My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories (37 page)

She hesitated, then snatched the ticket from my hand, held hers out to me.

“Go ahead.” I motioned toward the open door. “You’re boarding.”

She pointed to another open door a few gates away, another mass of crowding people. “So are you.”

It really was that easy, believe it or not. I started toward the open doors. For the first time in my life I did not look back, not until I heard the girl call, “You don’t even know where I was going.”

I shrugged and shook my head and said the only thing that mattered: “If you just want to go
away
then any ticket will get you there.”

*   *   *

“Miss?” the voice came through the blackness, and yet I did not move. “Miss!” The flight attendant seemed almost sorry. “It’s time. We’re here.”

That’s when I realized the plane was on the ground; all the other passengers were gone. The lights were down and the tarmac was dark. Wherever the girl was going, I was there.

Walking through the nearly deserted terminal, I made a list of what I had to do. I had enough cash for a hotel and a car, but they’d never rent one to a minor. Especially a minor traveling alone. I took the battery out of my phone, knowing I’d need to buy a burner. I would have to—

“Hulda!” someone yelled.

I looked at the crowd of people waiting just outside of security.

“Hulda!” the woman at the front of the crowd yelled again, a massive
Welcome (to your new) Home, Hulda!
banner unfurled in front of her. “We’re so glad you’re here!”

As she rushed forward, she must have crossed into a secure area because an alarm started sounding—both in my head and out of it.

This was dangerous.

This was wrong.

This woman was invading territory that was better left roped off. Secured. Barricaded and impenetrable to intruders. But the breach had already happened, and I let myself give in to the hug.

It was, after all, a really nice hug.

“Well, look at you!” The woman held me at arm’s length. “You changed your hair.”

I thought back to the short blond locks on the girl in the airport. The girl with the accent. The girl from Iceland. The girl these people were evidently waiting for.

I felt myself starting to panic, needing to run …

“You look so different from your picture,” the woman said, and I managed to breathe.

The girl these people had evidently only seen in pictures.

Maybe they wouldn’t get suspicious, call security. The police. Maybe I could just bide my time and slip away quietly and …

“Well, what am I doing hogging all the hugging? Ethan!” the woman yelled. She looked around, and I followed her gaze to the boy who was walking around the corner.

He wore Wranglers and boots and a plaid shirt heavy with starch. Until then, I’d thought boys like him only existed on the covers of romance novels. He must have been shocked by the looks of me, too, because he stopped short, frozen in the process of sliding a phone back into his pocket. Hulda’s words came back to me:

I don’t love him.

My other boyfriend.

“Ethan!” the woman yelled. “She’s here!”

I started to spin, but I was too late. He was already there. Looking at me. I could see the truth playing across his face, the realization that I was not an Icelandic girl name Hulda. I was not his girlfriend.

“It’s…” The boy started, and, mentally, I filled in the blanks.

An imposter!

A liar!

A fraud.

He moved closer.

“So good to see you!” the boy said.

And then he kissed me.

*   *   *

So it turns out that if you swap tickets with a girl who doesn’t want to go see her boyfriend, then there’s a good chance said boyfriend will meet you at the airport.

Along with his entire family.

“This is Aunt Mary,” the boy—Ethan—said, pointing to the woman with the really good hugs. “You’ll be staying with her,” he added before pointing to the others. “My mom, Susan. Dad, Clint.”

Clint took my hand in his big, beefy, calloused one, but he gave me a warm smile.

“Welcome.” His voice had a soft, southern twang. They all did.

“Oh, and that’s Emily. She’s my sister,” Ethan said as Emily looked up at me with the biggest bluest eyes that I’ve ever seen. I’m pretty sure she could see right through me.

“I’m twelve,” she said before I could ask. “I’m older than I look.”

We were walking toward the baggage claim, past a nativity scene where all of the wise men were dressed like cowboys, when the boy’s mom looked at me and asked, “So, is this your first trip to Oklahoma?”

Oklahoma.

Middle of the country. Middle of nowhere. Approximately a thousand miles from New York, another thousand from LA. It was … perfect.

“First time,” I said.

There was a long pause while everyone waited for me to do something. I felt like an animal at the zoo, an exhibit called
Icelandic Girl in the Wild.
But I wasn’t an Icelandic girl. And I couldn’t let them know that.

“It’s nice to meet you all,” I tried.

“My goodness,” Aunt Mary started, “Ethan said your English was good, but it’s perfect. Just perfect.”

“I watch a lot of American TV,” I said, and they all nodded as if that made sense.

“Okay, let’s get your bags.” Clint clapped his hands together.

“Oh, I don’t—” But before I could finish, a huge suitcase came around the conveyor belt, a giant sticker of the Icelandic flag plastered to the side. “I guess that’s mine.”

Clint went to grab the old-fashioned suitcase, lifting the giant thing as if it weighed nothing at all. I had to wonder how long Hulda was expected to stay.

But that didn’t matter. I wasn’t Hulda.

*   *   *

“So … Hulda?” Ethan asked, and it took an embarrassingly long time to realize he was talking to me.

“Yes, Evan?” I asked.

“Ethan,” he whispered. “My name is
Ethan.
You might want to remember that since you just flew halfway around the world because you are so in love with me.” I studied his profile in the dim light of the backseat of his parents’ SUV as it pulled away from the airport. His jaw was strong, and he kept his gaze straight ahead, as if trying to stare down the horizon. “You’re never going to get away with this, you know? Pretending to be Hulda.”

“Hulda is fine,” I told him. “I didn’t gag her and shove her in a closet if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Oh, I know. She called to tell me that she didn’t get on the plane. She asked me to look out for you, and that is the only reason I’m going along with this crazy stunt. Hulda is a good person. You did her a favor, so I’m doing you a favor because…” He trailed off, then looked at me anew. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“No.”

“Because if you are … if there’s something about you that brings trouble to my family—”

“I’m not in any trouble.”

“Because girls always trade plane tickets with strangers in airports. They’re always flying off to meet some stranger’s boyfriend.”

“That’s funny. According to the people in this car,
you’re
Hulda’s boyfriend. But Hulda didn’t think so.”

“What’s your point?”

“We all have secrets.”

He turned and stared straight ahead again. “I went on a foreign-exchange trip to Iceland last summer.”

“And…”

The corners of Ethan’s mouth turned up in something not quite resembling a smile. “What happens in Iceland stays in Iceland.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

He glanced back at me. “So, what’s in it for you?”

“I didn’t want to go to New York.”

“What’s in New York?”

Aunt Mary was leaning between the front seats, talking to Ethan’s mother and father. Emily was wearing headphones—I could hear faint traces of music as she closed her eyes, fading in and out of sleep. Ethan and I were alone in the last row, but the SUV was too quiet. Someone might overhear. Get suspicious. Find out.

I swore right then that no one would ever find out.

“I needed to get away, okay? I saw my chance, and I took it. I’ll be out of your hair, and you can start mending your broken heart or whatever just as soon as we stop. I will disappear, and you will never have to see me again.”

I expected him to protest, to complain that I was putting him in an impossible position. I didn’t expect him to actually say, “You can’t just run away.”

But I was not in the mood to hear what I couldn’t do. The list had been too extensive for too long.

You can’t eat that.

You can’t go there.

You can’t be this.

Ethan didn’t know that I was in that SUV-bound-to-nowhere because I had solemnly sworn to never let anyone tell me what I could or could not do ever again, so I leaned closer.
“Watch me.”

But he only laughed. “No. You don’t understand. I know my father, and there is no way this vehicle stops until we get home.”

“So I’ll split as soon as we get there.”

But that must have been hilarious, because Ethan just laughed harder.

“What’s so funny?” I asked, but he sank lower in his seat, closed his eyes and whispered, “You’ll see,
Not Hulda.
You will soon see.”

*   *   *

In case you were wondering, by “soon” Ethan meant four hours later.

That’s how long I sat squeezed into the backseat, listening to Hulda’s fake boyfriend snore. He kept his cap pulled low over his eyes, so I sat alone in the dark vehicle, staring out over the lights of the towns in the distance and the red glow of the taillights of the trucks that passed us by.

When Clint finally pulled off the interstate and onto a small highway I thought we must be almost there, but it was another hour before we turned onto a narrow gravel road that wound and curved through the darkness. The lights of the city were long gone. There were only stars. Millions of stars. Honestly, it was like we were the only people on earth when Clint stopped beside a small white house with a wraparound porch and said, “We’re here.”

“This is your house?” I asked Ethan as we crawled out of the backseat.

“No.” Ethan yawned, and I realized it must be after midnight. “Aunt Mary lives here. We’re next door.”

I turned to look, but saw only dark hills beneath that blanket of stars—a moon so large that it felt like I could touch it.

“With next door being…”

“About a half mile on the other side of that ridge.” Ethan pointed to the darkness.

A cold wind blew my hair into my face, jolting me awake. I watched as Clint carried Hulda’s huge suitcase up the stairs and through a door that opened without a key. That’s when I realized I was literally in a place where people didn’t lock their doors at night and the distance to the nearest neighbor was measured in miles.

If all I wanted was to go away then I’d done it. But Aunt Mary was beaming at me. Ethan’s parents were giving me hugs and wishing me good night. And Ethan kept looking at me as if he expected me to bolt off into the darkness at any moment.

I had to congratulate myself on finding the perfect place to hide.

It was a shame I couldn’t stay.

*   *   *

“You got everything you need, sweetie?”

Aunt Mary knocked on the bedroom door and it swung open. If she thought it was weird that I was still sitting on the bed with my backpack on my lap, she didn’t say so.

“Do you need some help unpacking?” She pointed to Hulda’s huge suitcase, but I shook my head.

“No, thank you.”

“That’s okay.” She crossed her arms and leaned against the doorframe. “You’ve got five months to settle in.”

Five months. A whole semester. I tried to imagine living in a tiny white farmhouse in the middle of nowhere for almost half a year. I had one bar on my cell phone (I’d checked before removing the battery again), and there was no cable TV. Could a person even live like this? Then I thought about the unlocked door, the big Christmas tree, and the handmade stocking already hanging on the mantel, the name
Hulda
sewn on in green sequins. And I knew that, for some people, the answer was absolutely yes.

“Your house is nice,” I told her.

“It’s old. Like me.” Aunt Mary laughed. “And it’s empty now that my husband and little girl aren’t here. But it’s mine. I was born here, you know.” She glanced at the old building as if expecting it to finish her story. “This was my room when I was your age. And then it was my daughter’s room. And now it’s yours.” She gave me a wide smile. “We’re glad you’re here, Hulda.”

“I’m very glad to be here,” I said because it was the first lie that came to mind.

For a second, though, I thought it must not have been the right lie, because Aunt Mary looked as if she knew there was something wrong with Hulda. Wrong with me.

Then she shook her head. “I just can’t get over how good your English is.”

“Thank you,” I said, and remembered what Ethan had told me on the drive. “Ethan helped me with it when he was in Iceland last summer.”

“Of course. He’s a good boy,” Aunt Mary said, but then something in the woman’s countenance grew serious. She studied me anew. “I would hate for him to get hurt.”

I looked into her big brown eyes. “I would hate that, too.”

And at that moment I meant it.

I swear, I really did.

*   *   *

“She’s so quiet.” I could make out the words, but I couldn’t place the voice. Or the room. Or the house. Or the overwhelming stillness that seemed to permeate everything around me. There were no honking horns, no dinging elevators or room-service carts being pushed down anonymous, never-ending hallways. That was when I told myself that I was still sleeping, that it had to be a dream.

“It’s a long flight. She must have been exhausted,” someone else said, and I remembered: Aunt Mary. The little white farmhouse with the big Christmas tree.

Ethan. Iceland. Hulda.

I threw off the covers and bolted upright in bed. The sun was too bright, burning through the white lace curtains that covered the windows. It felt like a spotlight, and I knew I had to get away—to get out of there before someone looked too closely, asked too many questions. By now, it would be obvious that I hadn’t shown up in New York, and people would be looking for me. If they found Hulda, they could find Ethan. And if they found Ethan, they’d find me.