Eb tripped on broad steps. The droid helped him lean against one of the many garland-wrapped columns that framed a festive set of doors. Crisp winter air cleansed his sinuses.

  He wiped his eyes and looked over a stretch of land he hadn’t seen in forty years. The great lawn of Millar Academy Prep, lush and swamped with lounging students in the springtime, was buried in snow. Tracks were carved from building to building.

  The young man on the steps could’ve been mistaken for a Swiss guard, standing resolute with a bag slung over his shoulder. Steam rose from his cleanly parted hair, still damp with comb tracks.

  “How old are you there, sir?”

  Eb peeled himself off the pillar and journeyed to the bottom step just below the eye line of his younger self.

  “Eighteen,” Eb said. “I’m eighteen, I think. I… I remember the briefcase.”

  Young Ebenezer clutched a J.W. Hulme briefcase, distressed leather with gold buckles. His father gave it to him his senior year. Large flakes of snow clung to the sides and stuck to the shoulders of young Ebenezer’s wool overcoat.

  Clouds streamed from his nostrils.

  “What were you doing, sir?” the droid asked. “Standing in the cold?”

  “I was… waiting.”

  Young Ebenezer held out his hand. Snowflakes gently settled in the palm of his leather glove, dissolving into the creases at first but eventually holding their form.

  Waiting.

  This was standard procedure for young Ebenezer, from the day he was sent to Millar Academy Prep. He was the first to arrive for semester and last to leave. One by one, his classmates would climb into cars for the Christmas holiday. Young Ebenezer would watch them from his room until his ride would arrive. He would stand on the steps with perfect form and wait.

  Occasionally, no one would arrive. He would have to come back the next day.

  “Not this time.” Eb stood behind his younger self. “We were flying out for the holiday.”

  There was no joy in Eb’s revelation, unlike young Ebenezer sticking out his tongue, a large snowflake melting on the tip. He remained resolute, at attention and mindful, but a tiny smile dimpled his ruddy cheeks.

  A trio of students came from around the corner. They were lobbing snowballs at each other. Young Ebenezer did not move.

  “Handler.” Eb recognized the boys and fumbled down the steps. “Ericson and Peters.”

  The boys wrestled each other to the ground, snow packing into their stocking caps, pouring down the backs of their powdered overcoats. The scene lifted Eb from the spiraling fear and confusion, absorbing him in the memory. A smile defrosted the tension on his forehead, melting his ridged brows.

  A laugh escaped him when Handler dusted Ericson with a two-handed snowball. Young Ebenezer, however, held his ground.

  “Hey,” Peters said, “what’re you still doing here, Ebby?”

  “Parents running a bit behind,” young Ebenezer said.

  “Why you leaving so early?” Ericson said from the ground. “Exams are tomorrow. And then a party, son. You running out on us?”

  Young Ebenezer shrugged.

  The snowball fight continued and he was caught in the cross fire. He dropped his bags and fired back, catching Peters square in the ear.

  “I took exams early that year,” Eb said distantly. “We were going to Aspen. Just Mom, Dad and me.”

  “Your first vacation, sir?” the droid asked.

  “On holiday, it was.”

  Eb had planned the trip. He’d been forwarding emails and links ever since Peters told him about the same trip he took with his family. Peters had two brothers and a sister. They skied all day and played games with their parents at night. Eb imagined a blazing fire in a cobblestone hearth and a view of a lighted ski slope. The laughter, the fun.

  So he planned it. After months of begging, his mother agreed and his father went along with it.

  Young Ebenezer yanked a phone from his pocket. Mildly panicked, he brushed the snow off his overcoat and patted down his hair. His good humor drained away.

  A black car approached the turnabout.

  “Watch the trees,” Peters shouted. “Remember… snow plow!”

  The boys laughed. Young Ebenezer climbed into the backseat. Eb watched the car pull away.

  There was no reason to get in the car with young Ebenezer. The ride would be the same as always. The Uber driver would ask what music he liked, did he like going to Millar Academy Prep, was Devetta Scrooge really his mom?

  Devetta Scrooge wasn’t his mom, he would answer. Even though she was. If he didn’t deny it, the driver would ask questions all the way home. It didn’t matter if the driver was male or female, they wanted to know if Devetta Scrooge was really like that because no one was really like that.

  But she was.

  Eb watched the Uber drive out of the circle, left blinker at the four-way, where he would ask about the music.

  “Just leave it off,” Eb said, mouthing the words young Ebenezer would say.

  Millar Academy Prep was the best part of his life. And it wasn’t all that great.

  The droid reached out and, once more, turned the invisible crank. The streets and buildings, the snow and clouds began to grind around them, the universe spinning slow at first.

  Then faster.

  Until it blurred.

  Bull-nosed marble steps appeared below their feet. The black Uber pulled into a driveway, the pavers cleared of snow. It circled around a three-tiered fountain, icicles draped over scalloped lips.

  The Scrooge name had not been painted on the mailbox. There was no point. They never lived in a house long enough for it to matter. By the time the paint dried, they would already be building a bigger and better house.

  “We never stayed long,” Ebenezer said, “but never left the neighborhood. We just kept building. My father said we were bringing up the value of the neighborhood one house at a time. Everyone should thank him.”

  The shrubs were sheared perfectly square, the windows clean, the drapery hung just so. Not a single light twinkled nor ornament hung. Across the street was a modest house in comparison. It was a two-story home with inflated snowmen and jolly fat men and strands of white lights that coiled up tree trunks. Evergreen wreaths blotted out the windows.

  Young Ebenezer climbed out of the backseat.

  The droid stepped aside, hands tucked into his sagging sleeves, to let him pass. Young Ebenezer wiped his feet before opening the door. High-pitched laughter rang somewhere in the house, the hysterical kind that came with a knee slap and a long sigh.

  Amazon boxes were stacked at the foot of the stairwell, some with the tops cut open. Inside were brand-new ornaments and a fourteen-foot artificial tree.

  “Never opened,” Eb said. “Every year, she ordered new ornaments. Some years they made it out of the package.” Eb peeled back a flap. “It all ended up in the garbage. Every year.”

  Young Ebenezer didn’t bother dropping his bags. He toted them down a long hallway and stopped where the laughter was loudest. He watched with the fascination of a young kid seeing his first circus, a bearded lady perhaps or a parade of clowns.

  “Yes, of course,” Devetta Scrooge crooned. “I will call as soon as I land and you take care. And James? I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. I can’t tell you how much this means to me.”

  Eb remembered the way his mother would put her hand over her heart, her thick eyelashes fluttering as she half bowed, her way of giving thanks in a meaningful, ancient way. The Buddhists do that, she once said.

  Without batting their eyes, of course. Or the lipstick.

  “You were supposed to pick me up,” young Ebenezer said.

  “Honey, I had a very important call. How was the trip home?”

  He didn’t bother describing the awkward silence or the slight nausea he got from riding in the backseat. She had already turned to the computer. If he said anything, she’d interject timely uh-huhs while clicking from one tab to another.

  Her office was a holy shrine of social media, a monitor for almost every platform. The walls were hardly visible beneath a continuous stream of reality television and status updates. A fog of perfume sent intruders into a coughing fit, a sickly sweet fragrance that attacked the eyes and back of the throat. She could text with her left hand while clicking the mouse with the right.

  “Honey.” She raised her phone when young Ebenezer started to walk away. “I’ll be flying out tonight. Your father wants to talk to you.”

  “Tonight? I thought we were leaving tomorrow.”

  “You haven’t heard? Silly me. I just got called up for a pilot. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  She clasped her hands together, the long painted nails folding over the backs of her tanned hands. A wide smile exposed neon white teeth.

  “Now?” young Ebenezer said. “I mean, at Christmas?”

  “Well, it doesn’t start until January.”

  “Why are you flying out tonight?”

  “Honey, I need to get settled and prepared. There’s a lot of competition in reality television. You know, I can’t just show up and expect them to love me despite all my followers.”

  The bag sagged on young Ebenezer’s shoulder. He hiked it up and started for his room.

  “Hey!” Devetta Scrooge shouted. “Aren’t you happy for me?”

  “There’s lipstick on your teeth,” young Ebenezer called from the stairs.

  She found a mirror and polished her teeth with her finger, mumbling about spoiled brats and a selfish family. “Just once. Can’t you be happy for me just once?”

  “She never came back,” Eb mused. “Met a producer and stayed in California.”

  “Were you sad, sir?” the droid asked.

  The answer was naturally no. An emphatic no. She only left that room to eat or use the bathroom, and she walked hundreds of miles on a treadmill with a Bluetooth in her ear while thumbing a phone and tapping touchscreen monitors. Had she not met the producer in California and divorced his father, she would’ve knocked out a wall to expand her social media shrine before building another house.

  “Your father wants to talk to you!” Devetta Scrooge repainted her lips before taking a call.

  On the third floor, young Ebenezer threw his bags on the bed. A mini-fridge hid beneath a wide desk. He flopped on the chair with a bottle of water and went zombie—a faraway place with no thoughts or feelings.

  Eb knew the place well.

  He’d never seen it from the outside, how vacant his eyes were, how slack his face went. He only knew how empty it felt. A safe house where nothing hurt.

  “What’s this, sir?” The droid observed the organized desk.

  At first, Eb thought he was talking about the old man face carved into a pine branch—a gift from his grandparents. There was a stack of flat stones balanced on the corner of the desk. Black and smooth.

  The stones.

  Eb plucked one off the top, the remaining stack shimmering in place. He rubbed the smooth edge. He’d forgotten about the stones.

  “I got those for him.”

  “Your father, sir?” the droid added.

  Eb nodded.

  He’d found them in a stream at camp one summer and kept them in his pockets. That Christmas morning, he stacked them on the coffee table with a little note for his father, something he called natural sculpture. His father looked at them and grunted into his coffee. They stayed on the coffee table until Eb took them to his room.

  “Never said thank you,” Eb said. “Neither did I.”

  The girls had given him paperweights since the day they arrived. The fact that he gave them to his father was lost in the zombie fog, a memory he discarded long ago. Even stacked on his desk, young Ebenezer had already banished the memory along with the feelings. Now they were just rocks.

  So why did I keep them?

  A car door slammed. Young Ebenezer looked out the window. Someone had pulled up to the house across the street. Jacob got out of the passenger side.

  Young Ebenezer fumbled for his phone. What are you doing? he texted.

  You home? Jacob texted on the way inside.

  Yeah.

  Thought you were gone.

  Change of plans. Home for Christmas.

  Come over.

  “We used to sleep in the treehouse when we were kids.” Eb watched the Christmas lights go on at Jacob’s house. The trees glittered in the dusky light. “Jacob’s mom would call my parents to make sure it was all right. Always had to leave a message. Never got a call back.”

  Young Ebenezer shoved his bags under the bed. If he left no evidence, his mother might forget he was home. His father would never know.

  “What are you doing?” a voice boomed.

  A shiver rattled every bone in his body. Eb turned toward the doorway.

  His father walked into the room, his steps slow and methodical, the lumbering pace of a calculated thug. The room filled with the smell of an old leather briefcase.

  “Unpacking,” young Ebenezer said.

  “Going somewhere?” his father said.

  “Apparently not.” Young Ebenezer stood his ground.

  His father’s eyes darkened beneath hooded brows. A quiver pierced Eb through the stomach. He had the urge to crawl under the desk, roll under the bed next to his luggage. His father wanted his son to be a man, not because that was the right thing for a father to want, not because he wanted the best for his son.

  Blake Scrooge liked a challenge.

  “You think this is funny?” He held his phone in young Ebenezer’s face. “Some sort of joke?”

  It took him a minute to read the email. “I can explain,” young Ebenezer said.

  “No. You can get back to work.”

  Young Ebenezer pleaded. His father paced the room while his son followed his plodding footsteps.

  “I got disciplined,” Eb said, his voice as shaky as young Ebenezer’s. “We cut class before Thanksgiving, spent the night at a house party. I didn’t mean to do it, just one thing led to another. When I woke up, the police were there. I figured the chancellor’s email got lost in cyberspace or spam because no one said anything.” He clutched both dolls in one hand. He was still carrying them. “He was just waiting for the right time to beat me with it.”

  “Sit down.” His father pointed at the bed.

  Eb resisted following the man’s order. Young Ebenezer sank on his mattress, head hanging. The sooner he took a submissive position, the shorter the speech. His father knew when every ounce of victory had been wrung from a situation.

  “You think this is a joke?” he said.

  “No, sir.”

  “You think I spend all that money to send you to the best school, to hire the best tutors, to provide you with a home and clothing and food and this wonderful life so that you can play grab ass with your buddies? Is that it?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I got news for you, young man. This can all go away in a heartbeat.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that, you’re on your own, you understand? I make the calls. I know what’s good for you. If you don’t want to listen, then you can figure it out on your own.”

  His father’s phone buzzed. He turned away to answer a text. Young Ebenezer deflated, propping his elbows on his knees.

  “That was his move,” Eb said. “Listen or else. Do what he says or he’d take it all away. He meant it, too.”

  “He couldn’t take it away, sir,” the droid said.

  Eb turned to the droid. Of course he could. His father had the money, wasn’t that obvious? He bought the house and the cars, paid for school and books. Wasn’t the droid watching the same thing Eb was? His father could put him on the streets at any moment.

  His father was going to take it all away one day. Eb knew that. His father knew the day would come when Eb was capable of being self-sufficient. His father would be watching, he’d see it coming, and he’d snatch it all away, rip the carpet from under his feet just before he got there.

  One last victory before manhood.

  “He never gave you anything, sir,” the droid said. “Nothing that mattered.”

  Eb swallowed a sudden lump. His bone-crushing fear transformed into something deep and moving, a current of sadness that rushed up his throat and slammed into the back of his brain.

  Nothing that mattered.

  “Here’s what you’re going to do,” his father said. “The chancellor was kind enough to have your instructor send additional projects.”

  “But—”

  He held up his hand, the fingernails manicured, palms lotioned. “Don’t interrupt.”

  Young Ebenezer went back into hangdog.

  “You’ll finish them before returning from break. Anything less than an A on one of them, and I’ll have another batch sent on top of your schoolwork. You’re hanging out with losers, all of them.” He pointed out the window. “No son of mine is going to be a no-good loser, you understand?”

  Pause. “Yes, sir.”

  The speech continued. He was extra wound up, probably gamed up at a holiday party that afternoon. A fight was always at the tail end of a good night, his father always said.

  He was just getting warmed up.

  The lecture came out in clichéd chunks that Eb could recite by memory. If his father wasn’t looking, he would mouth along. If he got caught, it would unlock a whole new set of insults. Sometimes it got worse than cursing.

  Eb shook his head. He remembered. He knew it well.

  Addy and Natty heard them, too.

  A bomb detonated in his stomach, a sickening realization that he’d danced the dance his father taught him. He’d towered over employees, shouted at teleconferences, threw insults at everyone that deserved it.

  Eb had his own hangdogs.

  His father’s phone buzzed again. Quietly, he thumbed the screen, his lips moving, a sly smile upon them. His latest mistress needed attention. He hardly tried to hide it anymore and left breadcrumbs as big as sourdough loaves.

  “And another thing.” His father pointed the phone from the doorway. “Don’t plan on going outside or sneaking out to Jacob’s house. You are grounded, young man. I will be watching.”

  Eb fell on the bed next to his younger self. They sat on the bed until night fell. The Christmas lights at Jacob’s house cast a red glow on the wall. His phone buzzed with texts from his best friend every once in a while.

 

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