I walked her out to her car, and just before she opened the door to climb inside, I leaned into her and kissed her cheek. No doubt, Jeremy Pratt’s body was doing things that Travis Coates’s body had done many times before in that very same spot, but she suddenly held up both of her arms and shouted, “Hey, whoa . . . what?” She was definitely caught off guard, but she was also laughing a little.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m really sorry.”
“No. I am. Wow. That’s happening, isn’t it?” She looked down to my, you know, my . . . umm . . . space invader.
I quickly covered the front of my jeans with both hands. She started laughing and I joined in, knowing full well that even in the dim moonlight she could see how red my face had turned.
“It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have fallen asleep. Hell, I shouldn’t have even stayed.”
“I love you.”
“I think Jeremy Pratt does too.”
“I’m sorry, Cate. I really am. I just . . . this is so hard.”
Then we both laughed, and she sat down in her car and let the door hang open. She peered up at me with those eyes she used to get just before she cried. I felt like shit. I deserved to feel that way too.
“I’ll talk to you when I get back, okay? Can we just talk when I get back?”
“Yeah. Merry Christmas.”
• • •
They say you can fall out of love with someone just as easily as you fall into it. But is that also the case when the person you love dies? Do you have to fall out of love with them so you can fall in love with someone else? If that’s the way it works, then I could understand why Cate was taking her time, and I could at least respect her for not telling me something just because I wanted to hear it. You don’t have to tell someone you love them if they already know it in every molecule of their body. I’d known it in two bodies, and no matter what anyone says, it isn’t something that goes away.
Christmas Eve arrived quickly, and I still hadn’t seen Hatton since that day at the arcade—only talked to him on the phone a few times. After my little freak-out I wasn’t sure I could blame him for keeping his distance. I think maybe the Travis Coates Experience isn’t all that entertaining when it gets too serious. I’d basically tweaked out like a junkie in front of him and, well, I’m sure it wasn’t too fun to watch. Leave it up to me to suck the fun out of a building full of games and prizes.
And Kyle? Kyle had been busy with a mess of his own. After coming out to his parents and sister had been such a relief to him, he decided he’d just go ahead and tell a few college friends of his too. But his roommate, Evan, hadn’t reacted the way he’d expected. He said it gave him the creeps and asked Kyle to move out. You always hear about these kinds of people—parents and friends who can’t accept someone being gay and who treat them like they’re less human because of it—but listening to Kyle talk about it made me feel so angry and defeated. Now he was staying with his parents until he could find a new place.
“You know what it’s like, Travis?” Kyle said to me on the phone. “It’s like being in the only group of people still left that it’s okay to make fun of . . . that it’s okay to call unnatural.”
“Not the only group,” I said.
“Oh. Right. I guess you do know what it’s like.”
“Well, technically mine was by choice. I chose to be a . . . whatever I am.”
“Cryogenic American?” Kyle said.
“Exactly. Know what, man? Screw that Evan guy. People like him are few and far between, right? Maybe try to see it that way. At least he’s in the minority.”
“There’s more of them than you think,” he said. “Audrey’s pissed because her boyfriend keeps telling her they should pray for me.”
“Pray for you to do what?”
“I dunno. Change? Pray me straight. I tried that. It doesn’t work.”
“That Matt Braynard’s a tool anyway. He’s always walking around school like he owns the place.”
“It really bothered Audrey. Said she might break up with him.”
“Well, it sounds like Hatton’s prayers were answered,” I said.
• • •
My parents managed to make Christmas morning in my house feel the same as it always had. We had the fireplace on, and there were twinkling lights wrapped all around the tree and down the rails of the staircase. Mom even got up early to make pancakes shaped like Santa heads (yes, I see the irony). And Dad? He was on the back patio having his one recurring Christmas gift from my mom: a single smoke from a pipe he’d had since before they met. He’d promised to quit before they got married, and she’d promised that he’d get to smoke one pipe-full on every Christmas morning for the rest of their lives. Outside.
Mom would always tell me not to be tempted by my father’s bad habits, and we’d always laugh and eventually eat our pancakes around the kitchen counter. I could smell the sweet smoke soaked into his clothes and, in a weird way, that’s how I expected every Christmas for the rest of my life to smell. Not like holly or peppermint or gingerbread. But like my dad’s tobacco.
After breakfast we sat on the floor like always, and my mom passed out the gifts from under the tree. We had a long-standing rule that everyone in our small family would give only two gifts, big or small, expensive or cheap, to everyone else. Once our four were lying in front of us, we took turns, youngest to oldest, opening them one by one.
“Feels like socks,” I said, unwrapping the soft package.
It wasn’t socks. It was a green and black scarf. I’d actually asked for this after seeing it in a store one day. I wasn’t even trying to hide my scar anymore—there was no use—but I’d grown accustomed to wearing all the ones Mom had bought me. I immediately and expertly tied it around my neck. Next it was Mom’s turn. She started with one that I’d gotten her and she was tearing up before she’d even gotten all the paper off it. She paused.
“I don’t even want this if it’s a million dollars,” she said. “If I can just have you here every Christmas till I’m dead, then I don’t need anything else.”
“That’s nice, Mom. But I didn’t keep the receipt,” I joked.
“Travis! I love it! I absolutely love it!” She held the terry-cloth bathrobe to her chest and then out again, examining the embroidered initials on the front.
For Dad’s turn he chose a gift from me as well. When he opened it to find a black T-shirt with a large green Space Invaders alien on the front, he started laughing.
“This’ll show those cherry-chomping sons of bitches.” Man, my dad really hated Pac-Man.
When I opened the first gift from my dad and saw that it was a skateboard, I was sort of stunned. I hadn’t told them about that day at Hatton’s.
“How’d you know?”
“I was clueless what to get you, so I stole Hatton’s number out of your phone and asked him. It was the first thing he suggested. Will that one work okay?”
“Four wheels and a deck. It’s perfect.”
Mom opened a sweater from Dad, and then he did the same from her.
“We went shopping for these together,” she said. “When you get old, it’s just easier that way. Okay, Travis. Now open mine.”
I’d guessed that it was a book, but I was wrong. It was actually a tablet loaded with games, movies, music, and TV shows. I was speechless. I hadn’t even seen one in person, only on television a few times.
“Mom, this is . . . wow. So cool. How much was this?”
“Don’t ruin this for me.” She held up her phone to take a photo of me holding it.
After they each opened their other gifts from me—a gift certificate to a spa for Mom and a book about Bob Dylan for Dad—it was time to open my last present. It was from my dad, and it was money. I knew that much. One of his gifts was always an envelope with two hundred dollars inside. But this time he handed me a stack of five envelopes, each with my name written on the front in the exact same way.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Coul
dn’t quite break the tradition after you left,” he said. “Thought if you ever came back, you’d find a good use for it.”
“So this is . . . a thousand bucks? Dad, come on. That’s ridiculous. What am I going to do with all this? Here, take this back. I can’t take this . . .”
“Hell, I haven’t gotten to do this for a long time. Merry Christmas, Travis,” he said, not even pretending to listen to me. “Promise to use it for something fun, okay?”
Christmas night ended in the most perfect way possible. Around the time my dad and I were beginning our third or fourth consecutive viewing of A Christmas Story, there was a loud knock at the door. I opened it up to find Kyle and Hatton standing there with huge smiles on their faces. They said I had two minutes to get my shoes and coat on and meet them in the driveway.
“Resistance is futile,” Hatton added in a deep voice, slowly backing away into the darkness outside.
I was already shivering by the time I got from my front door to Kyle’s truck, so when I was inside, I pressed my cheek right up against one of the dashboard heating vents. Hatton had crawled into the backseat, and instead of saying anything about the arcade, he simply reached up and patted me three times really hard on the back and said, “Travis Coates!”
“Where are you taking me?”
“Secret.” Kyle never took his eyes off the road.
“Hatton, tell me,” I said.
“He’s in charge,” he said.
It took us about twenty minutes down the interstate to get to wherever we were going. It ended up being a neighborhood, not unlike the ones we all lived in, but with a little less light on the streets and a little more junk in each front yard. I started getting anxious when we pulled into a driveway and Kyle turned off his ignition.
“I knew it,” I said. “You guys are murdering me. Damn it.”
“Why would we murder you in a stranger’s house?” Hatton asked.
“It’s the perfect crime, really,” Kyle said. “Drive someone to a random stranger’s house, kill them, disappear. Confuse the hell out of everyone.”
“Okay. No, but really. What’s going on?” I was looking out every window, not knowing what to expect.
I followed Kyle and Hatton to the front door, and we waited after knocking three times. Eventually a little kid holding a toy gun opened the door. He was wearing Spider-Man underwear and nothing else.
“Mom!” he yelled, running away from us.
Kyle stepped inside first and we followed. The small living room was covered in red and green wrapping paper. It was a Christmas war zone. There were toys everywhere, some put together and some not even partially. There were other kids too, at least three of them. And one teenager with half-open eyes, sitting on the couch playing a video game. I wondered how many houses all over town looked exactly this way inside . . . one big simultaneous holiday hangover. The present-less Christmas tree made me sad. They always did.
Finally, a woman in a nightgown stepped out from a darkened hallway and gave us a silent stare. Then she put her hands up quickly and said in a high-pitched voice, “Oh! Yes. The listing!”
“Forget we were coming?” Kyle asked.
“I guess I did. You know how Christmas goes. It’s been crazy here all day. Did you remember our deal?” She grinned.
“Yes, ma’am,” Kyle said.
“Boys, get up and come over here for a picture,” she said loudly toward the couch.
“Do we have to?” the one playing the video game asked.
“Yes, you have to! I’m framing this and putting it up on the wall. Hell, we might use it for our Christmas card next year.”
She picked up the Spider-Man–underwear kid and held him on her hip while the other boys got up and stood in front of the Christmas tree. She walked over and stood beside them.
“Well, come on, then,” she said, waving me over.
I looked at Kyle and Hatton, who both shrugged, and walked over to stand with the family. She pulled at her sons’ arms to move them in closer and started combing the tallest boy’s messy hair with her hand.
“Okay. Ready.”
“Everybody smile,” Kyle said, holding up his phone and trying not to laugh.
“Cheese,” I said.
When we were all done, the kids took their places back on the couch, and the woman started walking toward the kitchen.
“Okay, let’s go out back and I’ll show you where they are.”
“Where what are?” I whispered to Hatton. He ignored me. He was busy dodging things scattered all over the floor.
We followed her through the kitchen and out the back door. She flipped on a light and the entire backyard, which had even more junk in it than the front, lit up with a dull, dirty yellow. I looked up at the porch light to see hundreds of dead bugs collected in its glass. My mother would’ve insisted on cleaning it out for them. She wouldn’t have taken no for an answer. I just cringed and kept walking.
We got to the back corner of the yard, and the woman opened up the heavy metal door of a rusted shed. Kyle helped her prop it open with a half-broken cinder block while Hatton looked at me with this really excited expression.
“There you go, boys. If you can haul ’em, you can have ’em.”
She pulled a string that was dangling down from the ceiling, and the little metal shed lit up much brighter than I’d expected. And right there in the center was a set of two theater seats with red cushions standing perfectly on faded green metal legs that led up to dark wooden armrests. They looked nearly identical to the ones I’d had before, except there wasn’t a single wad of gum on either one.
“Merry Christmas, buddy,” Kyle said, walking over and sitting down in one of the seats.
“Boom! Surprised?” Hatton held up his hand and gave me a high five.
I knew it was possible that I might cry in front of them and in front of this woman who I’d never seen before in my life. But I didn’t. I just watched as they both lifted the seats and started carrying them across the yard and then around to Kyle’s truck. They loaded them into the back, and Kyle used a couple of ropes to tie them down so they wouldn’t fall over or slide around on the way home. Inside the truck I was afraid to say much because I had that lumpy feeling in my throat, half due to amazement and half to trying not to blubber like a baby.
When we’d gotten them safely up to my bedroom and in their rightful place, in the corner by the window, facing my TV, I sat down in one of the seats and looked up at my two best friends. They wanted me to say something. Thank you, maybe. But that didn’t seem like enough, I guess. Hatton threw himself onto the bed and grabbed the remote control off my nightstand. He tossed it over to me. Kyle sat down beside me and stared across the room at the black screen.
“Yeah,” Kyle said. “This feels just about right.”
“It’s perfect,” I said. “Better, even.”
“Better than what?” Hatton asked.
“Than before.”
I suddenly realized I hadn’t gotten either of them anything. Here they’d obviously schemed in secret to do this amazing thing for me, to make me feel at least a little bit normal in my own room again, and I hadn’t done a thing for them. I was suddenly overwhelmed with guilt, so I stood up quickly and said I had to pee. I didn’t.
My mom and dad’s door was shut, so I was careful to be extra quiet when I walked down the stairs and into the guest bedroom. I went into the closet and rustled around in a few boxes, but I didn’t see what I was looking for. I wasn’t all that sure what it even looked like anymore, but I knew it had to still be there, somewhere.
And then I saw it. Right in the back corner of the closet on the floor, covered by a couple of old throw pillows. I grabbed it and crept back up the stairs and into my bedroom. I held the green tin cookie jar in both hands and walked right up to Kyle and Hatton.
“Merry Christmas, guys. You wanna see something weird?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
SOMETHING WEIRD
They stared down i
nto the cookie jar, both speechless and not moving. I thought they might even be holding their breath, afraid, perhaps, that one little stream of air could cause the ashes to explode all over the room. Hatton couldn’t help himself and eventually started easing one finger into the jar. Kyle slapped his hand away.
“Why are these here, Travis? Oh my God.”
“I think my parents are having a hard time figuring out what to do with them.”
“This is the creepiest and coolest thing I’ve ever experienced in my entire life. Thank you, Travis.” Hatton went to stick his finger in once more, and Kyle, once again, slapped it away without a word.
“What’re you gonna do with them?” Kyle asked.
“Well, I was hoping maybe you guys could help me figure that out.”
“I can’t believe they didn’t toss them out or something.” Hatton leaned down, almost putting his face against the top of the jar as he spoke.
“Me neither. But they don’t know I have these. So mum’s the word.”
“We should probably find something else to put them in, huh?” Kyle raised an eyebrow and looked around the room.
“I guess. But what’ll we replace them with?”
“I have an idea,” Hatton said. “But we can’t do it today. Actually, I’ll need a few days, maybe, but it’ll work.”
“What will work?” I put the lid back on the jar and set it on my desk.
“We can’t leave it empty and we can’t just fill it with dirt or something. That’s real ash in there. I figure your folks are keeping it around for some reason. Say they look inside and find us out. You don’t want to deal with that, right?”
“Right,” I said.
“Right. So give me a couple of days and I’ll get you some replacement ashes.”
“You gonna have a bonfire somewhere?” Kyle asked him.
“My dad’s a vet.”
“Oh no,” I said. “Hatton, I don’t think—”
“It’ll work. Trust me. They won’t be able to tell the difference.”