It snowed the night before Christmas Eve that year. I had a new winter coat and mittens that matched my scarf. Finny and I walked down to the creek and stomped holes in the ice down to the shallow water. The Mothers made us hot chocolate and we played Monopoly until my dad came home from The Office and nothing mattered except that it was Christmas.
It hasn’t snowed for Christmas since then, and every year there has been more and more other things that matter, and it has felt less and less like Christmas.
Jamie is spending Christmas with his grandmother in Wisconsin, and I am pleased to be missing him. It is a dull ache that I enjoy prodding.
Jamie, I think, Jamie, Jamie, James, and I remember his tongue in my mouth. I don’t like it as much as I thought I would, but I’m getting used to it. I tell him that I love him all the time now, and he hasn’t said anything else about having sex. He gave me a new journal for Christmas, and even though I haven’t filled up my old one yet, I’m going to start it on New Year’s. He’ll be home by then and we’ll spend it together. Jamie, Jamie, Jamie.
“Autumn,” my father says, “are you the sugar plum fairy this year?” There is a silence at the table as I try to understand what he means. Then I see my mother bite her lip, and I realize he is talking about my tiara. He has not noticed that I have worn this tiara every day for the past three weeks. I take a breath.
“Yeah,” I say. “Just thought I’d make the dinner a little more festive.” He smiles at me and takes a bite of ham. He is pleased with himself. My mother says something to Finny, and slowly the conversation at the table resumes. After a few minutes, I excuse myself and go to my room.
I’ve bought some posters: Jimi Hendrix rolling on stage with his guitar, Ophelia drowned and looking up at the sky, a black and white photo of a tree without leaves. I like the effect they have on the lavender and white room, like the corset and the cardigan, like my tiara with ripped jeans. I don’t look at the posters though. I lie down on the bed and look at the ceiling.
When someone knocks on my door, I pretend I’m asleep. A moment later, the door opens anyway and Finny sticks his head in.
“Hey,” he says. “They said to tell you that we’re done eating.”
“Okay,” I say, but I do not move. I am waiting for him to leave. He doesn’t though; he keeps standing there like I’m supposed to do something. I do nothing. I look at the ceiling until he speaks again.
“It really sucks that he hasn’t noticed,” Finny says.
“At least my father’s around for Christmas,” I say. His expression changes only for an instant. Then it is as if a door has closed again.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” I say.
“It’s fine,” he says. “Everybody is waiting downstairs.”
After he leaves, I lie in bed a little longer. I think about telling Finny how I don’t care, and how it hurts, and how it doesn’t really matter to me but I wish it mattered to my dad. I imagine that suddenly Finny is holding me and telling me it is okay, and he’s saying that you can feel more than one way about a person. We go downstairs and he holds my hand while we watch It’s a Wonderful Life together on the couch. When he and Aunt Angelina leave, he kisses me good night on the porch, and we see that it is starting to snow.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed, wipe my eyes, and go downstairs.
8
The party is at my house, because it is big and so my parents can meet Jamie before they go to The Office’s New Year’s Eve party.
Jamie was good with my parents. He shook hands, made eye contact, and didn’t smell like any kind of smoke. Dad was satisfied. Mom was pleased, and I have a nagging feeling that it is because Jamie is so good-looking, as if she can now rest assured that I am not too uncool at school.
Sasha, Brooke, and Angie are going to spend the night. Alex’s mom is going to pick up the boys after midnight. Until then, we are alone.
Brooke has stolen a champagne bottle from her parents’ party. It’s wrapped up in her sleeping bag, and it will only be after it is too late that we will realize it was safe to put it in the fridge.
We eat pizza and watch a movie. The movie is not great. The boys crack jokes and try to be the one to make the girls laugh the most. Jamie is winning, of course. I lean back in the leather couch and feel like a consort.
Afterward, we sit around and talk, and everyone is trying to be funny now. Mostly we talk about the other kids at school. Eventually the conversation turns to sex, as I am learning all conversations eventually will. None of us have had sex, and we are young enough that this is not embarrassing; it is simply a fact that time will remedy. We tease each other and exchange stories of who at school has done what where. We laugh and throw pillows at each other. Sex is something to joke about. Sex seems as possible, as real, as the world ending at midnight.
Midnight. I am as excited for the kiss with Jamie as if it were our first. I’ve only been kissed at midnight once before, and I am eager for this kiss to replace that kiss, to be a kiss that I will remember forever.
At eleven-fifty, we raid the kitchen for pots and pans. At eleven fifty-five, we stand at the front door and ask Jamie for the time every thirty seconds. For some reason we have decided that his phone is the most reliable.
And then, as it always does, the moment comes and passes, and even as part of me is once again surprised that I feel no different than I did a moment before, I am running across the lawn with the others, banging my pot and looking up at the stars and illegal fireworks my neighbors are setting off. We scream as if we have heard wonderful news. We shout a happy new year to each other and the trees and the others we cannot see out there, shouting at the sky like us. We scream as if this display of joy will frighten all our fears away, as if we already know nothing bad will happen to us this year, and are happy for it.
“Jamie, come kiss me!” I shout. I toss my pot and wooden spoon on the grass and hold my arms out to him. He swaggers over and pulls me to him by my hips. The others bang their pots. It is a good kiss, just like all our other kisses. The others drop their pots and exchange their own kisses. I pick up my pot and spoon again, and during the relative quiet before we begin to bang again, I realize we are not alone.
Thirty feet away, Finny and Sylvie and Alexis and Jack and all the others are banging on their pots and laughing at the sky too. Finny and I meet eyes, and he looks both ways before waving at me surreptitiously. I wave back, my hand no higher than my hip, terrified one of his friends will think I am waving to them. At that exact moment, everyone else seems to notice the others, for we are immediately in a competition that no one will ever acknowledge out loud. We are having more fun than they are. We love each other more. We are louder. We have more to look forward to this year than they do. We scream and shout and kiss some more. The boys begin their a cappella impression, and we hold out our arms and spin in the street.