Jingle Boy (7 page)

“Let’s do it.”

It was already dark out when Holly and I approached the back door of a small redbrick house in Fair Lawn, our breath making steam clouds in the cold. The directions Rudy had given Holly instructed us to go down the outdoor basement steps, knock, and wait. I have to admit, I was a little freaked out. Strange neighborhood, strange directions, going to see a bunch of potential psychos I didn’t even know. I had the chills even without the sub-zero temperature. But I also felt a bit like James Bond on a mission. Which was fairly cool.

Holly knocked and a few paint chips scattered from the wooden door, which looked like it had been shedding color for years. We waited. And waited. And the longer we stood there, the more the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. There was something not quite right about all this.

“Maybe we should just—”

The door opened with a painful creak. A huge kid about our age with Asian features and dyed blond hair opened the door just wide enough to sandwich his large belly and make it protrude even more. He looked at us through thick glasses, his expression sullen and suspicious at the same time. His black T-shirt read, Give Me a Dollar and I’ll Leave You Alone.

“How did you find us?” he asked flatly.

“Rudy Snow invited me,” Holly replied, stuffing her mittened hands under her arms and shuffling her feet against the cold.

“Dirk!” the kid shouted, startling us both. I actually jumped. “We got newbies!”

“Hold on!” a muffled voice called out from the basement depths.

The big kid produced a sandwich the size of my head from behind his back and took a bite, chewing as he stared at us blankly. My eyes met Holly’s.

“Okay! Bring ’em in!” the same muffled voice shouted.

The big kid turned around and left the door ajar, saying nothing. Holly and I hesitated a moment before following.

Our greeter led us through a small, dank, cinder-block-walled space that reeked of mildew and wet paper into a huge room. It ran the length of the house and was lit by dimmed fluorescent torchlights in each corner. The wood-paneled walls were decorated with posters from Christmas movies, each of which had been defaced in some sadistic way. Tim Allen’s eyes were gouged out on the poster from
The Santa Clause
and Macaulay Culkin had been drawn to look like the devil on the
Home Alone
poster. But the
Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas
poster—which is very rare, by the way— was the worst. All the little swampland animals were holding machine guns and machetes that must have been cut out of
Guns & Ammo
and pasted on. Their faces were sketched over with markers to wear looks of battle-ready rage, and Emmet himself was sporting a gas mask.

I turned in circles as I followed our guide across the room, taking in broken Christmas decorations, a beheaded Rudolph doll, stacks of videotapes marked with the names of Christmas specials from the last ten years. Wondering what purpose these served, I walked backward into something heavy and semisoft that felt like a person. In the midst of cardiac arrest, I whirled around and grabbed on to a large swinging punching bag that hung from one of the ceiling beams. On it was a poorly painted replica of Santa Claus; his face had been so pummeled it was barely there anymore.

“You okay?” Holly asked over the roaring of blood in my ears.

“Not quite sure,” I replied.

A loud sizzle and crackle caught our attention and we both flinched. Sitting in the far corner of the room was a police scanner, belching out codes and car numbers. Above it was a large relief map of Bergen and Rockland counties with pins stuck into various spots and huge red arrows pointing at others. I swallowed hard. I wasn’t sure whether to be repulsed or intrigued.

“Dirk, newbies. Newbies, Dirk,” the big kid said, his mouth full. We stopped at the edge of a wooden coffee table that was surrounded by three couches in various stages of decay. The big kid sat down next to a girl half his size on the couch to our right. Across from them Rudy was perched on the edge of his seat, fidgeting as always. He grinned and raised his eyebrows at us.

Dirk, a small guy wearing cargo pants and a wife beater, stood up from the couch across from us. He was clearly the leader. He had a presence. And although he was small, he was definitely a free-weights kind of person. He had defined arms and held them away from his sides like a chronic bodybuilder.

“Welcome to the Anti-Christmas Underground,” Dirk said. Then his face suddenly contorted and, one eye winking closed, his whole head jerked to the right. I blinked, but no one else seemed to notice, so I pretended I didn’t, either. Holly took an almost imperceptible step closer to me. I somehow resisted the urge to grab her hand and run.

“I’m Dirk, and this . . . is my place,” he said, opening his arms wide. “I got this twitch when I was five years old. I was kicked in the nuts by a rabid reindeer at a petting zoo. Had it ever since.”

I held back the nervous laugh that pushed its way up my throat.

“This here’s Flora. She goes to Northern Valley,” he said, gesturing to the girl on the couch. She had short dark hair, pale skin, and red-rimmed glasses and was dressed in head-to-toe black. “Flora hasn’t believed in Santa Claus since she was two years old. That’s the year she started getting underwear and socks under the tree.”

“Nothing but underwear and socks,” Flora said in a quiet, sweet, dreamy-sounding voice that made me suspect she was heavily drugged. “Every year.” She looked down at the closed notebook on her lap.

“You’ve already met Ralph, our Paramus Catholic man,” Dirk continued, with another wink and a twitch. “He once had a department store Santa call him ‘lardass’ in front of a hundred waiting kids and their parents.”

“They still laugh in my nightmares,” Ralph said before ripping another hunk off his sandwich with his teeth.

“And you know Rudy. He’s originally from Fair Lawn like me,” Dirk said, turning to the other couch.

“Hey! How ya doin’? I’m Rudy! Nice to meet ya!” he said, looking at me. Sporting a Yankees jersey, a flat-top, and some peach fuzz over his lip, Rudy stood up and shook my hand over the table. He had a serious grip. “Last Christmas my mom and I had to move in with my great-aunt Rita. Rita has a three-room apartment and she sucks her teeth and makes me rub her corns and I think maybe she has something rotting in her bedroom closet because the smell from in there is, like, bottom-of-the-garbage-pail rank, but I haven’t been able to get past her to find out what it is.”

With that, Rudy smiled and sat down, his left leg jiggling like it wanted to free itself from the rest of his body. He continued to watch us with that eager smile.

“So, you’ve met us,” Dirk said, turning his palms up in a gesture that made me think of
The Godfather
. “Now we just have two questions for you and then we’ll take a vote and consider you for membership.”

Holly and I exchanged a look. There was no turning back now.

“You,” Dirk said, lifting his chin at Holly and looking her over in a manner that inexplicably made me want to punch him in the face. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Holly,” she replied, touching her hand to her chest.

“Holly. Funny. As in ‘deck the halls with’?” Dirk said, snorting a laugh that prompted the others to titter and shift in their seats. “Okay,
Holly.
What did Christmas do to you?” Dirk asked. He folded his hands together at zipper level—a pose that accentuated his triceps—and waited with a skeptical expression.

“Two years ago my dad left us on Christmas morning for a department store elf,” Holly said matter-of-factly. “Haven’t heard from him since.”

You could hear the intake of breath in the room. The three kids on the couches looked up at Dirk, but his face remained impassive—then twitched violently.

“And you are?” he asked, turning his cleft chin toward me.

“Paul,” I replied. My voice, to my horror, sounded like Peter Brady’s in the “Time to Change” episode. I cleared my throat.

“Paul, what did Christmas do to you?” Dirk asked.

“Well, let’s see,” I said, shifting my weight from one foot to the other. “On the day after Thanksgiving, I bought the love of my life a necklace I couldn’t afford and she subsequently dumped my butt for the Paramus Park Santa, a loser named Scooby who has a rap fetish and a really big Adam’s apple. And when my mother returned said necklace at her store, she got fired for not having a receipt. Oh, and the
reason
she didn’t have the receipt was because my father started a fire at my house after being electrocuted while hanging Christmas lights and the fire gutted my room and destroyed pretty much everything, including the receipt. Now my dad’s in the hospital, my mother’s depressed, my ex isn’t talking to me, and I’m not getting the Jeep I was promised for Christmas because the repairs on the house and the hospital bills are costing too much. And oh yeah, I spent all
my
money on a suit and a tie and a ticket for a dance that I’m no longer going to, so to top it all off, I’m broke.”

I paused for breath and Rudy let out an impressed whistle. Everyone in the room looked at Dirk, who couldn’t take his eyes off me. There was this glint there that I couldn’t quite identify, but it kind of felt like admiration. A smile pulled at the corners of my mouth.

“We don’t have to vote,” Dirk said finally, his words punctuated by another violent twitch. “You two are in.”

WE’LL FROLIC AND PLAY THE ESKIMO WAY . . .

THE NEXT DAY I WAS ON ELF DUTY. TECHNICALLY I WAS still in training, so I was supposed to observe Scooby at work all afternoon. Just thinking about it would have been torture, if not for the fact that I showed up for my shift armed with a lengthy list of creative ways to sabotage and humiliate Scooby. Thanks to the Anti-Christmas Underground, I had a whole new outlook on life. Dirk and his friends were weird, but Holly and I decided to join their club, anyway. After all, we were weird, too, and in the exact same way. Where else were you gonna find a bunch of kids who hated Christmas enough to form a coalition? Now I was going to strike back at the holiday with the Underground’s help, and Scooby was going to be my first victim of war.

I walked out of the Santa Shack in my elf gear, feet jingling, and shoved my plan of attack into the little pocket on the front of the green jumper. Holly, Dirk, and Ralph stood at the foot of the snowy slope that surrounded the shack. They burst out laughing the moment they saw me. Dirk’s head started to twitch uncontrollably. Apparently laughter made the problem even worse.

“Nice, you guys. Thanks a lot,” I said as I approached them. But I was smiling. Nothing was going to get me down that day. I had the sweet taste of impending revenge on my tongue.

“This is a nice look for you,” Holly said, putting her hand on my shoulder. “Is that from Keebler’s fall line?”

“Good one, Hol,” I said flatly. “Now, can we get to work, please?”

Dirk pushed up the sleeves of his fraying gray T-shirt and twitched. “Ralph’s mom is already in line with the runt brigade. Follow me.”

Holly, Ralph, and I did as instructed. We came around the Santa Shack to find a line of about thirty kids and their families snaking along the North Pole area and out toward Abercrombie & Fitch. Scooby was busy trying to convince the five-year-old on his lap that his rap album was better than Elmo’s latest. I almost laughed at the unsuspecting schmuck. He had no idea what was coming.

“There they are—at two o’clock,” Dirk said, lifting his chin.

I followed his gaze and saw a tiny, harried-looking Asian woman. A pair of huge kids, one boy and one girl, hung from her arms while another boy ran around her legs. The kids couldn’t have been more than five years old, but together they definitely outweighed their mother. As the line moved forward, she nudged a stroller, complete with a struggling toddler, along with her knee.

“
That’s
your mom?” Holly asked, looking up at Ralph.

He nodded.

“His dad’s a
big
man,” Dirk said under his breath.

Ralph nodded again.

“Yo, Ralph. Who’s the runner?” Dirk asked, lifting his chin toward Ralph’s family again.

“Cousin Doogie,” Ralph said.

“Doogie?” I asked.

“My aunt liked that show,” Ralph replied.

“Well, let’s do this,” Dirk said. He slapped my shoulder. Hard.

I nodded and stood up straight, rolling my shoulders back. As Dirk and I walked around the North Pole toward the line, my feet jingle jangled every step of the way. I could hear Holly and Ralph trailing behind me, snorting and giggling. I’m sure my soccer player’s calves looked pretty comical in the striped tights. I heard a sudden “oof” and knew someone had just walked into Holly.

“Hey, Mrs. Ho. How ya doin’?” Dirk asked, approaching Ralph’s mom.

She looked up at us, her eyes heavy. “Hello, Dirk,” she said, attempting a smile. She saw Ralph standing behind us and registered surprise. “I thought you told me you’d only enter the mall at Christmastime over your own dead body.”

I glanced at Ralph, but he just stared back at his mom impassively. I couldn’t imagine him uttering the number of words his mother had just attributed to him.

“Mrs. Ho, this is Paul and that’s Holly,” Dirk said. She nodded at each of us. “Ralph thought we should offer to wait with the kids for you—you know, give you a little time off your feet.”

More surprise. In fact, Mrs. Ho looked like she was about to cry. “Really?” she said. “That would be wonderful.” She shook off the two kids and walked around Dirk, straightening her coat and sweater. “Sometimes you really are the sweetest boy,” she said, reaching up to grab Ralph’s flushed cheeks. She pulled him down and laid a big, smacking kiss on his forehead, then scurried away so fast she left a Mrs. Ho–sized blur behind her.

“Gotta love Mrs. Ho,” Dirk said. He nodded to Ralph and Holly, who reached into their backpacks. Then Dirk shoved his hands in his pockets and looked down at the kids. “Hey, Roger . . . Mandy. ’Member me?”

Roger and Mandy looked up at me and Dirk with trepidation, their chubby cheeks splotched with pink. Doogie took a couple of steps back as if he was getting ready to bolt.

“Hey, kids,” I said, kneeling down to their level. “Going to see Santa, huh?”

Mandy started pulling in staggering gasps of air, a clear precursor to a loud wail. What was wrong with me? It was like I’d spaced on the whole elf-fear thing. I was about to panic when Holly and Ralph provided us with the key element to the plan—eight twenty-ounce bottles of soda.

“Want something to drink, guys?” Holly asked with her best baby-sitter’s smile. She might be invisible to adults, but Holly prided herself on her kid magnetism. She was the most sought-after baby-sitter in town.

“Soda!” little Mandy cried out, reaching up her arms and bouncing up and down. Dirk and Holly twisted open the bottles and handed one to each ambulatory kid.

“What about Davy?” Ralph asked.

“Want soda! Want soda!” the baby shouted, reaching out his arms as he continued to squirm.

“You can’t give a toddler soda,” Holly told Ralph. “He’ll be bouncing off the walls.”

“But he wants one,” Ralph said in his usual monotone.

Holly laughed. “You can’t just give them everything they want,” she said.

Ralph shrugged and knelt down in front of the stroller, trying to distract the now screeching toddler.

As the line inched along, the children sucked down sodas as if they were going out of style. You’d think no one had ever let these kids drink anything with sugar in it before. But it was all good. Perfect, actually. We wanted to get as much liquid into them as possible before they got to Scooby’s lap.

I glared at Scooby as the line moved forward. He was so smug, sitting up there in his Santa suit, his Adam’s apple practically visible under the thick beard. (I swear I could see the fake hair bobbing up and down in that area.) Thought he could steal my girlfriend and get away with it, did he? Well, he had another think coming.

“We’re next,” Holly whispered to me, sending a thrill of anticipation down my spine.

I could just imagine the look on Scooby’s face when he was covered in kiddie pee. I wondered which of my new little friends would be the one to get him. Roger was starting to jump up and down, but Mandy appeared to be the front-runner. She had her knees clamped together and her face was turning a bright pink to match her Powerpuff Girls sneakers.

“Paulie! We have a situation here,” Dirk said under his breath.

I glanced up. Melissa Maya, the assistant mall manager (say that ten times fast), was whispering something in Scooby’s ear. They both scanned the area and when their eyes fell on me, Melissa snapped her fingers frantically and waved me over. My friends and I were standing right at the head of the line and now Doogie, too, was starting to squirm.

“I’ll be right back,” I told them, walking up the velvet carpet.

Melissa barely looked at me. “Peter, we need your help.”

“It’s Paul,” I said.

“Like I care,” she replied. “Mr. Papadopoulos wants to talk to Scooby and he wants to talk to him now, so you gotta get in costume and take the throne.”

My face must have gone white. “Now?” I asked.

“We just had a Santa break. We take another one and the little freaks’ll go berserk.” Melissa eyed the children in line. “Buncha little chunk munchers.”

Clearly she wasn’t a kid person.

“But what if they recognize—”

“Look, Percy,” Melissa said, suddenly turning on me with dilated pupils that I swear flashed red for a split second. She had little lines around her eyes that looked like pitchforks. “Either you get your butt in that shack right now or I’ll fire it. If I have to stay down here one second longer with these money-wasting freaks, I’m going to explode and I’m going to take you with me.”

Clearly not a mall person, either. Kinda makes you wonder how she ended up here.

I glanced helplessly back at my friends, now surrounded by four dancing, squirming children, and walked into the Santa Shack. I changed my clothes slowly, trying to think of a way out, but when I glanced out the window, Melissa Maya was standing there waiting for me and Scooby was on his way upstairs. There was nothing I could do. I was going to have to play Santa for four full-bladdered kids.

“All set,” I said, emerging from the shack moments later.

“Okay!” Melissa shouted. “Santa’s back! Next child, please!”

Holly, Dirk, and Ralph didn’t move. Holly was looking at me, her eyes wide, willing me to tell her what to do. I held my breath and shrugged. With one of my bosses standing right there, we were trapped.

“Santa’s waiting!” Melissa said impatiently. Ralph, who was busy downing the last of the bottles of soda, nearly spat it all out.

Holly scurried forward with Mandy and deposited her on my lap.

“I have to go to the bafoom,” Mandy said, squirming.

“Ho ho ho,” I said quickly. “Okay, then, what do you want for Christmas?”

“My own ’puter,” Mandy said. She clamped her hands between her legs.

“Get her out of there!”
Dirk mouthed down at the end of the carpet.

“Okay, your own computer, you got it,” I told Mandy. “Merry Christmas!”

Holly hustled Mandy away and Ralph walked up to me, holding Roger up against his massive chest. He sat him down on my legs without a word, raised his eyebrows in a what-can-I-do gesture, and turned away.

“Ho ho ho,” I said. “What do you want for Christmas?”

Roger burst into tears. “I want my mom! I want my
mom
! ” he screeched.

“I need some Advil,” Melissa Maya said. She turned and stalked away, holding a hand to her forehead.

I got Roger off my lap and waved frantically at Dirk to bring me Davy. The kid sat there calmly and stared at my beard, then toddled off. I breathed a sigh of relief. The danger was over. Dirk walked up to me, deposited Doogie on my lap, and squeezed my shoulder.

“You made it,” he said.

That was when Cousin Doogie relieved his tiny yet oddly high-capacity bladder all over my leg.

“Just go inside, take a shower, and you’ll feel much better,” Holly told me as she pulled the car to a stop in front of my house. She turned away, hiding her mouth with her hand.

“You can laugh,” I told her. “It’s not like I don’t see the humor.”

“I’m sorry,” she said through uncontrollable giggles. “I’m really sorry, I just . . . I can’t stop thinking about your face!”

Her laughter made me smile. I couldn’t help it.

“See? Everything’s going to be fine!” Holly said, finally managing to contain herself. “Ooh! I have an idea!” She brought her gloved hand down on my knee. (I’d washed off in the mall employee bathroom and changed back into my jeans.) “I’m sitting for the Hurleys tomorrow. Why don’t I bring them to see Santa?”

“Oh, I love your brain!” I said, my face lighting up. “They’ll crucify Scooby.”

The Hurleys are the most infamous group of pre-pubescent delinquents around. The oldest one was caught stealing cigarettes at the ripe age of eight, and the youngest had been written up in the papers last year for punching the Thirty-fourth Street Macy’s Santa in the face and breaking the guy’s nose. Scooby would be powerless against their inherent wickedness.

“Holly, you are the best,” I told her.

“Just wait until tomorrow night,” she said. “The Underground is getting together to steal all the Santa displays from Midland Park to Montvale. Sounds like it’s gonna be fun.”

“I’m there,” I told her. “See you tomorrow!”

I climbed out of the car and jogged up to the house, trying not to look up at my hole of a bedroom. All I wanted to do was take that shower, put on my pajamas, and crawl into the pullout bed in the den. Maybe I could get my mom to bring me my dinner in there and I wouldn’t have to move for the rest of the night. I still couldn’t believe my first Scooby plan had crashed and burned, but all would be well. With Holly and the others on my side, there was no way I could lose.

“Hey, Mom,” I said, walking right by the kitchen.

I was halfway down the hall when I heard her call out my name, in a tone that suggested she thought I might have lost my mind.

“What’s up?” I asked, turning to find her standing just outside the kitchen door. She had one hand on the doorjamb and one hand flat against her apron on her thigh. Her expression was concerned.

“What?” I asked.

“I’m . . . making fudge,” she said, her eyebrows coming together.

“And?” I asked. Suddenly I could smell it. In fact, the smell had filled the house like it always did. It seemed to be coming out of the wallpaper. I was surprised I hadn’t noticed it the second I walked in.

“When was the last time you walked by the kitchen when I was making fudge?” my mother asked.

“Probably never,” I said, wanting this conversation to be over. I was suddenly very tired. Not even Christmas fudge appealed to me.

“Well, when I visited your father this afternoon, he mentioned he’d like us to bring him some. And I’m also making the gift packages for the family,” my mother said, wiping both hands on her apron.

A stab of guilt hit my chest. I was going to go over to the hospital after work, but after the peeing incident, I hadn’t been able to think of anything other than taking a long shower. Now visiting hours were over and I wouldn’t get to see my dad until tomorrow. Could this day get any worse?

“Do you want to help?” my mother asked.

“Not tonight, Mom,” I said. “I’m sorry, I’m just really tired from work.”

“Well, speaking of work, it looks like I won’t be completely unemployed for the holidays,” she said. “Vivian’s going to let me pick up some shifts.”