Jingle Boy

by Kieran Scott

  “Wait, so it’s not true?” Matt said, joining her in her fry poaching. “I’ve been telling everybody!”

  “Please, like Paul could beat up a gang by himself,” Marcus said with a scoff as he brought his burger to his mouth. “It was probably a couple of fifth graders lifting gum.”

  “Whatever, dude. You weren’t there,” I said, the heat rising in my face. He was just a little too close to being on the nose with his assessment.

  I sat down and pulled my wallet out of my back pocket. I’d dropped my change on the tray as always and when I went to put it back in my billfold, I could barely jam the few dollars in there.

  “You really need to clean that thing out,” Holly said, grabbing a few more of my fries.

  “I’m aware,” I shot back. I pulled the rather large, white Holiday Ball ticket out of the billfold and tossed it unceremoniously onto the table. Then I shoved the money in and sat down. Holly was looking at the elaborately lettered ticket and trying to look like she wasn’t.

  “Okay, let me have it,” I told her, reaching for a french fry. The moment I picked one up, my stomach rumbled dangerously and I put it down again. What had I been thinking, ordering fries?

  “Let you have what?” Holly asked.

  “I know you want to slam me for wasting my money on that thing,” I told her, lifting my chin and crossing my arms over my chest. “Give me your best shot.”

  Holly shrugged and took a bite of her burger. “Actually, I was just kind of surprised you still had it.”

  “Yeah, you’re not still going, are you?” Matt asked. “We’re playing poker at Marc’s tonight.”

  “We are?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Marcus said. “You’re bringing the jerky. Didn’t you get my e-mail?”

  “Dude, my computer currently has the consistency of Cheez Whiz,” I said.

  “Sorry,” Marcus said, raising his hands. “Are you in or what?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I guess.”

  I picked up my grape soda, and my eyes naturally traveled across the cafeteria to the table where Sarah had been sitting all week, ever since our breakup. Morosely I wondered which mystery cafeteria dish she was trying out today. Or maybe she’d given in to the habits of the girls at her table and was only eating salad and drinking water. Not-so-lovingly nicknamed the Hair Spray Table, it was home to some of the wealthiest, snobbiest, bitchiest females of our time. Sarah was sandwiched between Britney White and Britney Stein, wearing her new Scooby cashmere. Lainie Lefkowitz pointed to something in the pages of a glossy magazine and they all squealed, laughed, and high-fived. Everyone except Sarah. She merely smiled and sipped her milk. Milk. Good. Her inability to fully immerse herself in their behavioral patterns made my heart pang—at least she was still her own person.

  Of course, after everything that had happened, I wasn’t sure I knew who that person was. I tore my eyes away. What was the point?

  The two things you do know are that she’s materialistic and she’s a Scooby lover. Just remember that, I told myself.

  “Look, Paul . . . if you still want to go . . . ,” Holly was saying as I took a gulp of my soda, “I’ll go with you.”

  I snorted in surprise and grape soda came right out my nose. Matt and Marcus cracked up laughing and Matt slapped me on the back.

  “Ugh! Get a trough!” Holly said, pushing herself away from the table. I scrambled for a napkin and held it under my nose. The pain was excruciating. You really don’t want to send sugar and bubbles up your nasal passages. It’s not a fun sensation.

  “Are you kidding me?” I said through the flimsy napkin, which was now stained purple.

  “Yeah, Stevenson,” Marcus said. “You’re not exactly a school dance kinda girl.”

  “Really, Marc? Then what kind of girl am I?” Holly asked, leveling him with a glare.

  “You know, the tackle football kind of girl,” Marcus replied, unfazed.

  Holly blinked. She had been known to play tackle football with us on occasion. “Okay, true,” she said. She gazed down at the Holiday Ball ticket. “But it could be kind of cool.”

  Kind of cool? This had to be a joke. The thought of Holly at a Holiday Ball was wrong on so many levels. The anti-Christmas level, the joiner level, the girly level . . .

  “Do you even own a dress?” I blurted out, dropping my hand away from my face.

  Matt and Marcus laughed again. Holly picked up a fry and tossed it at my forehead, where it bounced off and landed in her Jell-O.

  “Come on!” she said, her green eyes dancing. “It could be fun to get dressed up and act like a normal human being for once. Besides, you already paid for it. And you practically organized the whole thing! Don’t you want to see how it turns out?”

  She had a point there. I had worked my butt off on the plans for this shindig, painstakingly ensuring that anything that had gone wrong at the last three balls would not be repeated. We’d splurged on a caterer to avoid being fed reheated lunch food, we’d ordered an extra helium tank so that everyone could suck the gas to their heart’s content during setup and we still wouldn’t run out like we had last year, and I’d hand-picked all the chaperones. (Turk Martin’s uncle had volunteered two years in a row and had hit on the head cheerleaders both times. Not pretty.)

  I looked down at the ticket and realized all at once that there was no reason why we shouldn’t go.

  “Sorry, guys,” I said, glancing at Matt. “You’re gonna have to get your own jerky.”

  “Yeah?” Holly said, raising her eyebrows.

  I started to smile and looked up at her, the inside of my nose and throat still stinging. “Yeah,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

  Holly grinned and I felt something I hadn’t felt in days. I actually felt kind of happy.

  “Oh, Paul, you look so handsome!” my mother told me, giving my tie a little tweak as we stood in the front hallway.

  Her face was practically gleaming with pride and I didn’t have the heart to point out the big purple-and-yellow stain around my eye. The swelling had gone down, but the colors had shifted and I now looked like some kind of deranged Batman villain. Huh. That could actually be kind of cool. I could be the freak that Christmas had wronged, taking out my pain on all of society. But what would I be called . . . ? The Christmas Revenger? The Jingler? The Snowblower?

  “I’m so glad to see you getting back into the spirit of things,” my mother told me. “I was worried about you for a few days there.”

  I forced a smile and bit my tongue. It wasn’t like I was going to stand there and tell her that this was a fluke. That I wasn’t actually in any spirit of any kind. That Holly and I would probably last half an hour before all of the Christmas carols and mighty-good-cheer irritated us to the point of insanity and we had to make our escape.

  “Did you hear about the Santa robberies last night?” my mother asked suddenly, her hand fluttering to her throat. “It’s so horrible. Seven towns lost their town Santas. Can you imagine the type of person who would do such a thing?”

  You’re lookin’ at him, my brain said, and I felt my cheeks flush with the secret.

  “I gotta go, Mom,” I told her, turning away before she could read my face. “Thanks for letting me borrow the car.”

  “Anytime, sweetie!” my mother called after me as I jogged down the path toward the driveway. Her chipper, happy, trusting voice made my shoulders curl forward. What would my mother think if she found out that her precious Christmas-loving son was exactly the type of evil Santa-stealing person she couldn’t even imagine? The guilt settled in hard on my shoulders as I waved to her, still standing in the open doorway, before pulling out. What was I doing? Was all this anti-Christmas stuff worth losing the respect of my parents?

  Don’t think that way, the little voice in my head told me as I drove toward Holly’s house. Christmas has forsaken you. You can’t feel guilty about forsaking it right back.

  By the time I pulled up at the foot of Holly’s curving driveway, I was a mess of
frayed nerves. A battle was being waged in my head between the old Paul and the new, and my eye was starting to throb. Maybe this Holiday Ball thing had been a huge mistake. Did I really want to immerse myself in an elaborate Christmas party after I’d spent last night waging war against the holiday?

  I was so thoroughly confused that I leaned on the horn extra hard and extra long, trying to get out some of my aggression. I was deciding how to bail on this whole thing when the front door of Holly’s house opened, and every last one of my warring thoughts went out the window.

  Holly was standing there in a floor-length black velvet gown with a high neck and no sleeves. She had some sort of cape or wrap thingie draped over her shoulders. Her hair was pulled back with a few curls dangling around her face. Even from this distance I could tell she was wearing some kind of glittery makeup that made her whole face sparkle. And lipstick. The girl was wearing lipstick.

  I actually reached my hands up to rub my eyes but mercifully remembered my injuries at the last second. It didn’t matter, anyway. Holly was approaching the car now and there was no denying it. She looked gorgeous. She looked . . . sexy. My best friend was capable of sexiness.

  Holly opened the car door and lowered herself into the seat, tucking her high heels under the hem of her dress. The whole car filled with an unfamiliar flowery scent. She slammed the door, reached over, and touched my chin. It took a second for me to realize that she was pushing my mouth closed.

  “You gonna drive?” she asked, grinning.

  “You look . . .”

  “I’m aware,” she said, blushing slightly.

  She turned and faced forward and I put the car in drive. This was going to be a very interesting night.

  “I gotta hand it to you, Paul, this is the coolest dance I’ve ever been to,” Holly said, fiddling with the stem of her plastic champagne flute.

  “Hol, it’s the only dance you’ve ever been to,” I pointed out.

  “Point taken,” Holly said.

  She sipped her sparkling cider and looked out across the dance floor. For the millionth time that night I found myself staring at her in disbelief. Was this really my tomboy best friend? She looked even more beautiful in the dim light cast by the twinkling white Christmas tree strands that were draped all over the gym. And it wasn’t just me. At least ten people had gone mute when they saw her.

  “How did you get all the trees?” Holly asked.

  “My dad cut a deal with the manager at Treasure Island,” I replied, trying without much luck to stifle a proud grin.

  However anti-Christmas I was feeling, I had to take at least one moment to revel in my success. People had been coming up to me all night telling me how amazing the gym looked. The walls under the basketball nets were lined with fake evergreens and we’d bought a couple of dozen cans of aerosol fir tree scent so that the room smelled authentic. Silver, white, and clear balloons packed the ceiling, with curly silver ribbons dangling down from each one. The refreshment tables were draped with garlands and paper Hanukkah and Christmas decorations. But my favorite touch was the tableau set up around the DJ’s table in the corner. The art club had been commissioned to make life-size cardboard replicas of the entire Peanuts gang, singing around the pathetic little tree that Charlie Brown brings home.

  I always thought that particular TV special really brought home the meaning of Christmas. It was a holiday that made everything beautiful.

  I looked at Holly and she smiled. Yeah. Everything was made beautiful.

  But not anymore, the little voice in my head pointed out.

  I looked down at the silver-and-white tablecloth. Out of nowhere I felt very heavy and very sad. Like my best friend had just dumped me and left me forever. But that was ridiculous. It was just a holiday. I was practically an adult here. It was going to have to stop being magical sometime, right?

  “Hey,” Holly said suddenly. “Wanna dance?”

  My heart skipped a beat in surprise. A slow song had just started up and groups of people were moving toward the walls while all the school’s established couples went to the dance floor.

  “You want to . . . dance?” I asked. With me? my brain added silently. This was a contingency I hadn’t planned for. We were only supposed to stick this thing out for half an hour, and I never thought Holly would want to actually dance. This was a girl who would rather watch The NFL Today than TRL.

  “Come on,” she said, standing. “It’s my first dance. We might as well . . . you know, dance at it.”

  “Okay,” I said, fumbling to wipe off my appetizer-greased fingers as I stood.

  I followed Holly over to the middle of the dance floor, hundreds of pairs of eyes marking our progress. I knew what everyone was thinking. We’d been teased since the third grade about being a couple. They all probably figured we’d finally given in to the inevitable. People were so stupid. Right. Me and Holly. Together. Ha!

  Holly stopped and turned to me and I paused for a moment, my heart in my throat. Suddenly I couldn’t remember what to do with my hands. This was Holly. Was I really supposed to . . . hold her?

  She slipped her arms around my neck and there was nothing I could do but lace my hands together around her waist. I was as stiff as a corpse and there were about two feet between us. I methodically moved back and forth to the music, starting to sweat. What was wrong with me? It wasn’t like I’d never been to a dance before.

  “Are you okay?” Holly asked me. As she spoke, she inched a bit closer to me. My heart lurched, but then I realized it was actually better—more comfortable. I could bend my arms. I started to feel a little less awkward.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “Paul, I—”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” she said, looking away.

  “Oh no!” I said. “Remember the Pact! That time you did start a sentence!”

  “Forget it, okay?” she said, struggling to hold back a smile.

  “No way! You would kill me if I went back on the Pact,” I said, laughing.

  “Paul,” she said, turning her face toward mine again.

  Something in her voice cut my laughter short. For the first time since we hit the dance floor, I looked into her eyes. An intense tingling feeling dropped from my heart all the way down through my toes.

  Holly was giving me the Look.

  The look someone gives you when they want you to kiss them. Eyelids kinda heavy. Green eyes somehow more intensely green. An unspeakable heat rushed over my skin and now my whole body was sweating under my suit.

  Oh. My. God. She was going to do it. She was going to kiss me! How was this possible? And why, why, why was I suddenly thinking about my breath? It wasn’t like I was actually going to let this happen, was I?

  Holly leaned in a little closer to me and my eyes started to close. I was going to let this happen, apparently.

  In fact, from the beating of my heart I was starting to realize it might not be a half-bad idea.

  Before I knew it, I was leaning closer to her, closing the gap between us. Our lips were about to touch. I was about to kiss Holly Stevenson. And then—

  “AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH! Gross! Oh my God! GROSS!”

  Holly and I jumped apart and everyone else on the dance floor stopped as well. It was Sarah’s voice, and in the midst of the confusion I realized that I actually hadn’t thought about her all night. There was another shriek, followed by another, and then a bunch of people over by the Secret Santa table backed up as if they were trying to get away from something. They were all looking at the floor, and I saw a couple of girls turn their faces away and hide them in their boyfriends’ jacket lapels.

  “What’s going on?” Holly asked.

  “Scooby! This isn’t funny!” Sarah’s strained voice carried across the gym.

  The crowd around the table parted enough for us to see Sarah, in a white strapless minidress, standing over a few crushed boxes on the gym floor. Scooby was next to her, wearing what I assume he thought was a pimped-out purple t
ux, holding his stomach and laughing.

  I looked at Holly and we both shrugged.

  “Sarah, what is it? What’s wrong?” asked Mr. McDaniel, one of our chaperones.

  “Look!” Sarah wailed, pointing at the boxes on the floor. For the first time I noticed a smear of brown on one of her white shoes. “Someone replaced all the Secret Santa gifts with . . . dog poo ! ”

  And with that, Sarah burst into uncontrollable sobs and flung herself into Mr. McDaniel’s arms. He patted her back and inched her away from the mess as Scooby grasped a chair for support. A resounding “ewww!” went out across the gym and everyone made their way toward the far wall. Coach Bullock, the football coach, started wrangling some of his team to dispose of the unopened gifts and start cleaning up the mess.

  “I don’t believe it,” Holly said suddenly, a laugh in her voice.

  “What?” I asked. I think I was still in shock.

  “Look over by the equipment room,” Holly said, covering her mouth.

  I glanced over without moving my head and saw Dirk peeking out the equipment room door. We locked eyes and Dirk suddenly twitched.

  “Ew! Ewww! EEEEEEWWW! ” Lainie Lefkowitz shrieked as the janitor mopped up the poo, momentarily widening the smear.

  I laughed and shook my head at Dirk in wonder. He and the other members of the Anti-Christmas Underground emerged from the equipment room in formal gear, blending in perfectly with the students and their dates. Then they quickly and unobtrusively slipped out the side door.

  “Classic,” Holly said.

  THEY’RE SINGING “DECK THE HALLS, ” BUT IT’S NOT LIKE CHRISTMAS AT ALL . . .

  WHEN I WOKE UP ON SATURDAY MORNING, I HAD NO idea where I was. There was a lot of loud banging and gruff voices shouting and then something mechanical and totally inappropriate for morning operation whirred to life right outside my window. I wrenched my eyes open. All I could see was a mishmash of pastel. My forehead was pressed up against something hard, which was weird because my bed isn’t next to a wall. I blinked a few times, pulled back, and realized that I was on the pullout couch in the den and that I had slept right up against one of the arms of said couch. I reached up to feel my forehead and found the bumpy, crisscrossed imprint of the plaid couch fabric on my skin.