Carols and Crushes

by Natalie Blitt

  “Right.” She gives me a look that I know she learned from one of those TV shows I wish they’d take off the air. The ones with the sassy children and the bumbling adults that make me want to deprogram Sadie every night.

  Though truth be told, I’d totally be on Team Sadie when the Zombie apocalypse comes. She’d have them all believing we were already zombies.

  “Why don’t you go upstairs now? Since you’ve been wanting to for so long.” I try to keep my tone light and happy, but there’s an edge to it, one that I’m sure Sadie can hear.

  “She’s adorable,” Matthew says as Sadie huffs up the stairs.

  “She’s something,” I mutter as I flop down on the chair across from the couch where Matthew is sitting.

  I want to do this right, but I don’t have the faintest idea what one is supposed to do when a boy comes over. If Mom was here, I think she’d offer him cookies?

  “Do you want—” I start, but evidently the urge to fill the silence isn’t mine alone.

  “I hope it’s okay—” he says, and then we both laugh.

  “You go first,” we both say, and then repeat the awkward chuckle. Only, because it’s Matthew, it’s actually not really that awkward. He motions toward me to go ahead, and I smile.

  “Do you want a snack or a drink or something?”

  He glances around uncertainly and maybe I did that all wrong, maybe I was supposed to offer him something different? I’m about to backtrack when he nods slowly.

  “Sure. I actually didn’t have lunch today, so I’m kind of starving if you have something. But if you don’t …”

  “Come on,” I say, motioning to the kitchen with my head. “I make a mean grilled cheese sandwich if you like those. And I’m sure we have some more tomato soup.”

  “Sounds perfect,” Matthew says, and from that moment on, through the making of the grilled cheese sandwiches and the heating up of the soup, the conversation is no longer stilted in any way. We don’t talk about chorus, we don’t talk about carols and showcases, or Renee and Eric. We don’t even talk about why he’s at my house. Instead, he asks about Sadie and tells me about the testing he had done when he was her age, and then offers to talk with her about it or try to help her out.

  Everything in my life feels mixed up. I’ve hurt my best friend and lost my chance with the boy I’ve liked forever. And yet the boy I thought was a jerk is actually … kind of nice to hang out with.

  Until we start talking about my family’s attitude about Christmas, and then it goes from kind of nice to epically hilarious in a matter of minutes.

  I hadn’t been intending to talk about Christmas. In fact, if you’d asked me earlier in Matthew’s visit, I would have paid money not to talk about it at all, for it to be January and for Christmas to be far behind me. But then Matthew asked me about our lack of Christmas decorations and everything kind of came out, including how my parents were planning a trip over the weekend of the concert.

  “Wait,” Matthew says, his face so serious that I grow worried. “Your family doesn’t make you pose for Christmas pictures? Your parents’ friends don’t still talk about the picture of you when you had no front teeth and how cute you looked? Your dad doesn’t have all the old cards framed on his bookcase at work? What kind of parents are they?”

  He stares at me with such fake pity that I can’t stop the bubbles of laughter that burst out, even with my hands plastered over my mouth. Though that was mainly to keep myself from snarfing out my orange juice. The good news is I was successful at least in that.

  “We only once posed for a family Christmas picture,” I say, swallowing, “and that was because my parents thought it would be hilarious to make an ironic version of the traditional card, with all of us wearing ugly Christmas sweaters.”

  “Tell me you still have it.” Matthew’s eyes widen, and he scans the kitchen we’d just tidied up as though the photo might be hidden somewhere here.

  I begin shaking my head, and he raises his eyebrows.

  “You totally still have it.”

  “Nope,” I laugh, and I can’t remember the last time I felt this loose and happy around a boy. I guess maybe Matthew isn’t so bad. He is kind of fun to be around. “Or at least I don’t have a physical copy of it anymore.”

  He starts moving toward the kitchen door, and I grab his arm. And then let go, because is that okay? To grab his arm like that?

  But Matthew doesn’t seem to think it’s strange. Instead, he takes advantage of my dropping his arm to take my hand, and he pulls me into the living room. “Show me where you keep the picture,” he orders, using what I could only assume is his best fake TV villain accent.

  “Never,” I whisper.

  He narrows his eyes. “Maybe I’ll just have to ask Sadie,” he threatens, and the laughter that I’d only barely contained before comes leaping back out.

  “No! No! Leave her out of this.”

  Our voices must be louder than I’d thought, because a door opens from upstairs. “Charlie?” Sadie calls.

  Matthew looks at me sternly. “Tell her it’s all fine,” he whispers into my ear. “You don’t want to get your sister involved, do you? Because who knows what other pictures we might find if I ask her for embarrassing photos of you.”

  I can’t help it—I shiver. Because while I know he’s being silly, while I know it’s just a game, I love this moment. I know that if I tell him to stop, that I don’t want to show him the picture, he’ll back off. But there’s something exciting about this game. And I don’t want it to end. It’s like a private little joke between the two of us.

  “We’re okay!” I call up to Sadie, and her door closes again. “I’ll take you to the picture,” I tell Matthew, trying to appear defeated. “Just don’t get my family involved.”

  Which is how we wind up at the computer in the den, sitting side by side. After I show him the picture, and he has a good laugh, I make him pull up the Christmas pictures of him and his parents that his mom has uploaded to their family website, on a page that has more Christmas bling than we’ve had in all the years combined.

  The room has darkened around us and I’m barely aware of the time passing. This feels surprisingly natural. And fun.

  Then we start searching for Christmas music videos. It starts with Matthew being shocked and appalled that I’d never seen the Hallelujah Chorus flash mob.

  “Oh my god,” he mutters, grabbing the keyboard out from under my fingers. “You cannot live another moment without watching this video. How someone who loves Christmas and Christmas music so much hasn’t watched a Hallelujah Chorus flash-mob video is beyond me. It’s practically a crime.”

  He’s staring at the computer screen as he talks, which gives me the opportunity to focus on him. He’s pressing his lips together, a move that I recognized from school as what he does when he’s really excited to say something, like he has to physically keep his mouth closed for fear that it will come out on its own. Like when he knows the answer to the question that the teacher has asked someone who doesn’t know it, and he so desperately wants to get them off the hook. I used to think he was full of himself, like he needed to prove to everyone how much smarter he is than everyone else. But I realize that’s not it at all.

  “You’re a good guy, Matthew Yee,” I say quietly, and at first I don’t think he hears me because he doesn’t stop typing. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe that’s better, in fact, because I probably shouldn’t have said that out loud.

  But he turns to me and even though the only light in the room comes from the computer screen, I can tell that he’s pleased. “I always thought you didn’t like me,” he admits, and his honesty surprises me. His honesty and the hint of sadness in his voice.

  I shake my head, trying to find the right words. “I don’t think I really knew you at all.”

  He shrugs. His head begins to turn back toward the screen, but I will it not to—I will him not to end this conversation because I don’t know what’s going on here, but I don’t want t
his to be the end.

  Miraculously, his chin reverses course and his eyes find mine again. He stares at me for a long minute, and then he smiles. “I think you’re a really good person, too, Charlie Dickens.”

  Which is when I remember Renee and what I said to her, the look in her eyes and in Eric’s. “A good person wouldn’t have said those awful things yesterday,” I blurt.

  And just like that, all the sadness gathers back in the pit of my stomach, and my eyes fill.

  Please let it be too dark for him to see that I’m about to cry, I beg the universe.

  “Good people sometimes say the wrong things,” Matthew says.

  “Why are you being nice to me?” I ask, my honesty a surprise. Usually I’m much better at protecting myself, pretending I don’t care, but I can’t seem to do that right now.

  “Because I know all about saying the wrong thing and reacting badly,” Matthew says quietly. “And I know this isn’t who you are, it’s just something that you did. And there’s a big difference between the two.”

  I want to hold his words in my hand, cup them gently and examine them. I need time to figure out if they’re true.

  Except at that moment, a key turns in the lock in our front door, and in pour Mom and Dad and Jed. For a second, I want us to hide, I want to continue the pretense that it’s just Matthew and me alone, that we’re in this protected bubble, the outside world blocked out.

  But before I even have a chance to formulate a plan, the light in the den flicks on, and all three of them are staring at us in confusion.

  “What are you guys doing sitting alone in the dark?” Mom growls.

  In the end, it’s okay. Mom believes us when we say that we didn’t realize how dark it had become as we sat at the computer looking for Christmas music. And before I know it, Matthew is fist-bumping a very stinky and sweaty Jed, who apparently won the game for his team.

  Mom and Dad invite Matthew to stay for dinner, and after a quick call to his dad, he accepts, but nothing is like it had been before. Apart from the three minutes Jed takes for a shower, Matthew stays glued to him from the minute he walked through the door, grilling him about the game and the training camps he’s attended. And Jed is eating it up.

  And I’m …

  I feel like I lost something I only just got, and part of me doesn’t know for sure what it was, because it all happened so quickly. I want Renee to still be my friend so I can excuse myself to go to the bathroom and call her and dissect the entire conversation with her. I want …

  I want to go back in time before everyone walked in. Before basketball-great Jed arrived home. Before Sadie came bounding down the stairs, batting her eyelashes at Matthew.

  Before I returned to my place as the forgotten child.

  Dinner is all basketball talk at first. Then Sadie actually listens to Matthew talk about the learning issues that he dealt with as a kid, and how much having techniques to work through them has helped him. And I know I should be happy, and I am. But meanwhile, the meal feels endless. It’s made so much worse because Matthew is sitting right beside me, almost as close as we were by the computer, but that feeling of closeness has disappeared. It makes me reconsider what happened.

  Maybe Matthew just came over to talk sports with Jed, since he’ll be trying out for the high school basketball team.

  I’m standing to clear the table when I hear my name mentioned. I’m so lost in my own world of reasons for Matthew coming over that have nothing to do with me that I don’t hear the context—only that it was a question someone asked Matthew about me.

  Please don’t let it be embarrassing. Please don’t let it be embarrassing.

  “Charlie said she’d never heard ‘Feed the World,’ and I thought that was so sad for someone who loves Christmas music as much as she does.” Matthew turns to me after addressing my dad, and the smile is the same one he’d given me earlier, open and light and all for me.

  My mom stares at me as if she’s never seen me before. “Of course Charlie has heard ‘Feed the World,’” she insists. “Remember, it’s the one from the eighties with all the British singers?” She turns to my dad. “How did it go again?”

  “It’s Christmas time,” Dad starts, his voice deep and rusty. But under his beard and mustache, the smile peeking through is undeniable.

  “And then something about not being afraid.” Mom hums a bit and then Dad joins in, and between the two of them, they basically rattle off the entire song. Or at least I think it’s the song.

  I turn to Matthew, who nods. “Your parents know it,” he whispers, and I’m not sure if he’s trying to be funny or not, but the admiration in his voice makes me giggle.

  “Was that really it?” I ask. Mom and Dad are laughing about something and Sadie is begging them to sing it again and Jed is smiling and suddenly the world’s worst dinner just reversed itself.

  Especially when Mom turns to Matthew and asks, “Did you say you’ve seen the music video? It’s still online? I vaguely remember watching it when I was your age—”

  “Probably over and over, knowing you,” Dad interrupts.

  “Okay, fine, over and over,” Mom concurs, pretending to be annoyed. “But the singers were super cute. And they seemed like real people and …”

  “They weren’t cute,” Dad scoffed. “Except for—”

  “I could pull it up on the computer,” Matthew says, his voice cautious, as though he’s afraid of startling a wild animal. Given that I’m frozen in place, I definitely understand his concern.

  And then suddenly we’re all in the den, crowded around the computer screen, Matthew in the middle as though he’s the only one who knows the secret code to finding this video on the Internet. Except, it’s kind of fun—the excitement, that is. And the fact that everyone is in on it, that Jed’s not on his phone, that Sadie isn’t watching TV, that we’re all together.

  It only gets more fun when we watch the video, which has terrible quality and the least attractive musicians of all time. Until you look at Mom and Dad’s faces and see how they are transformed watching it. They have their arms around each other, singing along, and even Jed doesn’t have a quip to make about it.

  Jed leaves when we start talking about watching it again, but he’s back right away with a printout of the lyrics for each of us in time for the chorus. Matthew reaches over and restarts the song, and maybe it is the Zombie apocalypse, because I can’t believe what’s happening.

  Suddenly we’re that kind of family. The family I’ve always dreamed of. The ones who gather around the piano (okay, fine, a computer) and sing Christmas songs (even cheesy songs from the eighties). After we’ve exhausted that song, we start pulling up other Christmas songs, ones with karaoke-style lyrics at the bottom. Some are funny while others are sweet, but all that matters is that we’re all in this together.

  It’s like my family found Christmas again, and all because of Matthew Yee.

  I really need to talk to Renee.

  On Friday morning, I stake out a spot in front of Renee’s locker a good fifteen minutes before she usually gets to school. I thought about calling to apologize last night, but I wanted to do it in person. After four years of never fighting, I need to do this right. I had a whole speech prepared, which all dissolves in the air when I spot her walking down the hallway, talking with Eric. Eric, who is holding her bag on one shoulder and her coat on the opposite arm.

  She’s so focused on her conversation with him that I don’t think she sees me until she’s almost right in front of her locker. At first she smiles, like this is any other day, not the day after one and a half days of not talking. And then her mouth pinches, and she twists to look at Eric.

  Eric is holding her stuff. Did he just see her at the front entrance and offer to help, or did they arrange to meet?

  My stomach clenches and for a moment I can’t breathe.

  “Hey, Charlie,” Eric says and deposits Renee’s bag beside me. He glances over at Renee and then places her coat on top of her ba
g. “Do you want me to stick around and …”

  Renee shakes her head, though her eyes are still on me. I can’t quite figure out what’s happening, whether she’s still mad, whether I’m now mad. Is she interested in Eric? Do I still have a crush on Eric? Does he like Renee?

  Eric walks off and Renee and I stand facing each other.

  “Um, I kind of need to get in there,” Renee says, her voice quiet. Her head is tilted down and I follow her gaze to her cast.

  “Sorry,” I mutter. “Nice cast.” The bright blue plaster covers her leg past the edge of her skirt, and I wondered if it stops there or if goes all the way up. Man, it would suck if it was a full leg cast. How would she take showers? Or exercise?

  “Thanks.” She struggles at her locker, trying to put both crutches under one arm and balance that way, but the ground is slippery and it’s hard to get traction.

  “Can I help?” I ask, and then take the question out of her hands by turning the lock myself. It’s a good thing that best friends know each other’s combinations.

  Are we still best friends?

  “I’m really sorry about Wednesday,” I say, my words falling over themselves in the rush to get out. “I shouldn’t have said all those things. I know you didn’t go out to steal Eric on purpose …”

  “How could you even think that?” Renee’s voice was buried in her locker, with me on the other side. “You can’t steal a person. And I’m not interested in Eric. I like him a lot, it’s true. I never realized what a nice guy he is. But even if you weren’t interested in him, I wouldn’t be. I’m not interested in anyone. I’m not like you. I’m not thinking about boys twenty-four-seven.”

  Her words sting but I deserve them. And if that’s what she needs to say to even things out, that’s fine, too.

  There’s a long list of questions I wish I could ask. Are you still going to stay in our group? That one is at the top, followed by: Can you still be in the concert? Why aren’t you interested in Eric? Do you think he’s interested in you? What if I’m now interested in someone else?