Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances (11 page)

I was slugging along past a group of little girls, giggling in the snow, when the despair really set in. The tears were about to flow forth. I couldn’t really feel my feet anymore. My knees were stiffened. And that’s when I heard his voice behind me.

“Hold up,” Stuart said.

I stopped suddenly. Running away is pretty pathetic, but it’s even worse getting caught. I stood there for a moment, unwilling (and partially unable) to turn around and face him. I tried to arrange my expression in the most casual funny-meeting-you-here, isn’t-life-hilarious! way I could. From the way my jaw muscles were straining by my ears, I’m pretty sure it was a lot more like my I’ve-got-lockjaw! face.

“Sorry,” I said, through my clenched smile. “I just thought I should get back to the train, and—”

“Yeah,” he said, quietly cutting me off. “I kind of figured that.”

Stuart wasn’t even looking up at me. He pulled a proper, if slightly embarrassing, hat out of his pocket. It looked like one of Rachel’s. It had a big pom-pom on top.

“I think you probably need this,” he said, holding out the hat. “You can have it. Rachel doesn’t need it back.”

I took it and pulled it on my head, because it looked like he was prepared to stand there, holding it out, until the snow melted around him. It was a tight fit but still brought a welcome warmth to my ears.

“I followed your footsteps,” he said, in answer to the unspoken question. “Snow makes it easy.”

I had been tracked, like a bear.

“Sorry to make you go to all that trouble,” I said.

“I didn’t have to go that far, really. You’re about three streets over. You just kept going in loops.”

A really inept bear.

“I can’t believe you went back out in that outfit,” he said. “You should let me walk you. You’re not going to get there this way.”

“I’m fine,” I said quickly. “Someone just told me the way.”

“You don’t have to go, you know.”

I wanted to say something else but couldn’t think of anything. He took this to mean that I wanted him to go, so he nodded.

“Be careful, okay? And, can you just let me know that you made it? Call or—”

Just then, my phone started ringing. The ring must have been damaged by the water as well, so now it had a high, keening note—kind of the sound I imagine a mermaid might make if you punched her in the face. Surprised. A little accusatory. Hurt. Gurgley.

It was Noah. On my messed-up screen, it actually said “Mobg” was calling, but I knew what it meant. I didn’t answer; I just stared at it. Stuart stared at it. The little girls around us stared at us staring at it. It stopped ringing, then started again. It pulsed in my hand, insistent.

“I’m sorry if I was an idiot,” Stuart said, speaking up to talk over the noise. “And you probably don’t care what I think, but you shouldn’t answer that.”

“What do you mean
you
were an idiot?” I asked.

Stuart fell silent. The ringing stopped and started again. Mobg really wanted to talk to me.

“I told Chloe I would wait for her,” he finally said. “I told her I would wait as long as it took. She told me not to bother, but I waited anyway. For months, I was determined not to even look at another girl. I even tried not to look at the cheerleaders. Not look, look, I mean.”

I knew what he meant.

“But I noticed you,” he went on. “And it drove me crazy, from the first minute. Not just that I noticed you, but that I could see that you were going out with some supposedly perfect guy who clearly didn’t deserve you. Which, frankly, was kind of the situation I was in. It sounds like he’s kind of realized his mistake, though.”

He nodded at the phone, which started ringing again.

“I’m still really glad you came,” he added. “And don’t give in to that guy, okay? If nothing else? Don’t give in to that guy. He doesn’t deserve you. Don’t let him fool you.”

It rang and it rang and it rang. I looked at the screen one last time, then at Stuart, and then I reached my arm back and threw the phone as hard as I could (sadly, not that far), and it vanished into the snow. The eight-year-olds, who were truly fascinated with our every move at this point, chased after it.

“Lost it,” I said. “Whoops.”

This was the first time in all of this that Stuart actually looked up at me. I had dropped the horrible grimace by this point. He stepped forward, lifted my chin, and kissed me.
Kissed
me, kissed me. And I didn’t notice the cold, or care that the girls who now had my phone came up behind us and started going, “OoooOOOoooOOoooh.”

“One thing,” I said, when we had broken apart and the swirling feeling in my head subsided. “Maybe . . . don’t tell your mom too much about this. I think she has ideas.”

“What?” he asked, all innocence, as he put an arm around my shoulders and led me back toward his house. “Don’t your parents cheer and stare when you make out with someone? Is that weird where you come from? I guess they don’t get to see it much, though. From jail, I mean.”

“Shut it, Weintraub. If I knock you down in the snow, these kids will swarm and eat you.”

A lone truck puttered past, and Tinfoil Guy gave us a stiff salute as he drove farther into Gracetown. We all moved to make way for him—Stuart, me, the little girls. Stuart zipped open his coat and invited me to tuck myself under his arm, and then we made our way through the snow.

“You want to go back to my house the long way?” he asked. “Or the shortcut? You have to be cold.”

“Long way,” I replied. “The long way, for sure.”

a cheertastic christmas miracle

john green

To Ilene Cooper, who has guided me through so many blizzards

Chapter One

J
P and the Duke and I were four movies in to our James Bond marathon when my mother called home for the sixth time in five hours. I didn’t even glance at the caller ID. I knew it was Mom. The Duke rolled her eyes and paused the movie. “Does she think you’re
going
somewhere? There’s a blizzard.”

I shrugged and picked up the phone.

“No luck,” Mom said. In the background, a loud voice droned on about the importance of securing the homeland.

“Sorry, Mom. That sucks.”

“This is ridiculous!” she shouted. “We can’t get a flight to
anywhere
, let alone home.” They’d been stuck in Boston for three days. Doctors’ conference. She was getting kind of despondent about the whole Christmas-in-Boston thing. It was as if Boston were a war zone. Honestly, I felt sort of giddy about it. Something about me has always liked the drama and inconvenience of bad weather. The worse the better, really.

“Yeah, sucks,” I said.

“It’s supposed to blow through by morning, but everything is so backed up. They can’t even guarantee we’ll be home
tomorrow
. Your dad is trying to rent a car, but the lines are long. And even
then
it will be eight or nine in the morning, even if we drive all night! But we can’t spend Christmas apart!”

“I’ll just go over to the Duke’s,” I said. “Her parents already told me I could stay there. I’ll go over there and open all my presents, and talk about how my parents neglect me, and then maybe the Duke will give me some of her presents because she feels so bad about how my mom doesn’t love me.” I glanced over at the Duke, who smirked at me.

“Tobin,” Mom said disapprovingly. She wasn’t a particularly funny person. It suited her professionally—I mean, you don’t want your cancer surgeon to walk into the examination room and be like, “Guy walks into a bar. Bartender says, ‘What’ll ya have?’ And the guy says, ‘Whaddya got?’ And the bartender says, ‘I don’t know what I got, but I know what you got: Stage IV melanoma.’”

“I’m just saying I’ll be fine. Are you guys gonna go back to the hotel?”

“I guess, unless your father can get us a car. He’s being such a saint about all this.”

“Okay,” I said. I glanced at JP, and he mouthed,
Hang. Up. The. Phone.
I really wanted to return to the place on the couch between JP and the Duke and go back to watching the new James Bond kill people in fascinating ways.

“Everything’s fine there?” Mom asked. Lord.

“Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s snowing. But the Duke and JP are here. And they can’t really abandon me, either, because they’d freeze if they tried to walk back to their houses. We’re just watching Bond movies. Power’s still on and everything.”

“Call me if anything happens.
Anything
.”

“Yup, got it,” I said.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay. God, I’m sorry about this, Tobin. I love you. I’m sorry.”

“It’s really not a big deal,” I said, because it really wasn’t. Here I was, in a large house without adult supervision, with my best friends on the couch. Nothing against my parents, who are fine people and everything, but they could have stayed in Boston right through New Year’s without my being disappointed.

“I’ll call you from the hotel,” Mom said.

JP apparently heard her through the phone, because he mumbled, “I’m sure you will,” as I said my good-byes.

“I think she has an attachment disorder,” JP said when I hung up.

“Well, it’s Christmas,” I said.

“And why don’t you come over to
my
house for Christmas?” JP asked.

“Shitty food,” I answered. I walked around the couch and took my place on the middle cushion.

“Racist!” JP exclaimed.

“It’s not racism!” I said.

“You just said that Korean food was shitty,” he said.

“No, he didn’t,” said the Duke, lifting the remote to restart the movie. “He said
your mom’s
Korean food was shitty.”

“Exactly,” I said. “I quite like the food at Keun’s house.”

“You’re an asshat,” said JP, which is what JP said when he didn’t have a comeback. As comebackless comebacks go, it was a pretty good one. The Duke restarted the movie, and then JP said, “We should call Keun.”

The Duke paused the movie again and leaned forward, over me, to speak directly to JP. “JP,” she said.

“Yes?”

“Can you please stop talking so I can go back to enjoying Daniel Craig’s outrageously good body?”

“That’s so gay,” JP said.

“I’m a
girl
,” said the Duke. “It’s not gay for me to be attracted to men. Now, if I said
you
had a hot body,
that
would be gay, because you’re built like a lady.”

“Oh, burn,” I said.

The Duke raised her eyes at me and said, “Although JP’s a freaking paragon of masculinity compared to you.”

I had no response to that. “Keun is at work,” I said. “He gets paid double on Christmas Eve.”

“Oh, right,” said JP. “I forgot that Waffle Houses are like Lindsay Lohan’s legs: always open.”

I laughed; the Duke just winced and restarted the movie. Daniel Craig walked out of the water, wearing a pair of Euro boxer briefs that passed as a bathing suit. The Duke sighed contentedly while JP wretched. After a couple minutes, I heard a soft clicking sound next to me. JP. Using dental floss. He was obsessed with dental floss.

“That is disgusting,” I said. The Duke paused the movie and scowled at me. She didn’t have much meanness in her scowl; she scrunched up her button nose and squared her lips. But I could always tell in her eyes if she got really pissed at me, and her eyes still seemed pretty smiley.

“What?” JP said, the floss dangling out of his mouth from between molars.

“Flossing in public. It’s just . . . Please put it away.”

He did, reluctantly, but insisted on the last word. “My dentist says he has never seen healthier gums.
Never
.”

I rolled my eyes. The Duke brushed a stray curl behind her ear and unpaused Bond. I watched for a minute, but then I found myself looking out the window, a distant streetlight illuminating the snow like a billion falling stars in miniature. And even though I hated to inconvenience my parents or deny them a Christmas at home, I could not help but wish for more snow.

Chapter Two

T
he phone rang ten minutes after we restarted the movie.

“Jesus Christ,” JP said, grabbing the remote to hit pause.

“Your mom calls more than a clingy boyfriend,” the Duke added.

I jumped over the back of the couch and grabbed the phone. “Hey,” I said, “how’s it going?”

“Tobin,” replied the voice on the other end of the line. Not my mom. Keun.

“Keun, aren’t you su—”

“Is JP with you?”

“He is.”

“Do you have speakerphone?”

“Uh, why do you w—”

“DO YOU HAVE SPEAKERPHONE?!” he shouted.

“Hold on.” As I looked for the button, I said, “It’s Keun. He wants to be put on speaker. He’s being weird.”

“Fancy that,” said the Duke. “Next you’ll tell me that the sun is a mass of incandescent gas or that JP has tiny balls.”

“Don’t go there,” JP said.

“Don’t go where? Into your pants with a high-powered magnifying glass on a search for your tiny balls?”

I found the speakerphone button and pressed it.

“Keun, can you hear me?”

“Yes,” he said. There was a lot of noise in the background. Girl noises. “I need you guys to listen.”

JP said to the Duke, “Where does the owner of the world’s smallest breasts get off impugning someone else’s personal parts?” The Duke threw a pillow at JP.

“YOU MUST LISTEN NOW!” shouted Keun from the phone. Everyone shut up then. Keun was incredibly smart, and he always talked like he had memorized his remarks in advance. “Okay. So my manager didn’t come to work today, because his car got stuck in snow. So I am cook and acting assistant manager. There are two other employees here—they are (one) Mitchell Croman, and (two) Billy Talos.” Mitchell and Billy both went to our school, although it would not be accurate to say that I knew them, on account of how I rather doubted either could pick me out of a lineup. “Until about twelve minutes ago, it was a quiet night. Our only customers were Tinfoil Guy and Doris, America’s oldest living smoker. And then this girl showed up, and then Stuart Weintraub”—another classmate, and a good guy—“arrived covered in Target bags. They distracted Tinfoil Guy a little, and I was just reading
The Dark Knight
and—”