Charmed Thirds_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [53]
“Annnd maaaay aaall yoour Christmases . . . ses . . . ses . . . ses . . . ses . . .”
Until my mother laughs and says, “Spit it out, Johnny!” and bumps the needle so he can finish the line.
“be white.”
This has to happen every year. Just like the tree always has to be draped in freshly strung cranberries even though it's a long and tedious and finger-stinging process. Just like we always have to bake Gladdie's butter cookies, even though they always come out tasting like oily tongue depressors.
But this year was different. There was a genuine excitement about waking up this morning because there was a wee one among us who sincerely believed that something magical had occurred while we slept. Think about the very concept of Santa for a second: A fat senior citizen in a tacky red suit flies around in a sleigh pulled by magic reindeer, delivering gifts for all the good little boys and girls in the world in just one night. It's absurd. Yet kids totally buy it. Totally. And in small children, that pure, untainted faith is a beautiful thing. In grown adults, however, I find it disturbing. After all, how different is Santa from Jesus and Buddha and Allah and so on? But that's an easy comparison for an atheist to make.
Anyway, I didn't want to spoil Marin's fun with my misanthropy. So I got all hopped up on candy canes and hot chocolate and threw myself into the Christmas cornballiness. And thus, I found myself wearing a jingle-bell reindeer-horn headband, entertaining my niece with very loud, very atonal versions of yuletide classics. Marcus accompanied me on guitar.
“YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!” cheered Marin with delight after I tore through “Good King Wenceslas.”
“Now, this next number contains a very important life lesson, Marin, about being true to yourself, even when everyone around you is putting you down.”
She blinked her huge blue eyes in bewilderment.
“It's a little song about the culture of conformity, and how easily individuals can be victimized by groupthink and . . .”
“ING! ING! ING!” Marin's word for “sing.”
And so I cut short the life lesson and positively shredded “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Despite my very punk rock performance, Marin lost interest before we even got to the middle eight and drifted over to her Pinky the Poodle Playhouse. I kept singing until my performance went down in “HIS-TOR-Y.”
Then Marcus said, “Rudolph Revisited: A Red-Nosed Nerd's Revenge.”
When I heard him say the title of the high school editorial I wrote three years ago, an editorial that I'm sure has been forgotten by everyone else who read it, I was reminded of just how much HIS-TOR-Y we have together.
Marcus deserves to know the truth, but isn't demanding it from me. He's content to just be, which is very Zen of him. Besides, we were so full of sincere holiday cheer that I didn't want to spoil the mood.
Tomorrow. I will tell him tomorrow.
We had made gifts for each other because we were sickened by our culture's conspicuous consumption and MORE MORE MORE materialism. And also because we're poor. Marcus is friends with a silversmith at school—yes, a silversmith—who taught him how to make a ring out of a quarter. He somehow soldered a message for me in teeny script: My thoughts create my world. It only fit the middle finger of my right hand.
“I love this,” I said, making the obscene hand gesture necessary to model it for him. “I'll think of you every time I tell someone to fuck off.”
“Who's the last person you told to fuck off?” Marcus asked.
“You.” A laugh struggled its way out of my throat. “New Year's Eve 2000–2001.”
Before he could comment on this historical low point, I grabbed him by the red and green nubs of wool sticking out from around his neck. It was supposed to be a scarf. I tried knitting it last semester but didn't get very far.
“It's almost long enough to be an ascot,” I apologized.
“I love it,” he said. “I love you.”
We kissed with sticky peppermint mouths.
Then Marin ran back over, showing us how she had taken the Virgin Mary out of the Nativity set and given her a