Xmas Spirit (4 page)

“Really?” Petula shouted, slapping her hands away. “How about the next time you want to borrow my car or my homework or my doctor’s note, I give you some thoughts instead?”

Petula wagged her finger threateningly in both of their faces and issued a yuletide ultimatum.

“I don’t give a damn if you both have to invent a phony charity and ring a stupid bell for donations in front of the supermarket until your gel manicures melt!” Petula said. “I want what I want, that’s what I WANT.”

They looked back at her, dumbfounded.

“I’ve sent you my list,” Petula said.

“With links?” Wendy A. asked.

Petula rolled her eyes at such a stupid comment. Of course she would send links. She did every year. Complete with manufacturer, color, quantity, and size.

“I’ve been having trouble with my e-mail lately . . .” Wendy
T. stammered.

“No excuses, Wendy!” Petula growled. “I’m registered at every store in town.”

Both Wendys nodded, chastened, and slid into the backseat of Petula’s car.

“And while you’re at it, find out what Damen is getting me. If you can’t intervene, then for God’s sake, make sure he gets a gift receipt!” Petula howled, climbing in the driver’s seat, cranking the ignition, and peeling out carelessly for home. “I want cash when I return it, not some lame store credit.”

Students dived out of the way as the car barreled toward the exit for the tranquil and seasonally festooned streets of Hawthorne beyond. Charlotte smiled as Petula’s taillights glowed like demon eyes in the distance, sighing at the sheer display of brazenness she’d been privileged to behold.

Charlotte looked up at the sky. It was barely four o’clock, and it was already getting dark, glowing streaks of pink and orange crowding out the baby blue. She wanted more sun. More light. More . . . life.

“Damn you, daylight saving time!” she huffed.

The lot emptied, with hugs and holiday wishes all around—for everyone except her. Damen was already long gone, and there was no sign of Scarlet. Charlotte was alone. The first twinge of sadness suddenly overcame her. Why on earth she was still hanging around the lot, she wasn’t sure. It wasn’t so much because she wanted to be last, but because she was in no hurry at all to leave. No hurry to go home. Not all memories were created equal.

The wind picked up ever so slightly as the sun dipped over the purpling clouds, and Charlotte felt a chill for the first time in a long time. Not like the cold that permeated her bedroom, or Dead Ed, or her office in the Great Beyond. She couldn’t feel that cold, not really. Rather than reach for her collar to pull it closed, she tugged at her sleeves and pulled them up, marveling at the goose pimples budding all the way up her arm.

I can feel it
, Charlotte thought. Whether she meant the cold or the intense sensation of being alive once again, she wasn’t entirely certain.

Her very next thought, her natural instinct, was to tell Eric what she was feeling, just like she always did. He would be so happy for her. But then reality, like the cold, began to set in. She looked back up at the sky, straining to see him, all of them,
any of them, through the stars that were just beginning to peek through the gloomy sky. They seemed so far away. Eric, Pam, Prue, all of them. Out of sight.

“My friends,” Charlotte whispered.

Darkness fell and the clouds rolled away, completely disappearing with the day, revealing the heavens above in all their twinkling glory. Suddenly she broke out in a wide grin. She didn’t need to go home just yet. She had a friend nearby she could visit.

“Scarlet.”

“Eric?” Pam called out into the darkness.

“I’m not here,” a gruff voice said, punctuated by a guitar strike.

“So mature, Eric.”

Pam found him slumped in his chair, staring blankly ahead.

“What do
you
want, Pam? Oh, let me guess. Charlotte sent you.”

Pam was about to answer when she looked out his window at the Christmas lights they’d strung around the compound. They were dimming.

“You’re slacking off, dude,” Pam chided, turning back to him. “We’re all counting on you to power up our Christmas.”

“Tell you the truth, I don’t know what’s going on. It’s not me.”

“Well, what else could it be?”

Eric just shook his head disinterestedly.

“That’s not what you came here to talk about, is it?”

“No.”

“Well,” Eric said angrily, sitting up in his chair, “you can just tell Charlotte if she has something to say to me, like an apology, she can come here herself.”

“I will,” Pam said softly.

“Good,” Eric groused dismissively.

“When I find her.”

His mood turned from nonchalant to curious.

“What’s that supposed to mean? I just saw her last night. So did you.”

“Yeah, but she didn’t show up for work today.”

Eric lifted his head to meet Pam’s worried
That’s not like her
gaze.

“Are you trying to say she’s missing?”

“I don’t know what else to think. She’s not at work and she’s not home.”

“Well, it’s not like anything awful could have happened to her. I mean, she’s already dead.”

“This isn’t funny.”

“Relax, Pam,” Eric said sweetly. “Where could she go? She’s just pissed at me. She’ll get over it.”

“Not just you.”

“You guys were fighting too?”

“I was defending you, if you want to know the truth.”

Eric stood up and put his hands in his jean pockets, down to the studded leather bracelets on his wrists.

“Listen, I appreciate that, but our problems shouldn’t come between the two of you.”

“She’s my best friend, Eric. I was just being honest, telling her to maybe see things from your side, and she didn’t want to hear it. I should have just shut my mouth.”

“I’m sorry but I just can’t listen to all that Petula and Scarlet and Damen stuff. Especially the Damen stuff.”

“Jealous much?”

“It’s like, what am I, not good enough for her? I’m a damn rock god! I had girls clawing for me,” Eric said, getting lost in his own myth. “I’m freakin’ Santa Claws.”

“Let’s not get crazy, Eric. You got electrocuted playing at an outdoor band shell in a lightning storm. That hardly qualifies you as some hard-rocking heartthrob. A tragic figure maybe, but hardly some legendary lothario.”

“What’s the last thing she said to you?” Eric asked.

Pam thought about it for a second.

“She said, ‘I wish I’d never died.’”

Pam looked stunned as the words fell out of her mouth.

“What?”

“Oh. No.”

“Don’t even go there, Pam.”

“Christmas crossover.”

Eric turned away and walked back toward the window, and Pam rushed toward him, spinning him around by his shoulders.

“Admit it,” Pam said forcefully. “You are totally thinking what I’m thinking. She’s not here. She’s there!”

“This is crazy. You are crazy!”

“Am I? Didn’t Mr. Brain always say that Christmas was the
one time of the year when the door between our world and the living world opened?”

They both looked out the window, and the lights grew even fainter. Eric took the plug that had been hanging on his windowsill and placed it in his mouth. Instead of a burst of electrical energy shooting through the wires, there was a slight hum, a few sparks, a quick brightening, and then a slow fade. Pam shot him an
I told you
look.

“That was just a coincidence,” he said, playing it off.

“Don’t you get it, Eric? If she’s there, alive and well in Hawthorne, we can’t be here.”

4
Winter Wanderland

Story of Christmas

If our lives are like the chapters in a book, then Christmas is the page we keep rereading. Searching for a sentence, a phrase, or even just a word we might have overlooked the first time that will help us to move on and clarify our understanding of what comes afterward. We may adjust the lighting, check our eyes, and ultimately question our powers of concentration in a futile effort to make sense of it all. Sometimes, though, it’s worth remembering that the problem may not be with you. It might just be a misprint.

Charlotte strolled down
the still-familiar lanes of Hawthorne, lost in thought and brimming with anticipation, running her hands along whitewashed fence posts, flicking snow off the occasional evergreen branch, breathing in the sweet and smoky smell of burning birchwood from fireplaces up and down the street. She meandered cautiously through the maze created by the mounds of snow piled up on the sides of the road discoloring gradually—from pure virgin white to dove gray to dark black soot—like the strata of an archeological dig.

A full spectrum of color. Of reality. Of life.

The quaint homes were decorated with miniature lights, which illuminated the snow on the trees from underneath, diffusing the rainbow colors like snow cones. Tasteful wreaths sprinkled with snow hung peacefully on doors and windows, and Charlotte couldn’t help but imagine the cozy happenings and precelebratory preparations, not to mention magical expectations, building up inside each house as intricate ice crystals formed beautifully in her full, long black hair.

Suddenly a loud rumble from a tricked-out muffler preceded a warning flash of high-beam halogen headlights and a shrill horn blowing as she attempted to cross the street.

“Hey!” a guy’s voice yelled as a late-model sports coupe screeched to a halt, crunching the snow mercilessly underneath its tire treads. “Look out. You could get killed that way.”

Charlotte snapped out of her reverie and stared directly into the driver’s eyes.

His eyes.

Damen’s eyes.

“Do I know you?” he asked uncertainly, squinting.

Charlotte didn’t answer. She was stunned. Paralyzed.

“Do
you
know you?” Damen asked.

“Yes,” Charlotte stammered, unable to get the word out.

“Yeah, I do know you. You’re that girl from physics class who agreed to tutor me. Carla, right?”

“Charlotte.”

“Right,” Damen said as if he was trying to sink it deep into his brain. “Well, you need to be more careful. Good thing I was slowing down to park in front of my girlfriend’s house.”

“Petula,” Charlotte muttered.