Jingle Boy (3 page)

“I feel physically ill,” I said flatly, my arms suddenly hanging at my sides like deadweight. I couldn’t believe this guy was using his position as Santa to hawk what was undoubtedly his own bad rap album. “We have to report this.”

“To who? The North Pole police?” Holly asked. She reached out and tugged on my arm. “Come on, let’s get out of here. When you’re up there being Santa next week, you can uncorrupt all the kids he corrupted.”

“All right,” I said, trying to see Holly’s bright side. She was right. I’d be such a great Santa I’d put this guy to shame. “Let’s get out of here before you burst a blood vessel.”

Holly actually took a skip of joy as we headed for the car. She could be pretty cute when she wasn’t paying attention.

“Hey, can I get my hat?” I asked as we approached the short hallway that led to the door.

Holly stopped dead in her tracks and I felt my heart plummet. “I don’t have your hat,” she said, turning ever so slowly to face me.

“Yes, you do,” I said. My whole body started to heat up. “You took it, remember? What did you do with it?”

Holly stuffed her hands in her coat pockets, but it clearly wasn’t in there. It was too big to fit in there.

“You lost it?” I said loudly. “How could you lose my hat?”

“I’m sorry!” Holly said, her face paler than usual. “I must have put it down in one of the four thousand stores you dragged me into.”

“Hey! Going to every store was
your
idea, remember?” I said, feeling desperate. I looked around at the floor, hoping she’d just now dropped it and hadn’t noticed.

“Come on, Paul,” Holly said placatingly. “It’s not like it’s irreplaceable. I’ll buy you a new one right now.”

She took a step in the direction of the North Pole, where all the Christmas stands were. I didn’t budge. And I didn’t say a word. How was I supposed to explain my superstition to her? She knew I always wore the hat, but I’d never told anyone about my little obsession—the fact that I knew in my bones that Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without it.

My
Santa hat. The one with the semimatted fur around the headband. The one with the pom-pom that was stained with hot chocolate and was hanging on by a few short threads. The one that still smelled like mulberry wine from the time my mom left that Christmas candle burning in my room. It
was
irreplaceable.

“No. Forget it,” I said, forcing a smile. “I just want to get home and wrap Sarah’s present.”

“There ya go! Focus on that!” Holly said, relaxing. “You found the perfect gift.”

As we turned toward the door again, I took a deep breath and told myself to chill. Maybe it was all going to be okay. Maybe this had happened for a reason. I had Sarah now. I no longer needed my hat to make Christmas perfect.

I was just starting to feel a bit better when I caught a flash of red out of the corner of my eye. When I got a closer look, my jaw dropped.

“Ugh! That is just wrong!” Holly said, grimacing.

Apparently Santa had decided to take a break after making his last sale. He was standing next to the glass doors to the parking lot making out with . . . no . . . practically
mauling
some girl right around the corner from K•B. If any of the kids pouring out of there saw him, they could be traumatized for life.
This
was the guy who was supposed to train me to be the universal symbol of Christmas itself? I was about to walk up to him and give that sorry excuse for a Saint Nick a piece of my mind when the couple shifted and I got a good look at Santa’s conquest.

“Oh my God,” Holly said.

My knees went out from under me as all of my daydreams flashed before my eyes in a sickening Technicolor whirl. Sarah and I making snow angels, Sarah and I singing carols, Sarah and I opening gifts by the fire.

Sarah with her lipstick smeared by some scraggly loser in a cheap Santa suit. No, wait, that was reality.

“Paul? Are you okay?” Holly said. I saw a flash of tongue between Sarah and Santa and my stomach lurched. “Okay, that’s enough. Turn around. Don’t look.”

But I couldn’t make myself move. Instead I closed my eyes, said a little prayer to the mercy gods, and opened them again, but the nightmare hadn’t disappeared. It was all too true. My girlfriend was being publicly groped . . . by jolly old Saint Nick.

The next few minutes passed in a blur. Sarah suddenly opened her eyes, saw me, and managed to push Scooby or whatever the heck his name was away from her. I think I said something. Her name, maybe. Maybe just the word
what.
She looked down at the floor for a second, clearly ashamed, but when she looked up again, her whole beautiful face had hardened with resolve.

“I’m sorry you had to find out this way, Paul,” she said, her voice light and sweet and not sorry at all. “I’m with Scooby now.”

“
This
is your boyfriend?” Santa said, his bushy white eyebrows lifting. “Dude, no wonder you came after some Scooby lovin’.”

I felt like I was melting inside my several layers of clothing. “Sarah, how long . . . ?”

She took a few steps over to me and laid her hands on my chest. “We got involved too fast,” she said, her big blue eyes seeming to mock me. “I just moved here. I need to see what’s out there. And besides, Scooby’s older. He has a car. He has a career. He’s going to be a famous rapper.”

At that point Scooby came up next to her and slipped his arm around her back, lifting his fake-whiskered chin. Sarah smiled up at him.

“He bought me this coat to celebrate his CD release,” Sarah said, drawing the soft red wool more closely around her. “Isn’t that so sweet?”

This wasn’t happening. She wasn’t actually breaking my heart in the middle of a mall and expecting me to be happy for her, was she? Didn’t I mean anything to her? Didn’t she know how much I cared?

“Come on, Paul,” Holly said, stepping in front of me so that I had to stop staring pathetically at Santa and his new Mrs. Claus. “Come on, let’s get the hell out of here. You don’t need this Barbie, anyway.”

I turned slowly, my head pounding so hard it felt like my skull was expanding. Scooby laughed behind me and it made me feel about three feet tall. A few hours ago I’d entered this mall with the most amazing girlfriend in the world and about a thousand expectations for the perfect Christmas to come.

I was leaving it hopeless, penniless, and girlfriend-less. And I knew exactly why.

I’d lost my Santa hat.

Christmas was falling apart before my eyes.

I’M GETTIN’ NUTTIN’ FOR CHRISTMAS . . .

“ARE YOU CATATONIC?” HOLLY ASKED.

I wasn’t exactly sure, but if catatonic meant sitting in a vinyl booth, barely able to breathe, definitely unable to move, with your brain filled with something that felt like oatmeal, then I guess I was. Unsure of what to do with me, Holly had driven from the mall to the Suburban Diner and somehow gotten me out of the car and into a booth. (The only thing I could recall from the walk through the parking lot was the puddle I’d stepped in, leaving my left sock and sneaker very wet and very cold.) There must have been a couple of kids sitting at the table behind me because there was a lot of banging and kicking and moving around and every once in a while I would bounce forward when a limb hit the back side of my seat particularly hard.

The one time Sarah and I had gone to the movies together, the kids behind us had spent the first ten minutes of the flick talking and kicking and wrestling. I’d told them to quiet down and they had—for about five seconds—and then they got even louder. I was just about to lose it when Sarah turned around and bribed them into silence with her jumbo bag of plain M&M’s. I was so impressed with her that night, I’d fallen in love with her all over again. We spent the rest of the movie scrunched down in our seats, cuddled together, feeding each other popcorn. I couldn’t believe I was never going to get to do that again.

I stared down at the congealing cheeseburger and onion rings Holly had ordered for me and tried to make sense of what had happened.

The door of the diner opened, letting in a shot of cold air, and my scalp tingled and tightened. My hat. This was all because of my Santa hat. Why had I ever taken it off?

“Eat something,” Holly said.

The only part of her within my line of vision was her hand on the table, clutching her water glass. There was a wet ring on her paper place mat—the one that broke down how to make every cocktail in existence, copies of which had been lifted by half the teenagers in Bergen County. For some reason I was mesmerized by that water ring as I listened to Holly munching on her fries.

“Paul?” she said. Her hands started waving in front of my face. “Paaaw-alllll ! ”

I knew I had to say something or do something to prevent her from calling up the Bergen Medical Center and having them prepare my padded room, so I mustered all my energy, took a deep breath, and said, “How . . . ?”

“I’ll tell you how,” Holly said, not missing a beat. “She’s a backstabbing, lying little . . .”

Holly trailed off. She tries not to swear or use slurs of any kind unless she really, really has to. But I knew what she was thinking. Part of me wanted to defend Sarah’s honor, but arguing with Holly takes up too much energy and I almost never win. Unless she lets me.

“I thought she cared about me,” I mumbled, slumping even farther until my butt was almost dangling in thin air. My shoulder blade pressed into a hard coil in the back of the seat, but I didn’t slide over. It was all just part of my misery.

“She used you,” Holly stated matter-of-factly, shoving a french fry into a huge mound of ketchup on her plate. I couldn’t help noticing that Holly seemed to be taking my shattered heart in stride. She’d already devoured half her chicken fingers and at least three mozzarella sticks. But then, she’d never been Sarah’s number one fan.

“But . . . I’m in love with her,” I said.

Holly’s hand dropped to the table, french fry and all. “Come on. Seriously?”

I managed to lift a shoulder.

“You barely
know
her. She just
moved
here,” Holly blurted out, her eyes wide and disbelieving. “She could be a closet speed freak, a pathological liar . . . a . . . a Britney Spears fan! How can you be in love with her?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” I said, shifting in my seat. As long as I’d known her, Holly had only ever had a crush on one guy—that actor Seth Green. And she dropped that when she found out he was about five inches shorter than she is. She has never—not once—mentioned an even remote interest in any of the guys at school.

“No. I guess I wouldn’t,” Holly replied. She popped the fry into her mouth.

“Besides, what the heck would she be using me for?” I asked, poking around for some kind of weakness in her argument. One speck of hope that maybe this whole Scooby thing was just a momentary lapse of sanity. I had to keep believing.

Holly took a long, deep breath and shot me a look. An I-know-something-you-don’t-know-and-I-don’t-want-to-tell-you-what-it-is look. My heart took a nosedive.

“What?” I asked, my voice full of dread.

“Nothing. Forget it,” Holly said, yanking a napkin out of the dispenser at the end of the table. She made a big show of wiping off her fingers, going at each one as if she were about to perform heart surgery. Maybe she was. I mean, from her tone it seemed like she might be about to tear my still-beating heart right out of my chest.

“Oh no,” I said. I pushed my hands into the seat at my sides and sat up straight, causing a cacophony of creaks, squeaks, and vinyl farts. My morbid curiosity was definitely getting the better of me. What did she
know
? “You have to tell me. You can’t violate the Pact.”

“The Pact states that you cannot begin a sentence and then refuse to end it,” Holly pointed out, flicking her red hair over her shoulder. “I did not start any sentence. I merely gave you a look.”

“Yeah, a loaded look,” I said. I was starting to sweat. “Spill, Holly. Come on.”

“All right, all right.” She pushed her plate aside and leaned her forearms on the table, bringing her face close to mine. Her expression was placating, sorrowful, almost pitying. The kind of look you give a kid when you’re about to tell him that his dog was hit by a bus. “In the locker room before gym the other day, Lainie Lefkowitz asked Sarah how things were going with you.” Holly fixed her green eyes on my face, trying to discern whether or not it was safe to continue.

I tried to keep my face as expressionless as possible. “Uh-huh.”

Holly took another deep breath. I stared at the smiley face pattern of the freckles just above her nose.

“She said, ‘Well, at least he’s getting a cool car,’” Holly said, pitching her voice a few octaves higher to imitate Sarah’s. Then she let out this loud, affected giggle that sounded nothing at all like my girlfriend. Sorry. Ex-girlfriend.

I blinked. “What’s so bad about that?” I asked. “I
am
getting a cool car! And Sarah was the only one who would even listen to me talk about it anymore!”

“That just proves my point! The car was
all
she cared about!” Holly exclaimed, flopping back in her seat. “She’s totally materialistic!”

“Well . . . so am I,” I protested feebly. “At least when it comes to my Jeep, I am.” Chalk it up to one of the most pointless arguments ever devised by man or teenager.

“Whatever. All I know is, she’s not good enough for you,” Holly replied, shaking her head and picking up another fry. “You can do
so
much better.”

“Better than Sarah?” I said. “What are you on? She’s ten times too good for me. I mean, have you not
seen
her?”

Holly blew out an exasperated breath and grabbed the ketchup bottle. “She’s not
that
pretty.”

I wasn’t even going to dignify that with a response. Maybe Holly couldn’t see how perfect Sarah was because she’s a girl, too. I mean, it’s not like I ever grasped the Seth Green attraction. But trust me, Sarah was the most beautiful girl in my class. The day she walked through the doors at Paramus Park High, she blew away any hopes Danielle Booth had of winning “Best Looking” in the yearbook poll. And Danielle had a lock on it since the fourth grade when she was the first girl to . . .
mature,
if ya know what I mean.

Yep. Sarah was perfect. And I was supposed to be taking her to the Holiday Ball. I felt sick every time I thought about it, which was about every five seconds. The totally detail-oriented daydream I had of walking into the twinkle-lighted gym with Sarah on my arm in a slinky red dress and every guy in the room turning to stare in awe had now been obliterated by a cheesy guy with lousy tongue control in an unconvincing fat suit.

“Scooby,” I said quietly, seeing his arm around Sarah’s shoulders, his skinny little lips on hers, the way he’d hitched up his Santa pants before walking over to us. Of course he’d done that behind Sarah’s back. If only she’d seen him. Maybe she would have—

“Do you think he’ll take Sarah to the ball in the Mystery Machine?” Holly laughed.

“Do you think she’s going to bring him?” I blurted out, my stomach clenching all over again. Holly arched her eyebrows at me as if this were the most obvious assumption in the world. “I mean . . . he’s definitely older. . . . Do you think he’ll want to come to a high school dance?”

Even as I asked this question, I knew how stupid it was. Scooby seemed like the exact brand of all-day-Sega-playing, still-got-a-Carmen-Electra-poster-on-his-walls, I-never-got-over-high-school loser that would
love
to come to a high school dance. Especially with a girl like Sarah on his arm.

“He’ll probably try to sell his CD there,” Holly said with a snort.

The waitress walked over and slapped the check on our table.

“Come on. I’ll take you home,” Holly said, grabbing up the little slip of paper.

Home. Yes. That would be good. All I wanted to do at that moment was lie down on my bed, stare at the ceiling, and wonder where it all went wrong.

Not that there was really any doubt. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t agreed to take off my hat—if Holly hadn’t
made
me take off my hat and then lost it on me. But I couldn’t be mad at her. I didn’t even have the energy for that. Besides, I could have gotten it back from her right at the start. I just . . . hadn’t tried hard enough. And now it was gone.

My Santa hat was somewhere on the grimy mall floor right now, being kicked around by holiday shoppers and flattened by baby strollers. It was all perfectly clear, to me, at least. I was being punished by Christmas.

“Oh no,” I said when Holly pulled her VW Beetle to a stop at the foot of my driveway.

The transformation had begun. Boxes and crates of lights were lined up along the front path, each neatly labeled with a red or green Magic Marker. There were ladders strategically placed all around our two-story house and my dad’s elaborate harness-and-pulley mechanism was already fixed around the chimney. He’d even managed to outline all the front windows with lights already. I squeezed my eyes shut. How could I have forgotten?

Holly leaned across my lap and looked up through my window. “Where’s Father Christmas?” she asked. She’d been calling my dad that for as long as I could remember. Once she renounced the holiday, I thought we’d never hear it again, but she hadn’t stopped using it, which was good. My father’s kind of proud of the title.

“He’s probably around back,” I said. I couldn’t believe the intense aversion I was feeling to the whole process of light stringing. All I could think about at that moment was getting inside before my father emerged from the backyard and roped me into helping. There was no way I was going to be able to get up there and be all holly and jolly with the sucking chest wound I had in my heart area.

“I’d better go,” I said, yanking on the door handle.

“Oh . . . well, call me if you need to vent,” Holly said as I scrambled out of the car.

“Yeah, thanks,” I replied. I slammed the door behind me and strode up the driveway, clutching my Fortunoff bag. My utterly pointless, exorbitantly expensive Fortunoff bag. I had just about made it to the front door when I heard the whir of the pulley and climbing ropes and my father suddenly appeared beside me, falling out of the sky and stopping right at eye level like Spider-Man on a strand of web.

“Hi, son!” he said brightly. He bounced a couple of times, then settled, hanging there in his harness with his prescription ski goggles on and a pencil stuck behind his red-from-the-cold ear.

“Hey, Dad,” I replied, hand on the doorknob.

“Get on your gear and come on out,” my father said, all smiles. “I can’t wait to get this puppy up and running.”

“Yeah . . . I don’t know, Dad,” I said, my chest heavy with guilt. I looked away as his face fell. “I . . . uh . . . I guess I ate too much at the mall and I’m . . . not really feeling that well.”

“Oh,” my father said. There has never been one syllable filled with more disappointment. “Well, then take a rest and see how you feel. I’ve got some more preliminary stuff to do, anyway.”

“Great,” I said.

I slipped inside and closed the door, feeling like the worst son in the Western Hemisphere. I trudged up to my room, passing under the mistletoe that hung at the bottom of the stairs and the photographs from Christmases past that lined the wall along the steps. My father’s disappointment and shock were no surprise. After all, I’d begged for him to let me help him my entire young life until sixth grade, when he finally decided I was old enough to be strapped to our roof. Creating the lights extravaganza was always my favorite task of the year.

But what did I care about lights at that moment? I’d just lost the girl of my dreams. And I owed my mother more money than I’d ever seen in my lifetime.

I walked into my room and dropped the Fortunoff bag on my desk by the window, right on top of the minutes from our last Holiday Ball meeting. There was a lump in my throat the size of an orange. I pulled out the little silver box, pushing the receipt back down into the bag. I took out the pendant and chain, holding it up against the waning sunlight. It swung from my fingers, glittering delicately. Sarah would have loved it.

Suddenly I felt very,
very
sorry for myself.

Wrapping the thin chain around my hand, I dropped down on top of my bedspread and lay flat on my back, staring up at the stucco ceiling. I held the hand with the pendant over my heart and took a deep breath. I heard my father trudging around overhead and tried to make myself smile. It was Christmas. The lights were going up. On Tuesday, I was going to be Santa!

But on Monday, I was going to have to spend the whole day at school with everyone knowing that Sarah had dumped me. And on Tuesday afternoon, I was going to have to spend hours at the mall being Santa-trained by the dreaded Scooby.