I’m thinking maybe now is the right time to give him the robin. I feel around for it in my pocket. And then he says, “You don’t really belong here.”
His words hit me like a snowball to the face. They sting, but they land true. The robin slips through my fingers and deep into my pocket.
Flynn is still talking. “Sometimes I wonder how different things would be if you weren’t here. Sometimes I think maybe I’d be different.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Like … maybe if you weren’t here, maybe I wouldn’t wonder about what the world is like beyond the North Pole.”
I wave him off. “Flynn, it’s not that great. I saw the world two Christmas Eves ago and I’m telling you, what we have here is better than anything out there. There’s eggnog every day! And candy cane hot chocolate, and those marshmallow cakes with the little red dots.”
“I’m pretty sure they have all that stuff, too. You’ll see. You’re going to go away someday,” he says, and it sounds like a premonition. “You’ll stop believing.”
Tears spring to my eyes. “Not me. I’ll never stop. Never ever ever.”
Stubbornly, he shakes his head. “One day you will, and you’ll forget all about us.”
“Stop saying that!”
“It’s all right. It’s what you’re supposed to do.”
I don’t like the sad look on his face; it weighs on me in a way that is unfamiliar and strange. We’ve never talked like this before. I don’t like the way it makes me feel—too real. Lightning quick, I pull the robin out of my pocket and hand it to him. “Here,” I say. “Merry Christmas.”
He holds the bird up to the moonlight and examines it. “It’s your best work,” he says, and from an elf, there’s no higher compliment. “It’s beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
Faster than I can blink, as fast as only an elf can be, he touches my cheek with his fingertips, whisper soft and cool. He tucks my hair behind my ear. And then, a sharp intake of breath, my own. Is this really happening?
I lean in closer, I close my eyes, and I purse my lips. And nothing.
I open my eyes. “Um … were you going to kiss me?”
“I—I can’t.”
“Why not?”
He hesitates and then he says, “I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
“You won’t hurt me,” I quickly say.
Flynn shakes his head.
I can see that he means to stand firm. The answer is no. So I say it, my whammy, my ace in the hole, the one thing an elf cannot refuse. “It’s my Christmas wish, Flynn.”
He opens and closes his mouth. He tries not to smile. “How is it that you always find a way to get what you want?” Before I can reply he says, “Don’t answer that. Just—close your eyes.”
Dutifully, I do.
“And Natalie?”
“Yes?”
“You aren’t the one I’m worried about getting hurt.”
Before I even have time to think, he tips my chin up, and he brushes his lips against mine. Flynn’s lips aren’t cool the way I imagined; they are warm. He is warm. He’s warm but why is he shivering? When I open my eyes again to ask him, he’s already backed away from me. “I have something for you, too,” he says.
I hold out my gloved hand, and he drops a piece of paper inside, and then he’s gone. Leaving me to wonder if I imagined the whole thing. Living where I live, it can sometimes be hard to tell the difference between magic and make believe.
I open the piece of paper.
Lars Lindstrom
10 Osby
Marigold loved this Christmas tree lot. It was brighter—and maybe even warmer—than her mother’s apartment, for one thing. Fires crackled inside metal drums. Strings of bare bulbs crisscrossed overhead. And, beside the entrance, there was a giant plastic snowman that glowed electric orange. Its pipe gave off real puffs of smoke.
She loved the husky green scent of the Fraser firs and the crinkle crunch of their shavings underfoot. She loved the flannel-shirted men, hefting the trees on top of station wagons and sedans, tying them down with twine pulled straight from their pockets. She loved the makeshift wooden shack with its noisy old cash register. The shack’s walls were bedecked with swags and wreaths, and its rooftop dripped with clear-berried mistletoe like icicles. And she especially loved the search for the perfect tree.
Too tall, too short, too fat, too skinny. Just right.
Marigold Moon Ling’s family had been coming here for years, for as long as she could remember. But this year, Marigold had been coming here alone. Frequently. For an entire month. Because how do you ask a complete stranger for a completely strange favor? She’d been wrestling this question since Black Friday, and she had yet to discover a suitable answer. Now she was out of time. The solstice was tomorrow, so Marigold had to act tonight.
Marigold was here … for a boy.
God. That sounded bad, even in her head.
But she wasn’t here because she liked him, this boy who sold Christmas trees, she was here because she needed something from him.
Yes, he was cute. That had to be acknowledged. There was no getting around it, the boy was an attractive male specimen. He simply wasn’t her usual type. He was … brawny. Lugging around trees all day gave one a certain amount of defined musculature. Marigold liked guys who were interested in artsier, more indoor activities. Reading the complete works of Kurt Vonnegut. Maintaining a respected webcomic. Playing the stand-up bass. Hell, even playing video games. These were activities that tended to lead to bodies that were pudgy or scrawny, so these were the bodies that Marigold tended to like.
However, this Christmas Tree Lot Boy possessed something that the other boys all lacked. Something she needed that only he could provide.
She needed his voice.
The first time she heard it, she was cutting through the parking lot that lay between her apartment and the bus stop. Every holiday season, Drummond Family Trees (“Family Owned and Operated Since 1964”) took up residence in the northeastern corner of the lot, which belonged to an Ingles grocery store. It was the most popular tree-buying destination in Asheville. Lots were everywhere in the mountains of North Carolina—this was Christmas-tree-farm country, after all—so to distinguish themselves, the Drummonds offered friendliness and tradition and atmosphere. And free organic hot apple cider.
Asheville loved anything organic. It was that type of town.