“Three in the morning,” I said. “You never called back.”
Assorted snuffling noises, as he tried to clear his thoughts.
“Sorry. It was busy all night. You know my mom and the Smorgasbord. Can we talk tomorrow? I’ll call you as soon as we finish opening gifts.”
I fell silent. I had braved the biggest storm of the year—many years—I had fallen into a frozen creek, and my parents were imprisoned . . . and he still couldn’t talk to me?
But . . . he had had a long night, and it seemed a waste to force my story on him when he was half asleep. People can’t really sympathize with you properly when you’ve woken them up, and I needed him at 100 percent for this.
“Sure,” I said. “Tomorrow.”
I climbed back into my cave of blankets and pillows. They had a strong, unfamiliar smell. Not bad—just a very strong detergent that I’d never smelled before.
Sometimes, I just didn’t get Noah. Sometimes I even felt like he dated me as part of his plan, like they were going to have a checklist on the application, and one of the things to tick off was going to be, “Do you have a reasonably intelligent girlfriend who shares your aspirations, and who is fully prepared to accept your limited availability? One who likes to listen to you talk about your own accomplishments for hours at a time?”
No. This was fear and cold talking. This was being in a strange place away from my family. This was stress over the fact that my parents had been arrested in a riot for ceramic houses. And if I just slept, my brain would go back to normal.
I closed my eyes and felt the world swirling with snow. I was dizzy for a moment, and slightly nauseous, and then I was fast, fast asleep, dreaming of waffle sandwiches and cheerleaders doing splits on the tables.
Chapter Eight
Morning came in the form of a five-year-old leaping onto my stomach. My eyes popped open from the force.
“Who are you?” she said excitedly. “I’m Rachel!”
“Rachel! Stop jumping on her! She’s sleeping!”
This was Stuart’s mom’s voice.
Rachel was a highly freckled mini-Stuart with incredibly bed-messy hair and a huge smile. She smelled vaguely of Cheerios, and she needed a bath. Debbie was right there as well, nursing a cup of coffee while she switched on the Flobie Santa Village. Stuart stepped out from the direction of the kitchen.
I hate it when I wake up to find that people have been creeping around me and have seen me asleep. Unfortunately, it happens to me a lot. I can sleep like a champion. I once slept through a smoke alarm going off. For three hours. In my bedroom.
“We’re going to put off opening our presents,” Debbie said. “So this morning, we can all just have something to eat and have a nice talk!”
This was clearly for my benefit, as there were no gifts for me. Rachel’s face looked like it was going to split in two, like a piece of overripe fruit. Stuart looked to his mother, as if asking if this was really a good idea.
“Except for Rachel,” she said quickly.
It’s amazing how quickly little kids’ moods can shift. She went from total despair to elation in the time it normally takes to sneeze.
“No,” I said. “No, you guys should, too.”
Debbie was shaking her head firmly and smiling.
“Stuart and I can wait. Why don’t you go and get yourself ready for some breakfast?”
I slunk off to the bathroom, head down, to try to do some basic morning repair. My hair looked like it was trying out for the comedy circuit, and my skin was raw and chapped. I did my best with cold water and decorative hand soaps, which is to say, I didn’t make a lot of progress.
“Do you want to call your family?” Debbie asked when I emerged. “Wish them a happy holiday?”
I found myself looking to Stuart for help with this one.
“That may be hard,” he said. “They’re in the Flobie Five.”
So much for hiding that fact. Debbie didn’t seem put out by it, though. Instead, she got a gleam in her eye like she’d just met a celebrity.
“Your parents were in that?” she asked. “Oh, why didn’t you say? I love the Flobie Santa Village. And it was so silly to put them in jail. The Flobie Five! Oh, I’m sure they’ll let them talk on the phone to their daughter! At Christmas! It’s not like they killed somebody.”
Stuart looked up at me knowingly, as if to say, Told you.
“I don’t even know what jail they’re in,” I said. I felt guilty as soon as I said it. My parents were wasting away in a cell somewhere, and I didn’t even know where.
“Well, that’s easy enough to find out. Stuart, go online and find out what jail they’re in. It has to be on the news.”
Stuart was already on his way out of the room, saying he was on it.
“Stuart’s a wizard with those kinds of things,” she said.
“What kinds of things?”
“Oh, he can find anything online.”
Debbie was one of those parents who still hadn’t quite grasped that using the Internet was not exactly wizardry, and that we could all find anything online. I didn’t say this, because you don’t want people to feel that they’ve missed something really obvious, even when they have.
Stuart came back in with the information, and Debbie made the call.
“I will get them to let you talk to your parents,” she said, holding her hand over the receiver. “They have no idea how persist— Oh, hello?”
It sounded like they were giving her a bit of trouble, but Debbie beat them down. Sam would have been impressed. She handed me the phone and retreated from the kitchen, all smiles. Stuart picked up a wriggling Rachel and carried her out, as well.
“Jubilee?” my mom said. “Honey! Are you okay? Did you just get to Florida? How are Grandma and Grandpa? Oh, honey . . . ”
“I’m not in Florida. The train never made it. I’m in Gracetown.”
“Gracetown?” she repeated. “You only made it that far? Oh, Jubilee . . . where are you? Are you all right? Are you still on the train?”
I didn’t quite feel up to telling the whole story of the last twenty-four hours, so I made it nice and short.
“The train got stuck,” I said. “We had to get off. I met some people. I’m staying at their house.”
“People?” Her voice hit a high pitch of concern, the kind that said that she suspected drug dealers and molesters. “What kind of people?”
“Nice people, Mom. A mom and two kids. They have a Flobie Santa Village. Not as big as ours, but some of the same pieces. They have the gumdrop shop, with the full display. And the gingerbread bakery. They even have a first-generation Merry Men Café.”
“Oh,” she said, somewhat relieved.
I think my parents think you have to have some kind of moral character to be in the Flobie crew. Social deviants don’t take the time to lovingly set the tiny gingerbread men displays in the window of the bakery. And yet, lots of people would take that as a sign that someone was unhinged. One person’s crazy is another person’s sane, I guess. Plus, I thought I was being pretty crafty by describing Stuart as one of “two kids” instead of “some guy I met at a Waffle House with plastic bags on his head.”
“Are you still there?” she asked. “What about your train?”
“I think it’s still stuck. It got caught in a snowbank last night, and they had to turn down the power and the heat. That’s why we got off.”
Again, pretty clever to say “we” as opposed to “just me, wandering across a six-lane interstate during a blizzard.” It wasn’t a lie, either. Jeb and the Ambers and Madisons had made the trek themselves, just after I blazed the trail. Being sixteen means you have to be a genius conversational editor.
“How’s . . . ” How do you ask your mom how jail is?
“We’re fine,” she said bravely. “We’re . . . Oh, Julie. Oh, honey. I am so sorry about this. So, so sorry. We didn’t mean . . . ”
I could hear that she was about to completely lose it, and that meant that I would soon lose it if I didn’t stop her.
“I’m fine,” I said. “The people here are taking really good care of me.”
“Can I speak to them?”
Them meant Debbie, so I called to her. She got on the phone and had one of those mother-to-mother talks where they express concern for children as a whole and make a lot of scrunched-up faces. Debbie was well up to the task of reassuring my mother, and in listening to her talk, I discovered that she wasn’t going to let me go anywhere for at least a day. I heard her shoot down the idea that my train was going anywhere, that there was any chance at all I was going to make it to Florida.
“Don’t you worry,” she said to my mom. “We’re going to take good care of your girl here. We have lots of good food, and we’ll keep her nice and snug and warm until things clear up. She’ll have a good holiday, I promise you. And we’ll send her right back up to you.”
A pause while my mother made high-pitched sisterly devotions of gratitude.
“It is no trouble at all!” Debbie went on. “She’s an absolute pleasure. And isn’t this what the holidays are all about? You just take care of yourselves in there. We Flobie fans are rooting for you.”
When she hung up, Debbie was wiping at her eyes and writing a number on her “Elf List” magnetized refrigerator notepad.
“I should call about my train,” I said. “If that’s okay.”
I couldn’t get anyone on the phone, probably because it was Christmas, but a recorded voice said that there were “substantial delays.” I looked out the window as I listened to it cycle through menu choices. It was still snowing. It wasn’t as end-of-the-worldly as last night, but it was pretty steady.
Debbie lingered for a bit but then drifted off. I dialed Noah’s number. He picked it up on the seventh ring.
“Noah!” I said, keeping my voice low. “It’s me! I’m—”
“Hey!” he said. “Listen, we’re all about to sit down and have breakfast.”
“I’ve kind of had a rough night,” I said.
“Oh, no. Sorry, Lee. Listen, I’ll call you back in a little while, okay? I have the number. Merry Christmas!”
No “I love you.” No “My holiday is ruined without you.”
Now, I felt myself losing it. I got all choked up, but I didn’t want to be one of those girlfriends who sob when their boyfriends can’t talk . . . even if my circumstances were a little beyond normal.
“Sure,” I said, holding my voice steady. “Later. Merry Christmas.”
And then I ran for the bathroom.
Chapter Nine
You can only spend so long in a bathroom without arousing suspicion. Over a half an hour, and people are staring at the door, wondering about you. I was in there at least that long, sitting in the shower stall with the door closed, sobbing into a hand towel that read LET IT SNOW!
Yeah, let it snow. Let it snow and snow and bury me. Very funny, Life.
I was kind of terrified to come out, but when I did, I found that the kitchen was empty. It had been cheered up a bit, though. There was a Christmas candle burning on the middle bit of the stove, the Bing Crosby tunes were rocking out, and a steaming pot of fresh coffee and a cake were waiting on the counter. Debbie appeared from the laundry room next to the stove.
“I had Stuart go next door to borrow a snowsuit for Rachel,” she said. “She outgrew her last one, and the people next door have one just her size. He’ll be back soon.”
She gave me a knowing nod that said, I know you needed some private time. I have your back.
“Thanks,” I said, sitting down at the table.
“And I spoke to your grandparents,” Debbie added. “Your mother gave me their number. They were concerned, but I set their minds at rest. Don’t worry, Jubilee. I know holidays can be hard, but we’ll try to make this one special for you.”
Obviously, my mom had told her my real name. She pronounced it carefully, as if she wanted me to know that she had taken note of it. That she was being sincere.
“They’re usually great,” I said. “I’ve never had a bad holiday before.”
Debbie got up and poured me some of the coffee, setting the cup down in front of me, along with a gallon of milk and a massive sugar bowl.
“I know that this must be a very rough experience for you,” she said, “but I believe in miracles. I know it sounds corny, but I do. And I feel like you coming here has been a little one for us.”
I glanced up at her as I poured milk into my coffee and almost flooded the cup. I had noticed a sign in the bathroom that said FREE HUGS GIVEN HERE! There’s nothing wrong with that—Debbie was clearly a nice person—but she maybe veered toward the goofy side of soppy.
“Thanks?” I said.
“What I mean is . . . Stuart looks happier today than he has in . . . Well, I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but . . . Well, he may already have told you. He tells everyone, and you two already seem to have hit it off, so . . . ”
“Told me what?”
“About Chloe,” she said, wide-eyed. “Didn’t he tell you?”
“Who’s Chloe?”
Debbie had to get up and slice me a thick piece of cake before she could answer. And I do mean thick. Harry Potter volume seven thick. I could have knocked out a burglar with this piece of cake. Once I tasted it, though, it seemed just the right size. Debbie didn’t fool around when it came to the butter and sugar.
“Chloe,” she said, lowering her voice, “was Stuart’s girlfriend. They broke up three months ago, and he . . . well, he’s such a sweet guy . . . he took it so hard. She was terrible to him. Terrible. Last night was the first night in a long time that I saw a spark of the old Stuart, when you were sitting there with him.”
