“I hate snow.” My dad hunched over the steering wheel, eyes squinting out the windshield, doing a pretty good impersonation of The Grinch.
“Dad,” I admonished, “how can you say that? It’s great ammunition.”
“It’s not so great for visibility.”
My fingers curled around my new fifty-foot range snowball launcher. It had just come in the mail, and I couldn’t wait to try it out. A little Christmas gift to myself—paid for with some of the money I, Joey Michaels, had saved during my water-fighting days.
Unfortunately, a two-hour trip up into the mountains stood between me and sheer snowball-launching bliss. The good news was that, when we got there, the ground would be covered with a blanket of marvelous snow.
By five o’clock, the sun had already set for the day. The way our headlights lit the snowflakes, it looked as if we were traveling through space at light speed.
It made me want to pretend we were in a spaceship and my snowball launcher was actually a laser blaster. I aimed at my nine-year-old sister, Christine, and made a laser blaster sound. “Buzzoinka.”
“Mom, Joey is pretending to shoot me with his snowball launcher.”
“Laser blaster.” I held up a finger. “And I think I accidentally fried your brain because you sound like a dumdum.”
“Mom!” Christine screeched again, practically proving my point.
“Mom!” I echoed. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. “Christine is tattling!”
The car slipped on the road. Christine flew sideways into me. My tummy flipped like I was back in gymnastics, and Mom screamed. That was cool. Not the part where Christine flew into me but the part where we slid toward the edge of the road and the river below.
Once, my school bus had spun 360 degrees on ice. I still wish I’d been bumper hitching behind it at the time, but at least we were two hours late for school that day. Best school day ever.
Mom fanned her face like she couldn’t get enough oxygen. She did that a lot, whether we were careening toward the edge of a cliff or she was discovering I’d been wearing the same pair of socks for a week.
Dad was a little cooler. He muttered under his breath as he regained control of the car.
Christine pushed away from me like we were sitting under mistletoe or something. “Eww … gross.”
Apparently she cared more about her proximity to me than her proximity to sudden death.
“Okay.” Mom caught her breath and turned down the radio as if that would help Dad keep the wheels on the road.
I would rather she had left the volume up because I liked barking along with the dogs to the tune of “Jingle Bells.”
“Kids, let’s play the Peace-on-Earth Game.” AKA the Quiet Game. Her favorite game.
“If you wanted peace on earth, Mom, you shouldn’t have let Joey spend his money on another weapon.”
I hugged the snowball launcher close and whispered, “Don’t listen to her, boy. We are so excited to have you in the family.”
Mom turned around to face us. “Sweetie, it’s not a weapon. It’s athletic equipment. Yukigassen is a competitive snowball-fighting sport in Japan that is spreading around the world. It might even be in the Olympics one day.”
She’d recited my argument perfectly. I should be a salesman when I grew up … if I didn’t make it as a pro Yukigassen player.
The whites of Christine’s eyes flashed in the dark as she rolled them at me. “Dad, I can’t believe you let him spend all his money on himself.”
“Not all my money.” I had six bucks left.
“Well, I spent my money on Christmas presents for others.”
Sure she did. At the grocery store around the corner. I bet she got me Q-Tips again so I could clean out my ears to better hear her lectures.
Dad cleared his throat. “Joe made gifts this year.”
I smiled my smug, middle-school smile. Now that I was in 7th grade, I got to take this class called “shop.” I know, it sounded like a class Mom and Christine would attend to prepare for the day-after-Thanksgiving sales, but actually we got to use manly power tools in there. I made a pegboard game for Dad, a casserole holder for Mom, a birdhouse for Christine, a guitar pick for Grandpa, and a picture frame with our last name engraved on it for Grandma.
Christine crossed her arms and sat back. “Humph.”
Mom clapped her hands. “Since you’ve all lost the Peace-on-Earth Game, let’s take turns saying what we are most looking forward to this Christmas.”
Dad tapped his brakes and we slowed for a narrow bridge. “I’m looking forward to getting through this storm and parking the car.”
I pressed my lips together to keep from saying, “Bah, humbug,” and patted Dad on the shoulder instead. He’d be a different person when we got to his parents’ house and he was able to sneak some of Grandma’s goodies behind Mom’s back. That’s what he was really looking forward to. Hopefully he’d swipe me a couple peanut butter reindeer and some peppermint fudge while he was at it.
“Yeah.” Mom was clueless about Dad’s sweet tooth. “I’m looking forward to helping out with the Living Nativity. Are you sure you don’t want to play the part of Joseph, Joey? You have the perfect name for it.”
Dad’s teeth glinted in the rearview mirror as he cracked his first smile since we’d climbed into the car.
I smiled back. “How about I play a shepherd? Then I could use the hook of my staff for a slingshot.”
A passing car illuminated Mom’s worry wrinkle between her eyebrows that only appeared when she was looking at me. “Never mind. Christine, what are you excited about?”
Christine flipped her hair so it slapped me in the face. “Ice-skating. Can I get one of those fancy ice-skating outfits?”
I imagined myself commandeering a Zamboni and chasing her around the ice rink, but Mom must not have been imagining the same thing. “You want to become a figure skater? We could sign you up for lessons and—”
“No.” Dad turned up the speed on the windshield wipers. “Not unless she wants to give up her dance lessons. Or singing lessons. Or piano lessons.”
“Please, Daddy?”
Dad was usually a sucker for Christine’s “Please, Daddy,” but it didn’t override his mental calculator this time. “Christine, if you want to take all your Christmas gifts back and use the money to pay for your own lessons, that would be fine.”
Ouch. Turning the holiday into a business transaction? That was extreme, even for Dad.
Mom’s head turned Dad’s way. He was getting “the look” even though it was too dark to see it.
Dad must have known. “So … Joe. What about you? What are you looking forward to?”
Besides hoping that I got an arctic snow shield under the Christmas tree? I chose not to speak the idea aloud in case it hurt my snowball launcher’s feelings. The poor guy was probably still smarting from Christine’s rejection of him. I looked down at the sleek new addition to my life.
Should I name him? He was kind of a pet.
Speaking of pets … “I’m excited to see Grandma’s new husky puppies.”
Grandma bred huskies. I’d always wanted one, and Dad said I could have one of my own when I saved enough money. But how many snowball launchers could I buy for the price of one of Grandma’s husky puppies? More than thirty. It would be a while before I got a dog.
“Oh, me too,” Christine said.
I smiled at her. She was a girly girl, but at least we both agreed that Grandma’s puppies were the coolest things on earth.
“Look at you two getting along.” Mom twisted all the way around to look at us, though I doubted she could actually see anything in the dark. “Are we on 34th Street? Because this is a miracle.”
“Ha ha.” I humored Mom. That was as good as her jokes got.
Dad chuckled for real. “It’s not 34th Street, but we are almost to Easy Street. Just one more curve, then we will leave this river behind.”
I looked out the window toward the side of the
road that dropped away over an embankment into inky blackness. Not quite as inviting a scene as it had been last summer on our rafting trip.
“Over the river and through the woods,” Mom sang.
It had taken more than an hour for her to burst into song. A new record.
Christine and I shook our heads sadly at each other. At least we were continuing to agree on things. This might turn out to be a peaceful Christmas after all.
“To Grandmother’s house we—”
A deer leaped in front of Dad’s headlights.
“—Whoa!” Mom changed the lyrics, though she wasn’t overreacting this time.
Tires screeched.
I jolted forward then swayed violently from side to side as our vehicle fishtailed.
Christine’s shriek pierced the air.
I gripped my snowball launcher tighter and ground my teeth together. We were going to be okay. Dad was a safe driver. Just because it looked like we were headed for the edge of the road—
The car jumped as one of the rear tires slid off the edge and slammed the bottom of our car on cement.
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