“We tell people things that aren’t true, Miss Carolyn. We tell them this holiday has magical powers that can save anyone, but that’s a lie. I don’t want to go into town, okay? I don’t want any cheer or any uplifting stories. I don’t want to hear any more garbage about how people can change through the power of love. I want to go home and I want to sleep until January second.”
“This isn’t like you,” Miss Carolyn said, her eyes as sad as Kate ever saw them. She ignored their sting and repaid their compassion with a stab of her own.
“We all have to grow up. Thanks for the ride.”
The car hauled to a stop in front of Kate’s building, and she practically threw herself out of the cab without saying goodbye. She lived in a tiny, closet-sized attic above the local bookstore, a fact she never minded and certainly didn’t now. The room barely fit her and all her furniture; it certainly had no room to fit all of her fears and worries and memories and disillusions. In a place as small as hers, she could dive under her bed covers and forget the rest of the world.
Kate entered through a side door and climbed the rickety set of stairs up to her apartment. The attic had been divided into three sections by thin walls, separating out a kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. Even with the limited space—her bedroom, after all, had enough space for a mattress, a side table made out of a milk crate and a lamp—she’d gone all-out decorating for Christmas. Lights. Tinsel. Wreaths. The room reeked of pine and cinnamon. Kate’s stomach turned, and she knew what she had to do.
With her foot, she opened the empty kitchen garbage can. Time to work. She started with the tinsel. Then the lights. Wreaths. Paper flowers. Finally, the miniature tree. They all met their fate in the bottom of the bin. After a minute of struggle with the lid, she succeeded in closing it.
Her apartment was clear. Clean of all Christmas foolishness and frippery. Now, instead of a sad apartment made merry by decorations, it was simply a sad apartment.
Too lazy to get undressed and into pajamas, she dragged herself into bed, peeling off only her coat before tucking herself between the covers. The place had no heat, which meant she never went to sleep with less than two layers on anyway.
Laying on her side, she found herself face-to-face with The Book atop her makeshift bedside table. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens waited there, begging her to open it and read it as she had done every year since she turned ten and saved up her pennies for this very copy. Its frayed edges and taped-over spine whispered to her, begging her to breathe in its tale.
Kate got out of bed. Picked up the book. And put it where it belonged. In the can with the rest of the trash. She was done with Christmas. She no longer had any use for its lies. Its betrayals.
Only then, with the last evidence of her belief in humanity safely discarded and the town outside her window still singing those blasted carols, did she return to her bed for a long, dreamless sleep.
Clark Woodward would curse the name Kate Buckner until the day he died for making him feel this way. No, scratch that. For making him feel anything. As he drove back to his family’s cold and empty home, he could think of nothing else than the new parameters of his existence. She’d opened up his heart and demanded he let everything flow freely both in and out of it, leaving him completely vulnerable to the pains of existence. Now that he’d broken through the dam, nothing could stop the flow.
It all rushed past him and around him and through him until all he could see was the road before him painted with projected colors of rage and pain and longing and sadness. Trying to push it away worked, but only for a few seconds at a time before it pinned him to the mat once again.
It only got worse when he arrived at the house and found the facade still covered in the remnants of Kate Buckner’s invasion. He could no longer think of her as Kate, the girl he thought he fancied himself in love with. He could only think of her in formal terms, with a full, unbreakable name like a super villain. Lex Luthor. Inspector Javert. The Wicked Witch. To hold her personally and remember her humanity only broke him further because it was all fake, and he was a fool.
She and her team of scheming townsfolk rigged the Victorian-style manor with hundreds of flood lights and millions of tiny stringed lights, which brought out each painstaking holiday detail they’d hung outside. Giant wreaths, wrapped and bowed with red ribbons, hung between each of the fifty north-facing windows. Two proud Christmas trees—decorated with identical gold baubles and red toppers—flanked the front doorway.
It was as beautiful as it was welcoming. As welcoming as it was sickening.
Clark yanked the car into park and jumped out. He wouldn’t stay in a house like this. With the temperature rapidly dropping, he couldn’t stay in the car either, but he could not stay in a house covered in the fingerprints of the woman who ripped out his heart, lit it on fire and roasted chestnuts over it.
Great, now he was describing things like she would have.
Storming across the frost-strewn lawn, Clark made a beeline for the first wreath on the first floor. Earlier today, she’d told him taking these things down would be an impossible job for one person. She lied about everything else. Why would she lie about this? He reached for the four-foot monstrosity and tugged. And tugged. And
