by Kieran Scott
Someone walked by the window, startling me, and when I turned my head, a sharp pain slashed through my eyeball. I slapped my hand over my eye and saw, with the other one, a couple of big men in quilted coats, leaning a ladder against the house. The workmen. Right. But it was Saturday. Didn’t construction guys ever get a break?
I tried to lie down, but another stabbing eye pain killed that fantasy. Ow!—then it sliced through my head. And my neck. Ugh! What kind of freaky position had I slept in?
I sat up, rubbing my neck, and my eyes fell on the desk chair in the corner of the room. My suit jacket was flung over the back of it and my red tie had slipped to the floor during the night, where it sat in a little coiled pile.
Right. The Holiday Ball was last night. And afterward Holly and I had gone out to the diner with the rest of the Underground and gorged ourselves on cheese fries. And the night before that was spent running around destroying Christmas with no sleep to speak of. No wonder I’d slept all night in a weird position. My body was probably too tired to move. When I’d gotten home, I’d been so drained I’d practically collapsed. I hadn’t even walked Holly to her door when I dropped her off, a breach of etiquette that would send my mother’s mind reeling if she ever found out.
Holly.
“Oh no!” I said, my voice scratchy and dry. I brought my hands up to cover my face and tried to squeeze out the memory of my embarrassing behavior by scrunching my eyes shut. But it didn’t work. It all rushed back to me like a sledgehammer to the head.
I thought Holly was going to kiss me. Could I be any more delusional? Why would Holly ever want to kiss me? I mean, that would be like kissing her brother. If she had one. Which she doesn’t. But still. What was I thinking?
And forget about my vivid imagination, the even worse part was that I had almost kissed her. If Sarah hadn’t screamed when she did, I might have actually gone through with it. So I guess I owed Sarah Saunders one.
Yeah, right.
I held my breath, letting the wave of mortification pass over me. What would Holly have done if my lips had actually met hers? Would she have slapped me? Would she have laughed? Would she have kicked me in the Painful Place? Probably a combination of all three.
“Okay, but it didn’t happen,” I told myself, climbing out of bed. “It didn’t happen and everything’s fine and Holly is still your friend.”
Even so, the memory kept replaying itself over and over in my head and there was nothing I could do to make it stop. I grabbed my robe and started for the door, hoping a shower would snap me out of it, but I paused when I saw my reflection in the mirror. The eye looked much better this morning and yes, there was a plaid pattern on my forehead, but that would go away. I stared into my eyes and asked myself the question I’d been avoiding asking myself ever since the almost kiss.
“Did you actually want to kiss Holly?” I asked.
The second I said it out loud I got this warm sort of tingly, tight feeling around my heart and I watched my skin flush right in front of me. That would seem to indicate a yes. But what warm-blooded American guy wouldn’t have wanted to kiss Holly Stevenson last night? She’d looked downright hot. And besides, we were at a dance, there was all that atmosphere going on. I’d been sucked in, that was all. I’d simply fallen victim to dim lights, slow music, heady perfume, and raging hormones.
Holly was my friend. My best friend. And I wasn’t about to do anything to jeopardize that.
I took a deep breath and decided to hit the shower. After all, I did have a long day ahead of me. Last night Dirk had come up with the ultimate plan to expose Scooby for what he really was. That afternoon Rudy and I would put the plan into action. Today Scooby was going to get his. And nothing was going to stand in my way.
I peeked out the window of the Santa Shack, feeling like a fugitive from justice. Or a cat burglar. Or generally like someone who was doing something they shouldn’t be doing, which was exactly what I was doing. My mother walked by in her reindeer outfit, heading for the escalator to the food court, and seeing her only magnified the feeling. I glanced at the deserted North Pole. Scooby had gone on his dinner break, but I was sure that at any second, one of the elves was going to come back and catch us here and I’d be shunned like Rudolph from the reindeer games.
“You sure this is going to work?” I asked Rudy, glancing up at him over my shoulder. He was standing on a small stool in the corner, so he was even taller than he usually was.
“Sure, I’m sure,” Rudy said. He whipped a tiny screwdriver out of his pocket and used it to tighten the microscopic minicamera into place above the eaves of the Santa Shack. He was cool as a kumquat.
“Why are you so calm?” I asked. Somehow his chill attitude made me intensely nervous. A little stream of sweat ran down from my temple along the side of my face.
Rudy grinned down at me. “I’m just that good,” he said, waggling his eyebrows. He jumped down from the stool he was standing on and clapped. “All set. Let’s go watch the action.”
Rudy walked out of the Santa Shack without even trying to skulk. If anyone caught him, we’d both be subjected to another marathon interrogation in the mall offices, but this fact didn’t seem to bother Rudy, perhaps because he knew everyone who worked in this mall and they all seemed to worship the ground he walked on. Apparently in the six months that Rudy had been working at Radio Shack, he’d managed not only to introduce himself to the hundreds of clerks, custodians, and managers, but also to endear himself to them to the point where they all looked on him like a son. Or a brother. Or a really cool cousin.
“So we’re going to Sears?” I asked, my nerves calming more and more the farther we got from the North Pole without being accosted.
“That’s where I told everyone to meet us,” Rudy replied, nodding quickly. “It’ll be on, like, fifty screens!”
The mall was packed and Rudy was a fast walker, so I had to dodge and weave to keep up with him. I couldn’t wait until Scooby came back from break. This was going to be so perfect. And I owed it all to Rudy and his total AV geek status. We’d spent most of the afternoon planting remote receivers in Radio Shack, in the Sears appliance section, and in the Macy’s Juniors section, where TVs suspended over the clothing racks play cheesy pop videos 24/7. We’d even hooked one up behind the big screen in the back of the Disney Store. (The manager has a massive crush on Rudy and was easily convinced to let him “backstage.” Yeah. They call their stockroom “backstage.” Overcompensating much? News flash: You work in a mall!)
“This is gonna be so cool!” Rudy exclaimed as we crossed the threshold into Sears. “We are on a roll, baby! A roll!” He jumped on the escalator and took the steps two at a time. I ran after him and suggested he might want to take it down a couple of notches. We didn’t want anyone getting suspicious and it wasn’t so often that teenage guys were that excited to be hanging out at Sears.
“Good point, man,” Rudy said, slapping my chest as he looked around conspiratorially. “Good point.”
We walked inconspicuously over to the TV section, where Holly, Flora, Dirk, and Ralph stood waiting. My heart did a weird catch-skip thing the second I saw Holly and when she smiled at me, I quickly looked away. But not before I noticed she was wearing this green turtleneck that made her eyes go like . . . boom! Green! Anyway, if she saw the expression on my face, she would know something was up and would grill me endlessly until I told her what it was.
And Holly would never, ever know that I considered kissing her last night. Never, ever.
“Everything set?” Dirk asked, punctuating his question with a twitch. He had a black leather jacket on that made him look not unlike one of those skeezy guys from Grease. But still cool, of course.
“Good to go!” Rudy stage-whispered. He glanced at his digital watch. “The fox should be in the hole in less than two minutes.”
Ralph nodded and pulled a Twinkie out of his pocket, then proceeded to shove the whole thing into his mouth. Flora watched him in a sort of disgusted awe and he
pulled out another Twinkie and held it out to her. She scoffed and looked away, so Ralph offered it to me, but I waved it off. I couldn’t even think about eating.
My heart was racing like a reindeer team on too much hot chocolate. If this actually worked, if we actually pulled it off, I was finally, finally going to get to see Scooby humiliated! I stared at the big screen in front of us, watching some Michigan running back celebrate a touchdown and waiting for Rudy to hit the button that would switch the feed over to the Santa Shack.
Come on, I thought, glancing at my watch and willing time to move faster. Come on already!
“Hey, Nicholas,” Holly said casually, stepping around Ralph to stand by my side.
The muscles in my neck instantly tensed up. “Hey,” I said, barely looking at her. Couldn’t she see I was holding my breath in anticipation here? She was supposed to know me better than anyone.
“So . . . last night was fun,” she said, rocking back and forth from her heels to her toes.
Rudy switched the feed over. Every TV in the place was now showing the empty Santa Shack.
“Yeah . . . definitely,” I said. I think. I was pretty distracted at this point.
“Listen, do you think we could, like, talk later or something?” Holly asked.
The door of the Santa Shack was opening. “Because I really think we need to—”
“Shhhhhhh!” I shushed her. Loudly. “I want to see this.”
Scooby was pulling off his T-shirt.
“I know, but Paul, last night we—”
“Holly! Can you just back off for five seconds?” I snapped. “I’m finally going to get Scooby!”
I threw both arms out toward the screen and all of our friends’ heads swiveled around to look at Holly. There were a few moments of silence as Holly turned bright, bright red. My heart was in my stomach, but then Holly turned to look at the television.
“Well, there you go, Paul,” she said. She lifted a hand, then let it slap back against her thigh. “Just what you wanted.”
I tore my eyes away from her and there, on the screen, was my good friend Scooby, wearing nothing but a pair of fire-engine-red boxers, flexing his nonexistent biceps. He turned to check himself out from behind and Rudy and Dirk doubled over laughing. Printed on the back of his boxers was a picture of a muffin with little steam clouds rising off it and the words Stud Mu fin scrolling over the top.
I had to cover my mouth to keep from laughing out loud. It was even better than I had imagined. Shoppers started to gather around the dozens of television sets, pointing, laughing, glancing around confused. Scooby looked over his shoulder into the mirror and clenched one butt cheek, then the other, then the other, then the other, smiling and nodding in appreciation of himself.
“Aw, yeah!” Rudy said, lifting his hand to slap mine. I put out my hand and he whacked me so hard it stung. I could just imagine the reactions in the Macy’s Juniors section right now and the little kids watching Scooby in the Disney Store. They were going to be scarred for life!
Hmmm . . . maybe we should have thought of that. But whatever. I decided not to dwell on it and to revel in our success instead.
“Gotta hand it to you, Dirk,” I said, reaching out to squeeze his shoulder. “This was one hell of a brainstorm.”
“Don’t touch the leather!” Dirk blurted out. He slipped away from me and let out a violent twitch.
“Okay, okay!” Holly said as Scooby started to wiggle his butt in the mirror and Rudy laughed so hard he had to grab the TV for support. “Have you had enough? Are you done torturing this guy now?”
“What?” I said. “Are you kidding? Not by a long shot!”
“God, Paul, what is wrong with you?” she demanded, stepping in front of the TV and blocking my view.
“What’s wrong with me?” I replied, totally confused. “What’s wrong with you?”
Holly looked at each of our expectant faces as if she was trying to decide whether or not to say what she had to say in front of the assembled parties. “What’s wrong with me is that you’re not working against Christmas here, Paul,” she said finally, keeping her stance in front of the television. “All you care about is getting to Scooby.”
I lifted my shoulders. “And?”
“And it’s pathetic!” she replied. Was it just me, or were there suddenly tears in her eyes? “It’s perfectly clear that the only reason you’re doing any of this is because you’re still hung up on Sarah! You’re not anti-Christmas, you just can’t accept the fact that you got dumped!”
“Hey—”
“No! Forget it!” She looked around at the group again. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve had it with the anti-Scooby campaign. I’m done helping you try to embarrass this guy.”
On TV, Melissa Maya burst into the Santa Shack and started looking around frantically, shoving the half-naked Scooby out of the way. Apparently someone had tipped off mall management. She threw Scooby’s costume at him and he quickly wriggled into it. I couldn’t help it. I laughed again.
But I stopped when Holly let out a strangled sort of groan.
“You know what else, Nicholas?” she said, suddenly getting right in my face. “I’m also done with you.”
Before I could even stifle my grin, Holly had turned on her heel, whipping me in the eye with her hair, and stalked toward the escalator.
Ralph whistled quietly.
“What just happened here?” I asked, totally baffled.
Rudy laughed and slapped me on the shoulder, hitting his remote at the same time to switch all the TVs back to the Michigan game. “She smoked you, my man!”
That night I showed up in Wooddale with my wool hat pulled tightly down over my ears and two scarves wrapped around my neck. It was the coldest night of the year so far, but that hadn’t stopped any of the residents from coming out to see their parade. Their pride and joy. Bundled into various coat/hat/mitten/ski mask/earmuff/glove/scarf combinations, people were lined up three rows thick along the sidewalk, breathing into their hands and wrapping their arms around one another for warmth. I saw more than a few thermoses being passed along and heard more than a few jolly laughs. To these people, watching this parade made any degree of frostbite worthwhile.
I used to be one of them.
I joined my friends on the corner in front of Starbucks, where Ralph had staked his claim after leaving the mall. He’d sat outside for a few hours, by himself, in this cold, reading comic books and drinking coffee.
When I walked up, Ralph was surrounded by Dirk, Rudy, and Flora. He had a wild look in his eyes.
“There are cops everywhere, dude. Everywhere!” he said, swiveling from side to side and taking up quite a large circumference. “They’re on to us, I’m telling you. They know.”
“Would you shut up, Ralphie?” Dirk said through his teeth. “You keep spouting off and they will be on to us.” Dirk, of course, still had on nothing but a T-shirt and his leather jacket and didn’t look the least bit cold.
“What’s with Ralph?” I asked Flora, who was sipping a cappuccino, cupping it with both hands.
“Too much caffeine makes him paranoid,” she answered matter-of-factly. “You should see him after he’s had two raspberry iced tea Snapples.”
“Ah,” I said, glancing around at the people in our immediate vicinity. I leaned back to crane my neck and get a better view into the coffee shop, but no one in there looked familiar.
“Looking for Holly?” Flora asked, raising her tiny eyebrows at me.
“No,” I lied.
“She’s not coming,” Flora said as if I hadn’t responded. She looked across the street at a couple of red-faced kids. “She called me a little while ago.”
“She called you?” I blurted out before I could double-think it.
“And she did not sound happy,” Flora said, her voice thick with it’s-all-because-of-you meaning.
I felt every muscle in my body coil, but I turned away and took a deep breath to keep from snapping. Who was th
is girl to tell me how my best friend sounded? Flora knew nothing about Holly and what her various vocal tones meant. And we’d only met these people this week! Now all of a sudden Holly was calling them to relay her plans? Why hadn’t she called me?
Of course I knew why. I’d yelled at her in the middle of the mall. Girls hated that. But this was where I got confused. Holly wasn’t a normal girl. We’ve had plenty of public arguments in our lives and it had never bothered her before. And when it came right down to it, today she’d yelled at me a lot more than I’d yelled at her. I was the one who should be angry. Yet she was bothered enough to miss the sabotage of the Wooddale parade? Here I thought I was going to get my chance to apologize and she hadn’t even shown up.
“Shhh! You guys! Shhh!” Rudy said, swallowing the ever-present laugh. “Something’s going on down there!”
Sure enough, most of the crowd was turning toward the park across the street, mumbling and grumbling to one another. After all, the parade was supposed to have started fifteen minutes ago and the people of Wooddale weren’t accustomed to being made to wait. A chunky man in a long overcoat climbed the steps to the platform set up at the edge of the park and tapped the microphone a few times, sending a loud screech of feedback across the town.
Dirk looked at me and grinned maniacally. This was it.
The chunky man took a deep breath and lowered his head. I could tell he was wishing he could be anywhere but here. As I looked down at the expectant faces of the kids around me, I kind of understood the feeling. Maybe disappointing half the populace of Bergen County wasn’t the best idea. After all, those kids hadn’t done anything wrong—it was Christmas we were out to destroy.
“Hello, everyone, and thank you for coming,” he said. “I’m Richard Lembeck, chief of the Wooddale police.”
A few clueless people who couldn’t feel the palpable foreboding in the air applauded for the man, thinking he was about to kick off the parade.