His thick eyebrows lift. “You gave her your savings.”
“Turns out I didn’t need to leave so soon, after all.”
His whole face—eyes, mouth, eyebrows, even his crooked nose—is one big smile as he says, “You’re not leaving?”
“Not until this fall when I go to college. I guess I like Christmas, after all. Lately it’s been feeling extra … magical.”
He leans forward, and I tip my head up—waiting, waiting—when we’re interrupted by Santa. Ho freaking ho.
I might be okay with Christmas, but Santa is still the worst.
* * *
The rest of the day flies by, with a bunch of road warriors and even more locals than normal. They all want to double check Ben’s posted Christmas dinner menu, as though there’s any doubt they’ll be here. It used to be the most depressing day of the year to work, but tomorrow promises to be a party. My mom and Rick will be off in time to come to dinner. My mom is even making the tamales.
Ben and I don’t have a chance to talk again. He’s extra busy with today’s orders, plus prep for tomorrow. But his eyes follow me everywhere, and we keep sharing smiles that feel like secrets. By the time the last customer leaves, we’re both slaphappy and exhausted. “I have so much more work to do.” He rubs his face, leaving a streak of flour on his cheek. I lean into him and wipe it away with my thumb.
He tips his head down, closer.
I put my fingers on his lips, squashing the moment. And his very soft lips. “I’ve got some work to do, too.” I laugh as I dart away. I finish my cleaning in record time, and then sneak out the front door. The logistics of what I’m planning next will be tricky. The likelihood of second-degree burns is high.
* * *
Forty-five minutes later—and with only one minor scalding—I knock on the back door to the diner. Ben opens it, a rolling pin clutched over his head.
He lowers it sheepishly. “Thought maybe you were Candy’s boyfriend.”
“Ha! No. Follow me.”
“Where are we—”
“Just follow me!” I climb up. When I’m safely on the roof, the ladder squeaks its metal protests against Ben’s weight. Then his head—his adorable goofy smile of a face—pokes up over the edge. I hold out a hand and help him up.
I don’t let go of it as we walk to the edge of the roof and stare down at Christmas. The beauty I always had to look up to the sky to see has transported itself down to this ramshackle town. As we watch, Angel and a few other guys from the mine finish setting up a huge Christmas tree in the middle of the gas-station parking lot. It gleams and twinkles in the night. Lorna comes out of the station and screams about trespassing—before breaking into peals of shockingly sweet laughter and handing out free beers. More people join them, and from up here, it doesn’t look like a throwaway freeway exit. It looks like a warm, happy community. It looks like, well, Christmas.
I tug Ben away from the edge and over to a cardboard box that I’ve set up in front of the lawn chairs. The box is covered by a red-and-white-checkered tablecloth. On top of it are two mugs, two candy canes, a kettle, and a canister of whipped cream.
We sit. Still holding hands. “Christmas Eve is my favorite,” I say. “I think the anticipation is more fun than anything else. I kind of lost that. The idea that something—food, traditions, an arbitrary date on the calendar—can be special because we decide it should be. Because we make it special. Not just for ourselves, but for others. I’ve had people around my whole life to make things special for me, even when I didn’t notice it. And you’ve been working so hard to make life special for everyone who walks into this ridiculous diner. So … who is making it special for you?”
He looks down. The bashful sweep of his eyelashes against his cheek makes my heart burst with something that is probably not the Christmas spirit, but which feels every bit as Joy-to-the-World.
“What food would you make for yourself?” I nudge him with my elbow as an excuse to snuggle closer. All of those practice nudges are finally paying off.
“I don’t know. I don’t have a lot of happy memories to fall back on.”
“Well. I’m creating a happy moment for you. Tonight. Right now. Keep in mind I’m not magic.” I pour water into the mugs, already filled with hot cocoa mix.
He laughs as he unwraps his candy cane to stir with. I take the whipped cream and swirl it, towering, over the tops of both mugs.
“If I’m a gingerbread cookie, you’re a mug of hot cocoa. Makes you glad for cold nights like tonight. We can call this drink a ‘Hot Cocoa Benji.’”
“Not Benji.”
“Tell me!”
He smiles, licking cream from the corner of his mouth. “It’s a family name. There’s this famous story? About someone who was mean in his past, but then woke up to the horrors he was creating for himself. And he vows to go forward, being kind and doing good, and keeping Christmas in his heart year round…”
“Díos mío. Ben is short for the Grinch?”
“No! It’s Ebenezer. From the Dickens story? And … you knew what I was talking about all along, didn’t you?”
I laugh, and he joins me. “Sometimes you’re more spice than sugar,” he says.
“You’re a chef. You like spices. But I’ll stick with calling you Ben, if that’s okay. Otherwise you sound like an old man.”
“By all means. Also, this cocoa is the best I’ve ever had.”
“Liar.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to go to culinary school with me?”
I snort, raising my mug to toast him. “Totally sure. But maybe we can find a college and a culinary school close by each other.” I smile into my mug and take a deep drink to quell my nerves. “Because, you know, once a girl has had your gingerbread, how can she ever accept anything else?”
“Is that some sort of waitress pickup line?”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
And then, as Christmas Eve turns into Christmas, anticipation becomes reality. We share a cocoa-and-whipped-cream kiss. It’s hopeful and happy and exciting. Exactly how kissing Ben should be, our mouths smiling together.
* * *
If you do a search for “US cities named Christmas” (which, fine, everyone needs hobbies), you won’t find my home. It’s not a city. It’s barely a freeway exit.
You won’t find Angel, grinning and bursting with pride, showing off his new paintings—the only non-Christmas-themed decorations hanging on the diner walls. You won’t find Lorna, organizing the Christmas book club and asking Ben’s opinion on what to serve for snacks. You won’t find Rick and my mom and me, sitting on the couch, watching the Bonanza DVDs dubbed in Spanish we got him for his birthday.
You won’t find Candy. Neither will Jerry, for that matter.
And you won’t find Ben and me, sitting on the roof, talking and laughing and planning in our warm, friendly, hopeful census-designated place.
But it doesn’t matter anymore if you can’t find my home.
I found it for myself.
As Christmas stories go, this one isn’t as sad as it could be.
I’m not Tiny Tim. There were no Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, or Future. All told, it is a tale completely free of angels and elves, wise men and shepherds. Even Santa didn’t make an appearance.
Nope. As it turns out, I was visited by Hulda.
“Yes. Yes.” I heard her voice, high and clear, through the crowd of people who stood too close, wearing coats that were too heavy. Our collective breath clung to the windows, almost hiding the sight of the 747 that was waiting right outside. I shifted on my feet, wondering if there is any place on earth more chaotic than Chicago O’Hare Airport five days before Christmas.
Families ran for connections. Carols played over a scratchy PA system while people stood crowded together. Waiting. But for some reason I couldn’t stop staring at the blond girl leaning against the counter at gate H18.
“New York,” the girl said. “I will go there please. Now.”
He
r voice carried an accent that I couldn’t quite place—the consonants too precise, like someone who is very worried she might not be understood.
She slid her ticket toward the gate agent then forced a smile, an afterthought. “Please.”
The agent took one glance at the piece of paper and forced a smile of her own. “Oh, I’m sorry, but this isn’t a ticket to New York.”
The blond girl rolled her eyes. “Yes. That is why I stand in this line and talk to you. You can change it to New York, no? It is okay. I will wait.”
The gate agent shook her head and punched a few keys on her computer. True to her word, the girl waited.
“No. I’m sorry,” the agent said a moment later. “Your ticket is nonexchangeable and nonrefundable. Do you understand?”
“I am Icelandic. I am not moronic.”
“Of course. Yes. It’s just that…” The agent trailed off, looking for words. “I’m afraid that this ticket cannot be used on this flight. And even if it could, this flight is full.”
“But I must go to New York! I thought I could fly to where this ticket takes me and then take a bus or a train to New York, but it is very far. In Iceland, the distances … they are not so far. And now I am going to a place I do not want to go, to see someone I do not wish to see, and—”
“I’m sorry.” The gate agent shook her head. “You can purchase a ticket for New York. We have another flight leaving at six a.m. tomorrow. If you wish to go to New York you must buy a ticket for that flight.”
“But I have a ticket!” the girl snapped and pushed her old ticket forward again.
Meanwhile, another gate agent was approaching the door, propping it open as she announced, “Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to flight 479 with nonstop service to New York’s LaGuardia Airport.”
The lady behind the counter gave a desperate look to the even more desperate girl. “You will either need to buy a ticket for a later flight or go to your original destination.”
“But my boyfriend is in New York! And if you would only change my ticket—”
“This flight is full.”
“But I do not love him!”
The woman looked confused. “Your boyfriend in New York?”
“No.” The girl shook her head and shrugged. “My other boyfriend.”
“Oh,” the woman said, her mouth forming a perfect circle. Then she leaned closer. A kindness filled her eyes. “Are your parents here?”
The girl shook her head. “I am alone.”
And right then I totally knew the feeling.
I watched the girl push away from the desk and start through the crowd of people that swarmed, jockeying for position as the gate agent announced, “We would like to welcome our first-class passengers at this time.”
En masse, the crowd took another step forward, jostling the girl, who dropped her bag and wiped her eyes. Her footsteps faltered.
And that was when I did it.
I don’t know why I did it. It wasn’t even a conscious thought, a decision. Instinct alone was driving me as I stepped forward and blurted, “You want to go to New York?”
The girl looked at me, confused, but before she could even answer, I thrust my own ticket toward her and said, “Here. Take it. You can have it if you give me yours.”
“But that is your ticket.”
“You can have it. We can trade. Here.” I waved my ticket, but the girl glanced nervously at the gate agent standing by the door.
“It’s okay. They don’t check IDs during the boarding process,” I told her. “If you want to go to New York, this is your chance. Just give me your ticket. Give me your ticket and go.”
I could practically see what she was thinking. I was a teenage girl, too. We were about the same height, the same weight. To anyone in that heavily secured airport we might have even looked like sisters. It’s not like I was a creepy dude asking her to get into my van, but the offer probably sounded too good to be true. Which meant it probably was.
She hesitated, then snatched the ticket from my hand, held hers out to me.
“Go ahead.” I motioned toward the open door. “You’re boarding.”
She pointed to another open door a few gates away, another mass of crowding people. “So are you.”
It really was that easy, believe it or not. I started toward the open doors. For the first time in my life I did not look back, not until I heard the girl call, “You don’t even know where I was going.”
I shrugged and shook my head and said the only thing that mattered: “If you just want to go away then any ticket will get you there.”
* * *
“Miss?” the voice came through the blackness, and yet I did not move. “Miss!” The flight attendant seemed almost sorry. “It’s time. We’re here.”
That’s when I realized the plane was on the ground; all the other passengers were gone. The lights were down and the tarmac was dark. Wherever the girl was going, I was there.
Walking through the nearly deserted terminal, I made a list of what I had to do. I had enough cash for a hotel and a car, but they’d never rent one to a minor. Especially a minor traveling alone. I took the battery out of my phone, knowing I’d need to buy a burner. I would have to—
“Hulda!” someone yelled.
I looked at the crowd of people waiting just outside of security.
“Hulda!” the woman at the front of the crowd yelled again, a massive Welcome (to your new) Home, Hulda! banner unfurled in front of her. “We’re so glad you’re here!”
As she rushed forward, she must have crossed into a secure area because an alarm started sounding—both in my head and out of it.
This was dangerous.
This was wrong.
This woman was invading territory that was better left roped off. Secured. Barricaded and impenetrable to intruders. But the breach had already happened, and I let myself give in to the hug.
It was, after all, a really nice hug.
“Well, look at you!” The woman held me at arm’s length. “You changed your hair.”
I thought back to the short blond locks on the girl in the airport. The girl with the accent. The girl from Iceland. The girl these people were evidently waiting for.
I felt myself starting to panic, needing to run …
“You look so different from your picture,” the woman said, and I managed to breathe.
The girl these people had evidently only seen in pictures.
Maybe they wouldn’t get suspicious, call security. The police. Maybe I could just bide my time and slip away quietly and …
“Well, what am I doing hogging all the hugging? Ethan!” the woman yelled. She looked around, and I followed her gaze to the boy who was walking around the corner.
He wore Wranglers and boots and a plaid shirt heavy with starch. Until then, I’d thought boys like him only existed on the covers of romance novels. He must have been shocked by the looks of me, too, because he stopped short, frozen in the process of sliding a phone back into his pocket. Hulda’s words came back to me:
I don’t love him.
My other boyfriend.
“Ethan!” the woman yelled. “She’s here!”
I started to spin, but I was too late. He was already there. Looking at me. I could see the truth playing across his face, the realization that I was not an Icelandic girl name Hulda. I was not his girlfriend.
“It’s…” The boy started, and, mentally, I filled in the blanks.
An imposter!
A liar!
A fraud.
He moved closer.
“So good to see you!” the boy said.
And then he kissed me.
* * *
So it turns out that if you swap tickets with a girl who doesn’t want to go see her boyfriend, then there’s a good chance said boyfriend will meet you at the airport.
Along with his entire family.
“This is Aunt Mary,” the boy—Ethan—said, pointing to the woman with the really good hugs. �
�You’ll be staying with her,” he added before pointing to the others. “My mom, Susan. Dad, Clint.”
Clint took my hand in his big, beefy, calloused one, but he gave me a warm smile.
“Welcome.” His voice had a soft, southern twang. They all did.
“Oh, and that’s Emily. She’s my sister,” Ethan said as Emily looked up at me with the biggest bluest eyes that I’ve ever seen. I’m pretty sure she could see right through me.
“I’m twelve,” she said before I could ask. “I’m older than I look.”
We were walking toward the baggage claim, past a nativity scene where all of the wise men were dressed like cowboys, when the boy’s mom looked at me and asked, “So, is this your first trip to Oklahoma?”
Oklahoma.
Middle of the country. Middle of nowhere. Approximately a thousand miles from New York, another thousand from LA. It was … perfect.
“First time,” I said.
There was a long pause while everyone waited for me to do something. I felt like an animal at the zoo, an exhibit called Icelandic Girl in the Wild. But I wasn’t an Icelandic girl. And I couldn’t let them know that.
“It’s nice to meet you all,” I tried.
“My goodness,” Aunt Mary started, “Ethan said your English was good, but it’s perfect. Just perfect.”
“I watch a lot of American TV,” I said, and they all nodded as if that made sense.
“Okay, let’s get your bags.” Clint clapped his hands together.
“Oh, I don’t—” But before I could finish, a huge suitcase came around the conveyor belt, a giant sticker of the Icelandic flag plastered to the side. “I guess that’s mine.”
Clint went to grab the old-fashioned suitcase, lifting the giant thing as if it weighed nothing at all. I had to wonder how long Hulda was expected to stay.
But that didn’t matter. I wasn’t Hulda.
* * *
“So … Hulda?” Ethan asked, and it took an embarrassingly long time to realize he was talking to me.
“Yes, Evan?” I asked.
“Ethan,” he whispered. “My name is Ethan. You might want to remember that since you just flew halfway around the world because you are so in love with me.” I studied his profile in the dim light of the backseat of his parents’ SUV as it pulled away from the airport. His jaw was strong, and he kept his gaze straight ahead, as if trying to stare down the horizon. “You’re never going to get away with this, you know? Pretending to be Hulda.”
My True Love Gave To Me: Twelve Holiday Stories Page 28