faced forward—“and then this other one up here. But you could put them against a wall—”
“Like you guys did?”
He gave her another mischievous smile. “And it would still look full to anyone inside your home.”
A boisterous, chatty family wandered the row beside them—a mother, a father, and a young girl. The girl pointed at the tallest tree on the lot. It towered above everything else, a twenty-footer, at least. “Can we get that one?” she asked.
Her parents laughed. “We’d need a much bigger living room,” her mom said.
“Do people own living rooms that big?”
“Some people,” her dad said.
“When I grow up, I’m gonna have one that big, so I can buy the tallest tree here every year.”
The words pierced through the air to stab Marigold in the heart. Memories of her own childhood here—of that exact same proclamation to her father—flooded her system. Last year had been the first year that her family hadn’t purchased a tree. Melancholia blossomed into longing as Marigold realized … she wanted one. Desperately. She touched the tall Charlie Brown, letting her fingers fan down its boughs.
“I do like it.…” She turned over the paper card attached to the tree and winced.
“Oh, that’s the old price,” the boy said. “I could knock off ten bucks.”
It still cost way more than her mother would be happy for her to spend. “I’d take it for half price,” she said.
“For a tree this size? You’re crazy.”
“You said it’s been sitting here, unwanted, for several days.”
“I said a few days. Not several.”
She stared at him.
“Fine. I’ll knock off fifteen.”
“Half price.” And when he looked exasperated, she added, “Listen, that’s all I can give you.”
The boy considered this. Considered her. The intensity of his gaze made it a struggle to keep her eyes on his, but she refused to relent. She had the distinct feeling that she was about to get the discount.
“Deal,” he finally grumbled. But with a sense of enjoyment.
“Thank you,” Marigold said, meaning it, as he hefted away her tree.
“I’ll freshen the trunk while you pay.” And then he called out, “Mom! Fifty percent off this orange tag!”
So he was a Drummond.
His mother—a woman with a cheerful face that, regrettably, somewhat resembled a russet potato—sat inside the wooden shack. She looked up from a paperback romance, eyebrows raised high. “Ah,” she said, at Marigold’s approach. “It all makes sense again.”
“S
orry?” Marigold said. A chain saw sputtered to life nearby.
The woman winked. “It’s rare to get a discount outta my son.”
It took her a moment—Marigold was distracted by that pressing question she had yet to ask—but as the woman’s meaning sunk in, the heat rose in Marigold’s cheeks.
“Our customers usually leave with more tree than anticipated.” The woman’s voice was pleasant but normal, though rural in a way that her son’s was not.
“Oh, I wasn’t even going to buy a tree,” Marigold said quickly. “So this is definitely still more.”
The woman smiled. “Is that so?”
“He’s a good salesman.” Marigold wasn’t sure why she felt compelled to protect the boy’s reputation with his mother. Maybe because she was about to ask him a favor. She paid for the tree in cash, eager to escape this conversation while dreading the one that still lay ahead. Her stomach squirmed as if it were filled with tentacles.
She glanced at her phone. It was almost eight o’clock.
The chain saw stopped, and a moment later, the boy headed toward her with the tree nestled in his arms. She was going to have to ask him. She was going to have to ask him right—
“Which one is your car?” he asked.
Shit.
They realized it at the same time.
“You don’t have a car,” he said.
“No.”
“You walked here.”
“Yes.”
They stared at each other for a moment.
“It’s okay,” Marigold said. How could she have forgotten that she’d have to get the stupid tree home? “I can carry it.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“No, it’s okay. That’s my place. Right there.” Marigold pointed at the only black window in the neighboring apartment complex. All of the others featured prominently displayed trees or menorahs. Every balcony had strings of lights wrapped around their railings or large illuminated candy canes or plug-in signs blinking Merry Christmas.
“That’s yours?” he asked. “The dark one on top?”
“Yep.”
“I’ve been staring at that apartment for weeks. It’s a real downer.”
My True Love Gave To Me: Twelve Holiday Stories Page 11