Expanded Universe, page 19
part #13 of The Last Picks Series
(He’d been put in charge of the stars because, well, straight boy. Honestly, he wasn’t doing too bad.)
I know Indira’s not psychic. I mean, I think I know. But the next time she looked at me, it had enough mental oomph to just about knock me out of my chair.
“Uh, yeah,” I said. “I guess we are talking about it now.” And then, in a burst of grade-A, genuine courage, I punted. “Did you want to go home for Christmas?”
Fox snorted.
Indira sighed.
Millie and Keme were trying to smear frosting on each other’s noses and giggling uncontrollably.
And Bobby, because he’s Bobby, said, “Whatever you want to do.”
I love Bobby. I love everything about him. I love the fact that he can say things like that without the slightest hesitation. Without even a hint of self-consciousness. And he can just go on meticulously applying frosting to a snowflake-shaped cookie like it’s the most important job in the world.
But sometimes—just sometimes—it would be nice if he didn’t say things that twisted my brain into a pretzel.
“Right,” I said. I tried to focus on my cookies—I was in charge of the reindeer ones, they were turning into a reindeer massacre. And then, because I couldn’t come up with anything better, I said again, “Right.”
“I’ll be celebrating Saturnalia at my house,” Fox said. “In case anyone’s wondering.”
“Keme,” Millie said, “WE should go to Saturnalia!”
Fox’s eyes got nice and big at that announcement. “Well, actually, the legal drinking age—”
“Dash is asking if you want to spend Christmas with your parents,” Indira said with a tone. “And if you want him to go with you.”
Bobby frowned as he carefully layered on more frosting. Then, apparently satisfied with the result (yet another perfect snowflake), he looked over at me.
“I mean,” I said, “if you want.”
“Do you want to spend it with my family?” Then Bobby’s frown deepened. “I assumed you didn’t want to spend it with your parents because you didn’t bring it up, but do you want to go home? I’d love to spend Christmas with your family.”
“Oh,” I said. “Oh! No. No, no. No, no, no. I mean, it’s way too late now to buy tickets, and everyone knows how bad holiday travel gets…” I trailed off. And then, just for emphasis, I laughed. To show how silly the whole thing was. And then, for further clarity, I added, “Absolutely not!”
Bobby’s eyebrows went up.
“Saturnalia was an ancient Roman holiday—” Fox began.
“Everyone knows what Saturnalia was,” I snapped. “We get the point!”
In the silence that followed, you could have heard a cookie crumble.
“You know what?” Bobby said slowly. “Christmas isn’t a religious thing for my family—it’s not a big deal.”
“Oh,” I said. “Great.”
“And I don’t have a lot of time off because we’re so short-staffed.”
I grabbed a Santa cookie and gobbled it. “Ugh. That’s awful. That’s so unfair.”
“Maybe don’t cram a cookie in your mouth with relief next time,” Fox advised.
“So, I was planning on celebrating Christmas here,” Bobby said. “With you.”
See? This is what I mean when I say Bobby is perfect.
“With ALL OF US!” Millie announced.
And Keme, because he’s a teenage boy, chose that moment to grab my wrist and try to stab a butter knife through the back of my hand.
I was still fighting for my life—or at least for my hand—when Bobby, returning his attention to the snowflakes, said, “You know what we should do? We should FaceTime our parents.”
2
From my observation post in the hall, I said, “I thought this was for little kids.”
Millie, wild-eyed, threw open a closet door. She turned toward Keme, who was rifling through the—ick—commode, and shouted, “Closet is clear!”
“Nothing!” he shouted back, slamming a drawer shut.
“Be careful,” I said, “that’s an antique—”
“Billiard room!” Millie called over me.
And Keme’s answering shout had an almost military crack to it: “On it!”
Together, they sprinted for the billiard room. A moment later, I heard a crash.
“Your point being?” Fox asked dryly.
“Did they get this excited about Elf on the Shelf last year?” Bobby asked. “Why do I not remember this?”
“Probably because you were moping and doing all that tremendously vigorous exercise and trying to pretend you didn’t have feelings,” Fox said.
Bobby isn’t the type to give dirty looks, but he didn’t sound very grateful when he said, “Thank you, Fox.”
“You’re welcome.”
“We didn’t do Elf on the Shelf last year,” I said. “Last year, they set up all of Vivienne’s decorations, but the rest of us were kind of busy—”
“Pining?” Fox said.
“Don’t you have art to do?”
“I am doing it,” Fox said haughtily. “Everything I do is art.”
From the billiard room came a way too aggressive grunt from Keme—he was undoubtedly lifting something heavy, probably for Millie’s benefit—and then, seconds later, a tremendous thud.
“They’re going to knock this house down,” I muttered.
“Do they get a prize or something?” Bobby asked.
“Not everyone is motivated in life by filthy lucre,” Fox said.
“Five minutes ago,” I said, “you were doing that Christmas scratcher and saying, ‘Titi needs a new pair of shoes.’” To Bobby, I said, “There’s no prize. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite of a prize.”
“What does that mean?” Bobby asked. “Does the loser have a consequence?”
“No, that’s what’s so confusing about this whole thing. There’s no game with Elf on the Shelf. There’s no winning and losing. They’re not supposed to touch the elf at all, actually. The fun is that every night, the elf moves somewhere else in the house, and the next morning, the kid—emphasis on kid—gets to find them.” Glass shattered. “Usually it’s not so destructive.”
“Wait, so what’s the point? This elf just moves around the house, and the kids try to find him?”
“The point,” Fox said, “is that Santa is always watching. It’s a coercive system—a punitive system—to regulate children’s behavior in an attempt to socialize them into a capitalist regime in which prizes are rewarded for good behavior, and poverty is the result of not toeing the line.”
Bobby looked at me.
“Okay, yes,” I said. But then to Fox, I added, “You’ve been spending too much time with Cyd.”
Fox sniffed. “He bought me a coffee.”
Millie and Keme must have moved their search upstairs because footsteps hammered overhead, interspersed with the unmistakable sounds of giggling.
“What in the world is going on?” Indira asked from the doorway to the servants’ dining room. She wore an apron that was dusted with flour, and her face suggested that the message of the day was quit horsing around.
“Elf on the Shelf,” Bobby said.
Indira said something under her breath that you cannot write on a Christmas cookie and disappeared back toward the kitchen.
“How long is this going to take them?” Bobby asked. “You must have done a really good job hiding it.”
Fox groaned. “You too?”
A surprisingly boyish grin bloomed on Bobby’s face. “It sounds fun. Besides, you can give me a hint. Is it on the ground floor?”
“Oh no,” I said. “No hints.”
“All right.” Bobby frowned. “Let’s see. Hiding things in plain sight is kind of what you do for a living, so you must have picked somewhere good.”
“Technically, teaching college freshmen how to print a Google Doc is what I do for a living.”
“Plus,” Fox said, “he thinks he’s very clever.”
“I am very clever, thank you very much.”
“Somewhere they could look at it,” Bobby murmured, as though speaking to himself, “and not really see it. Where it would blend in, or where their brain would trick them into thinking they already knew what was there.”
“But not anywhere he had to use a ladder,” Fox said. “He hates exercise.”
“I don’t hate exercise,” I said. “I love exercise.” Okay, maybe love was a stretch. “Do you have any idea how many people get hurt around the holidays falling off ladders?”
“And nowhere scary,” Fox said. “Definitely not in the cellar, because last time he had to get toilet paper, he sprinted down there, and I’m pretty sure he held his breath the whole time.”
“Okay, in the first place, that was a challenge. And in the second place, if there are ghosts in Hemlock House—if!—Millie said, like, three of them live in the cellar. And it’s dark down there.” I couldn’t help myself; honesty compelled me to add, “And there are spiders.”
“On a literal shelf,” Bobby said. “Under one of the glass things. You could swap out one of the taxidermy animals.”
“Okay, that’s actually a great idea. Let’s do that tomorrow.”
Disappointment flickered on Bobby’s face. “One of the Christmas trees. You hid it among the ornaments on one of the branches.”
“Bobby, you’re seriously good at this. We should do that one too!”
“What?” Bobby said. “Are you kidding me?”
“I find it a little insulting that you think you could guess so easily where I hid it.”
From above came a rattling series of thumps, and then Keme belted out, “Ooh-rah!”
“Then where is it?” Bobby asked.
I opened my mouth to answer. And then a sneaking tendril of doubt began to worm its way through me. I’d hidden the elf last night. I’d taken it out of the box. I’d waited for Millie to go home and for Keme to fall asleep. And then Bobby had come home early, and he’d been working so much lately, and—
“You have got to be kidding me,” Bobby said.
Another thunderous crash shook the house.
“It’s still in the box,” Fox said. “Isn’t it?”
3
“Voting is a little extra,” I said. “Don’t you think?”
“We have to vote,” Millie said. “If we don’t vote, how will we ever know which one is THE BEST?”
“Yes,” I muttered as I worked a finger in my ear. “How will we ever know?”
Keme gave me a dark look.
“Don’t be so dramatic,” Fox said as they threw the end of their scarf over their shoulder.
“I’m sure everyone’s gingerbread house is lovely,” Indira said.
“Are you?” I said. “Because I think you know you’re a shoo-in. I heard you cackling earlier.”
Indira didn’t do anything. But that lock of white, witchy hair seemed extra white.
“Uh,” I said. “Retracted.”
We all waited for a peal of thunder—or something.
After a few seconds, Bobby said, “Okay. Here we go.”
“We’ll go first,” Keme said.
“We will?” I said.
He gave me that look again—and, not so discreetly, showed me a fist—so I sighed, and we all moved into the billiard room.
Making gingerbread houses wasn’t a tradition for us. But Indira had insisted. Actually, insisted is too strong a word; she’d asked if we could do it, and because Indira never asks for anything—and because the rest of us simultaneously love her and are terrified of her—the answer had obviously been yes.
The competition and voting had been Fox’s idea.
You probably expected Millie and Keme to team up. That’s certainly what I expected, anyway. To my surprise, though, Millie had said she wanted to build her own. (You should have seen the look on Keme’s face.) And since I’d been complaining about how playing Xbox had given me early-onset arthritis of the, uh, knuckles, Bobby suggested Keme and I work together.
(Suggested is a word that can mean so many things.)
As everyone took their places in the billiard room, Keme hopped up to sit on a windowsill, leaving me to present our masterpiece.
“What,” Fox said, “is that?”
“It’s—”
“Is it a shoebox?” Fox asked—apparently answering their own question.
“No, it’s not a—”
“Is it a loaf of bread?” More dubiously. “Gingerbread?”
“It’s not a loaf of bread.” Then inspiration struck. “It has wheels.”
“It’s very nice,” Indira said, echoing her comment from earlier—and, from the tone of it, regretting that choice of words.
“Why does it have eyes?” Millie asked. “IS IT A MONSTER?”
“It doesn’t have eyes,” I snapped. “Bobby, for the love of God, tell them what it is.”
Poor Bobby. Poor sweet, beautiful, innocent Bobby. He actually, literally cleared. his. throat.
“Unbelievable,” I said. “This is absolutely unbelievable, that not one of you can—”
“It’s an RV,” Keme said from the windowsill.
“Oh!” (That was Indira.)
“Okay…” (That was Fox.)
“Babe, that’s so clever.” (My sweet boyfriend.)
“OH MY GOD!” (Guess.)
“We had a minor setback having to do with, um, the whole thing collapsing,” I explained, “and then Keme said we should do something that wasn’t a house, and I was eating Oreos, and the rest is history. It’s got windshields—” I directed a stern look at Millie. “—not eyes—and it’s got Twizzlers for windshield wipers, and you can see the little door Keme made with frosting. Oh, and it’s got a jump ramp, and inside there’s a dojo, a command center, and an isolation unit. Plus we made this sweet zipline out of candy floss.”
“It’s very nice,” Indira said again, with more enthusiasm this time.
“How does it have a zipline if you drive it around?” Fox asked.
“KEME, IT’S SO GOOD!”
“And what do you do with the jump ramp?” Fox said. “It’s too wide to fit in the back of the RV.”
Bobby kissed the side of my head. “It’s so creative.”
“And why does it have an isolation unit?” Fox reached as though they might open the RV, and I smacked their hand. “Isolation from what?”
“Plague victims,” I said, “the walking dead, bad guys. Ever heard of the Joker?”
Keme scowled and made a gesture that clearly indicated there you go.
“Is it an RV or the Bat Cave?” Bobby asked.
“It has a dojo,” Millie said with something that sounded suspiciously like a giggle.
With something that sounded like patience, Indira said, “Let’s move on.”
Fox’s effort wasn’t exactly surprising. But it was less than impressive.
“It’s a deconstructed gingerbread house,” they said.
“Really?” I said. “Because it looks like you just stacked all the gingerbread and put the tub of frosting to the side.”
“It’s avant-garde. It’s groundbreaking.”
“I LOVE IT,” Millie announced.
“I thought you were an artist,” I said. “Shouldn’t this be your time to shine?”
“This is art,” they informed the rest of us. “This is me shattering thousands of years of conformist, representational thinking.”
“Ceci n'est pas une pipe,” Bobby said.
(Bobby. Of all people.)
“Thank you,” Fox said in their most aggrieved tone.
“Moving on,” Indira said.
Bobby’s house was so Bobby that I wanted to seal it in an acrylic display case and give it to our children.
(God, please don’t tell him I even mentioned children; I don’t want to scare him off.)
It was a perfectly square house. With two perfectly angled pieces of gingerbread making a perfect child’s-drawing roof. It had perfectly symmetrical windows. He’d even used some of the frosting to make white lines that were supposed to be snow, and there were six of them on each side.
“It’s very…you,” Fox said.
“BOBBY, IT’S SO GOOD! IT’S THE BEST ONE YET!”
“It’s the best one yet?” I said. “Does it have a Batcomputer?” Keme chose that moment to punch me in the kidney, so I had to moan as I added, “It’s super cute, Bobby.”
And then it was time for Indira’s.
Let’s be real here: we all knew something was coming.
None of us was ready.
It was beautiful. It was perfect. It was beyond perfect.
House wasn’t the right word; it looked like a fairytale castle. Each piece of gingerbread had been hand cut. The icing on the roof looked like real snow that had built into drifts. Little curlicues of icing decorated the walls, and more icing and little gingerbread trees made it look like—
Okay, I’m just going to say it:
It made it look like a gingerbread house in a forest.
The kind that lost, wandering children might decide to nibble on.
Fox was the first one to speak (of course), but all they said was “Remarkable.”
“Oh my GOD!” (That was a whisper for Millie.) “It’s so pretty!”
Keme was staring at it, and the best word for the look on his face was entranced.
“That’s incredible, Indira,” Bobby said.
“Uh, I think you win,” I said.
“You definitely win,” Fox said.
“Hold on,” Indira said, but you could tell she was pleased. “We haven’t seen Millie’s.”
“Oh, mine isn’t very good,” Millie said.
Bobby gave Keme a nudge, and the boy roused himself long enough to blink and then say, “Yours is probably the best.”
I mean, he was still learning, so you’ve got to give him points for trying. Plus, the comment made Millie glow.
When we saw Millie’s, I think we all stopped breathing.
All of us.
Even Indira.
Because it was Hemlock House.
She’d done the turrets and towers and chimneys. She’d done the beautiful façade. She’d done the insane, sprawling, Victorian layout. There were little wreaths and little snowmen and what I was fairly sure were candy cane structural supports. Light glowed inside the house, and I know you’re going to think I’m insane, but I swear to God when I looked through one of the windows, she’d somehow gotten a Christmas tree in there with tiny presents around it.
