Christmas Bells (15 page)

The singers passed just as Mary burst out laughing. The cute bookstore guy halted, his eyes widening as he recognized Laurie. “It's you,” he said. “I thought you were a hallucination brought on by sleep deprivation.”

“I'm real,” said Laurie, smiling.

“So I see.” The other four singers continued on without him, but the bookstore guy seemed not to notice. “Now I know why I've never run into you in the dining hall. I live in Dillon.”

“Of course. South Quad, South Dining Hall.”

“Exactly. And I figured out you're not in the College of Engineering.”

“No, Arts and Letters. Sociology. Which is why I've never seen you in class.” Laurie bit the inside of her lower lip, realizing too late that she had admitted looking for him.

“I'm Mary,” her roommate broke in. “And you are?”

“Jason.” He turned to Laurie. “And you're?”

“Laurie.”

“Nice to meet you, Laurie. And Mary.”

“You sing beautifully,” said Mary warmly, offering him her most disarming smile, the one that reduced cynical teaching assistants to tongue-tied boys willing to grant her extensions for late papers, penalty-free.

“Thanks,” Jason replied. “We're doing a fund-raiser for the South Bend Center for the Homeless. For a donation, four or five of us will sing the carol of your choice to anyone on campus. It usually ends up guys sending us to their girlfriends, although we have sent three different quintets to a particular chemistry professor with requests for ‘You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch.'”

As Mary laughed, Laurie said, “Oh, that's right. I read about that in the
Observer
. Not the Grinch part, the fund-raiser.”

“Laurie writes for the
Observer
,” said Mary. “She's a great writer.”

Laurie felt her cheeks growing warm. “I wouldn't say
great
.”

“That's why I say it
for
you.”

“Jason, dude, come on,” called one of the baritones from down the hall. “Elevator's here.”

“Be right there.” Jason gave Laurie an apologetic shrug. “I've got to go. We have six more carols to perform before parietals.”

“You'd better go a-wassailing, then.” Mary withdrew from the doorway, but with one lingering glance over her shoulder, she added, “Very nice to meet you, Jason from Dillon.”

“Nice to meet you too.” Jason's gaze quickly returned to Laurie. “My friends think you're fictional, and they've been teasing me for almost a year. Will you help me prove to them that you exist?”

“Jaaaaason,” one of the singers bellowed. “Elevator's gone. Now we have to take the stairs.”

“Sorry, Ryan,” Jason called back. In an undertone to Laurie, he confessed, “Not that sorry.”

“It's terrible you had to endure a year of teasing because of me,” Laurie said, with exaggerated regret, smiling. “I feel horribly guilty.”

“You can make it up to me. There's a party on our floor tomorrow night. Want to come?” When she hesitated, he added, “You can bring Mary.”

“I'm sure she'd love to go, but—”

“But what?” Then understanding dawned in his eyes. “You have a boyfriend.”

Laurie nodded.

“Same boyfriend as last year?”

“No,” she replied, taken aback. How had he known? She was sure she hadn't mentioned a boyfriend.

Grimacing, Jason glanced down the hallway, where his companions' voices had faded to echoes in the stairwell. “I have terrible timing.”

“I imagine that's a liability in singing.”

He laughed, rich and full, and Laurie felt a pang of regret. “Yeah, it is. Anyway, I should go. Good luck with finals.”

“You too. Merry Christmas.”

With one last nod, Jason hurried off after the rest of his quintet, and Laurie closed the door and resumed packing up her books.

Mary had put on her glasses and was sprawled on her bed reading a Penguin Classic paperback edition of Emily Dickinson. “Not. Bad.”

“I agree.”

“He has a real Mr. Darcy thing going on in that tux, despite the ROTC haircut.”

“Do you really think he's in ROTC?”

“No one gets that haircut unless they're in ROTC.” Mary peered up at her. “Is that a problem? I thought your dad was in the marines.”

“The navy. Which is how I learned I don't ever want to be a military wife.” She raised a palm and shook her head vigorously. “Forget I said that. Do not analyze a single word of that sentence.”

Mary smiled knowingly. “Consider it forgotten.”

“I have a boyfriend.”

“Yes, I know. I've met him.”

Soon thereafter, in the midst of final exams, Laurie and Matthew exchanged Christmas gifts. She gave him a fascinating book by a Notre Dame professor about the history of medicine in the Middle Ages, while Matthew gave her a Notre Dame sweatshirt, size large. She didn't take offense, and she thanked him for it sincerely, but after supper she stopped by the bookstore to exchange it for a pretty cable-knit cardigan.

Snow was softly falling as she crossed the quiet campus on her way back to the dorm, and although the snow-covered scene was beautiful, serene, even reverent, she felt strangely lonelier for not seeing Jason, someone she hardly knew.

•   •   •

It escaped Matthew's notice that she never wore the sweatshirt he had given her. He never had the opportunity to impress her with a more thoughtful Christmas gift, though, for he broke up with her on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving the following year.
“I'm a senior,” he pointed out unnecessarily. “I'm graduating in May and I want to enjoy my last few months on campus.”

“I never liked him,” Mary remarked afterward, waving a hand dismissively.

“You can do so much better,” said Jessica, their other roommate.

Laurie decided to believe them.

Term projects and final exams distracted her from her broken heart. Laurie threw herself into her work, determined to earn excellent grades and keep her grade point average high. Her internship at the San Diego Department of Public Health the previous summer had convinced her to pursue her master's of social work degree after graduation, and she knew she needed impressive qualifications if she hoped to be accepted by a top program.

On Tuesday of finals week Jessica and Mary found her in the dorm's basement study lounge. “Put down that book,” Jessica teased, lowering her voice to a whisper rather than disturb the four other students bent over books or staring at laptops nearby. “You're coming with us.”

“I can't,” Laurie whispered back. “I have to finish this paper by nine or I won't have time to study for my Contemporary Sociological Theory exam.”

“You can spare an hour for a study break.” Mary snatched the book from her hands, marked her place with a piece of loose-leaf paper, and slapped the book shut, startling the other students. “They're decorating gingerbread cookies at North Dining Hall.”

When Laurie and her roommates arrived, they found a few dozen students mingling around long tables laden with gingerbread men—and gingerbread leprechauns and the ubiquitous interlocking ND logo—as well as frosting, raisins, and all manner of small candies for decorating. Feeling like kids at recess, the three friends each took a cookie on a small plate, gathered
supplies, and claimed adjacent seats at a table. Laurie, in her love of gingerbread, was tempted to take a bite of her logo cookie unadorned, but instead she applied a layer of frosting and began outlining the letters in chocolate chips.

“Well, deck the halls.” Mary nudged Laurie with her elbow and nodded toward the other end of the table. “Look what Santa brought.”

Laurie glanced down the table and discovered Jason frowning thoughtfully at a gingerbread leprechaun. Beside him stood a slightly taller, good-looking blond guy whom Laurie quickly recognized as one of the baritone carolers. As Laurie watched, Jason's friend gestured toward an assemblage of small bowls filled with candy before them, shook his head in mock disgust, and said something that made Jason throw back his head and laugh. And then, as if he had felt Laurie's gaze upon him, he caught her eye, and a slow, disbelieving smile came upon his face.

“If you don't go talk to him, I will,” said Jessica.

“What'll I say?” Laurie whispered frantically as she rose.

“Don't overthink it.” Mary gave her a little push in his direction. “Ask to borrow some frosting or something.”

Carrying her cookie in one hand and a plastic knife in the other, Laurie felt her smile growing as she approached Jason and his friend. “Hi.”

“Hi, Laurie,” Jason replied emphatically. “Laurie, I'd like you to meet my friend Ryan. Ryan, this is Laurie.”

Ryan looked from Jason to Laurie and back. “Bookstore Laurie?”

“Bookstore Laurie.”

“I don't believe it.” Ryan brushed his right hand against the side of his jeans as if wiping off cookie crumbs and extended it to her. “Bookstore Laurie. I thought Jason invented you.”

“As I've been telling you for almost two years,” said Jason pointedly, “I didn't.”

“We used to say he must've met you in the fiction section.”

Laurie laughed and shook Ryan's hand. “We've met before, sort of. You serenaded a girl on my floor last year.”

Ryan studied her. “Oh, that's right. You're the one who made us miss the elevator.”

“No, that was my fault,” said Jason.

“I went to your autumn concert,” Laurie confessed, “so I saw you there too.”

“And you didn't say hello afterward?” Jason protested.

“I couldn't fight my way through the crowds of admirers.”

“They are legion,” Ryan acknowledged.

“I was thinking,” Laurie heard herself say, “when you're finished decorating your cookies, do you—both of you—want to join me and my roommates for coffee or something?”

“Gingerbread goes great with coffee,” Ryan mused. “Or hot chocolate.”

“I'm sure we could manage hot chocolate too.” Laurie turned back to Jason, and saw his look of chagrined dismay, and felt her smile fading. “But if you have to get back to studying, that's fine.”

“It's not that,” Jason said, embarrassed, “it's just—”

“I found them,” a pretty brunette cried triumphantly, bursting between Jason and Ryan, throwing her arms around their shoulders. “Cinnamon hearts!” She kissed Jason on the cheek and held up a plastic bag of candy. “I knew they couldn't have run out.”

“Mission accomplished,” said Jason, and when he shot a guarded look Laurie's way, she understood immediately.

Jason's girlfriend—because of course that's who she had to be—tore open the plastic bag and set it on the table. “Finally. Now I can start.” She looked around. “Where's my cookie?”

Ryan winced. “Are you referring to the gingerbread man someone abandoned on that plate over there?”

Jason's girlfriend planted a fist on her hip. “It was not abandoned. It was awaiting cinnamon hearts.”

“I might have eaten it.”

“Ryan,” she protested, punching him playfully on the shoulder. “Go get me another one.”

“You'd better come with me to make sure I don't eat it on the way back.”

She laughed, rolled her eyes, and led him off. Laurie watched them go, impressed with Ryan's maneuvering. “He should be a diplomat.”

“Yeah, but he'll probably be a priest instead.” When Laurie did a double-take, Jason added, “I'm serious. He moved into Old College this semester, and he's seriously considering entering the seminary.”

“So your other friend,” said Laurie, trying to sound casual and failing utterly. “She must be your girlfriend, not Ryan's.”

Jason nodded.

“She seems very nice.”

“She is.”

“That's good.” Forgetting that she still held her gingerbread cookie, she gestured toward her roommates. “I'd better get back.”

“Sure. Of course.” Jason managed a halfhearted grin. “It was good seeing you.”

“Did your sister like the sweater?”

“What? Oh, yeah, she did. She loved it.” Jason's smile deepened. “She's a sophomore here now.”

“Really? That's great.” Suddenly Laurie felt utterly weary and miserable. “My timing is terrible.”

“I guess we have that in common.”

Laurie nodded and turned to go.

Jessica and Mary had watched the entire debacle, but based on their expressions, Laurie guessed that they had not overheard the conversation. “Girlfriend,” she said abruptly, stabbing her plastic knife into a bowl of frosting and dropping into her chair, disconsolate.

“Oh, Laurie, honey.” Mary got out of her chair to embrace her, and for a moment Laurie closed her eyes and rested her head on her friend's shoulder. Then Mary placed her hands on Laurie's shoulders, held her gaze, and implored, “Don't let this ruin gingerbread for you.”

Laurie couldn't help it. She burst out laughing.

•   •   •

In her senior year, the first snowfall of the season came in late October, and by early December, the entire campus was covered by a thick blanket of white that would endure until April. The weather during finals week was especially treacherous, with several inches of heavy, wet flakes falling every other day, and Laurie yet again had an exam scheduled for the last testing period on Friday afternoon. She had booked a flight home Saturday noon, but as thick flakes began swiftly falling as she made her way back to the dorm after supper, she realized with increasing dismay that her travel plans could—and probably would—be disrupted.

The next morning she rose before her alarm, awakened by strong gusts of wind scouring the windows with snow. She reached the South Bend Airport safely an hour before her flight, but once inside the terminal, the long line of exasperated would-be passengers told her that her ordeal had just begun. Travelers her own age milled about or slumped wearily in hard plastic seats clutching cups of coffee, their coats opened to reveal a variety of Notre Dame, Saint Mary's, and Holy Cross College sweatshirts.