*This is short scene from my upcoming as of yet untitled YA novel that takes place during the Christmas season.
It was Christmastime and Kodi and I were still hanging out, albeit less frequently. We’d gotten busy. She’d taken on more AP classes which meant more homework and she was working more shifts at Casa to save up for college. We’d spent so much time together in that place. It was a shame that it was over and I was banished from entering it. Luckily, Dad still didn’t know why I’d quit, nor that I wasn’t even allowed to enter the ugly pea-green doors. Dana, thankfully, had been magnanimous in that instance. Dad was okay with my line about needing time to study and plan for college until the spring when Whang had lined up a job for me at Dr. Cone’s ice cream parlor.
Christmas season had seemed to start earlier each of my years of high school. Freshman year was stressful because it was the first time I’d ever had to take multiple exams a day over the course of a week, but it ended up being less worrisome than I had anticipated—as things usually are. I was tired, though, and still a little too excited, for presents.
As would be expected, I don’t remember a thing about Christmas sophomore year—that black, wretched year—other than Dad picking up hundreds of dollars’ worth of takeout Chinese from the good place in the center of Bigg. Mom and Alison had always cooked for my Aunts and Uncles on the Hamm side. Kenton and I ate pounds of chicken fried rice, pork eggrolls, and crab rangoons throughout the day while playing Madden and WWE videogames while Dad poured a bottle of brandy into the eggnog.
Christmas month of junior year I was friendless and I went with Dad to his sister/Aunt Caroline’s house. I played Scrabble in an itchy, sweaty knit sweater. Aunt Caroline’s new husband Bruce could not spell to save his life. Kenton had left me to fend for myself while he went off to be with his girlfriend’s family. Dad drank. A lot.
However, by far the earliest the Christmas season started was senior year. The Friday after Thanksgiving Kodi, Whang, and I went to the South Bigg Christmas Parade. There were marching bands, glee clubs, and cheerleaders and dance squads form both South Bigg High and Four Lakes Academy. Rachel’s dance team did a routine at the parade route’s epicenter where we stood—a row back—and throughout the “Jingle Bell Rock”-esque number I watched Whang’s face beam with pride or adoration—or maybe the ruddiness at his high cheeks and neck was the work of the hot chocolate we’d spike with Bailey’s and Dr. McGillicuddy’s that we imbibed from tall, skinny cylindrical Thermoses (Thermi?).
After the parade we went to Rachel’s—a big, robin’s egg blue house with a yellow door and on it an evergreen wreath so big I could barely shut the door behind me. In the large formal dining room Rachel’s mom had displayed—on plates the size of tractor wheels the color of silver snow—white-chocolate-dipped and red and green sprinkled pretzel rods; Christmas cookies—both gingerbread, cane sugar, and molasses—as well as “unspiked” hot cocoa. Seated, though slouched, at the dining table, we talked about how the next year we’d walk with one of the charities and hand out bags of candy to the kids whose big mittens could not quite grip the slick plastic. It was the first time we’d made plans for the “next year” when we’d no longer really be together.
“I think it’ll be fun!” Kodi exclaimed. Kodi never really exclaimed anything, nor did she admit that something could be “really fun.” This was when I first realized that this girl that I love, the one that taught me to drive, and I professed to have saved me would probably go on to have other boyfriends, and different loves, and a future that would not feature me at its center and that made me feel melancholy and it made me think of Dad, alone another Christmas.
albatross base 