Chapter FIVE
Em woke the next morning with a start, her head filled with the hazy, dark images of a plotless nightmare. She opened and shut her eyes a few times, trying to shake a vague feeling of fear. Rolling over, she came face-to-face with Cordy, half buried beneath the mountain of pillows that Em slept between every night.
When she saw Cordy, her heart leaped as she remembered last night: Zach’s knowing smile, his hand on her waist, his desire to hang out over vacation. Vacation, which started today.
Gabby was leaving in just a few hours, and tomorrow was Christmas Eve.
Em would be on her own, free to spend time with Zach.
Except, she couldn’t. Not after what he’d said last night—
did he suspect how she felt? She couldn’t let him know. Her head hurt thinking about it.
And then, faintly, from underneath the pillow, she heard the phone ring. Gabby. Em knew that she had to answer it, but a part of her didn’t want to. She let it ring twice more before picking the phone up gingerly and saying hello.
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“Hey, babe,” Gabby said brightly. “Hope I didn’t wake you!
We’re leaving for the airport soon and I wanted to say good-bye.
Also, do you think I should bring that white bikini I bought last summer, or do you think that’s weird for a family trip?”
“Why would it be weird?” Em sat up, trying to get into the conversation.
“Because it’s so skimpy.”
Em laughed. Gabby did have a truly endearing sense of innocence, of wanting to make people happy. And just like that came the surge of guilt, so strong it turned Em’s stomach.
Gabby was her best friend. What was she thinking?
“It’s not so bad, I don’t think. Wear it when you’re at the beach without your parents.”
“Okay. Totally. I’ll only wear it when they go sightsee-ing or whatever,” Gabby said, and then she sighed deeply. Em waited. Was Gabby about to say something about Zach? She wanted so badly to spill her heart, to analyze every move with Gabby the way they would have if this were any other crush.
The silence made her chest hurt. She could feel her ears getting red, as they did whenever she lied. “Jeez, I’m hungover,” Gabby finally said. “I feel totally brain-dead. Good thing I get to sit on a plane for seven hours tonight.”
“Yeah, you were a little drunk last night,” Em said, remembering the way Gabby had stumbled down the hall and into Zach’s arms. He had morphed so quickly from flirtatious Zach to boyfriend Zach. “Did you throw up?”
“Ugh, yeah.” Gabby groaned. “When I got home. Thank god I didn’t do it in front of Zach. That’s the last time I drink that 52
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punch, seriously. I woke up wearing all my clothes. I even had Zach’s coat on! You didn’t ever find mine last night, did you?”
“I ransacked the bedroom. It wasn’t there. Are you sure you didn’t put it in the closet?”
Gabby sighed. “No. I definitely threw it on the bed. Oh, well. Maybe someone took it by accident or something.”
Em knew this was unlikely; Gabby’s coat, with its rhinestone heart pin and hot-pink lining, was one of her trademarks.
But she said, “Yeah. Probably. I’m sure it will turn up.”
“Ugh. Promise me you won’t let me drink like that anymore.”
“Deal. No punch for you, lady.”
“Okay. I gotta go finish getting my stuff together,” Gabby said. “I’ll miss you so much. If I meet a hot Spaniard, I’ll totally send him your way. And seriously, I really can’t wait to hang out when I get back,” Gabby added out of the blue. “To really spend some quality time together, you know? Boston day and movies and a sleepover.”
“Have fun, Gabs,” Em said. “I’ll miss you.” As soon as she said it, she realized how true it was. She never did anything without Gabby.
“Bye, Em. Remember to keep an eye on Zach while I’m away!”
Em swallowed down the fist in her throat. “Okay,” she croaked out. “À bientôt, escargot!” Em started saying this after she spent three weeks studying French the summer after freshman year. It meant “see you soon, snail.” It was ridiculous but she’d never been able to break the habit and now it had become their ritual for saying good-bye.
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Gabby giggled. “À bientôt, escargot!”
Em hung up the phone shakily. She had a pit in her stomach the size of a bowling ball and spent the rest of the day watching old episodes of Sex and the City on her laptop. Every time the phone beeped, she jumped, but it was only Lauren asking if Em wanted to come bake Christmas cookies with her and Fiona, or JD lamenting about how lame his cousins were. No word from Zach.
With her parents both working overnight shifts to ensure they could have Christmas Eve and Christmas off, Em had the house to herself—a treat she usually enjoyed by making up dance routines in the living room or eating ice cream during marathon phone sessions with Gabby. But tonight the house just felt big and empty. Even bigger and emptier than it felt when her parents were home.
Until, just as she was falling asleep with Cosmopolitans and Manolo Blahniks running through her head, she got a text.
From Zach.
What’s on your x-mas list this year?
She couldn’t help it; she got that tingly feeling all through her body again. She read his text three times quickly. Em was so tempted to write back, You, but she also didn’t want to seem desperate. A puppy! she wrote finally, in a fit of silly squirming.
I’ll be sure Santa gets the memo. Sleep tight!
Suddenly the world didn’t feel so vast. Em clutched her phone to her beating heart, with the sudden urge to kick off her blankets and dance on the bed.
C u soon I hope, he wrote again, signing off with a smiley 54
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face. Em melted. She was right—Zach did want her as bad as she wanted him. At least there was one person in the world who thought that she was special. One person who really cared.
It was impossible, all of this. She knew that. Of course she did. But it didn’t matter. This moment was all that mattered—
that he was thinking about her.
She went to sleep that night clutching Cordy to her chest.
“Spring rolls may be the best invention known to man,” Em said, taking a delicious, steamy, crunchy bite. “I think I like them more than Twizzlers. Even better than television.”
“Big words, my friend.” JD grinned at her from between mouthfuls of pork lo mein. “Big words.”
A day after the text from Zach, she was still floating. Em’s and JD’s families had a tradition of getting together on the night before Christmas, ordering in massive amounts of Chinese food, drinking eggnog, and singing carols while decorating the Winters’ tree. (The Founts usually decorated theirs weeks earlier—Mrs. Fount was one of those people who had a whole closet devoted solely to holiday decorations.) Sure, spring rolls and eggnog were a strange, and gastronomically dangerous, combination, but it was the only way Em knew how to get into the holiday spirit.
Once the tree was decorated, Em and JD retreated to the den to watch Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas while JD’s little sister, Melissa, went off to chat with all her new middle school friends, and the parents cleaned up and talked.
Em was settling into food-coma mode on the couch.
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JD—who’d come to the Winters’ this evening dressed in what he kept referring to as a “smoking jacket” (a burgundy-colored velvet blazer that Em could not stop laughing at)—
was juggling remotes and trying to turn down the volume on the TV. With his glasses sliding down his nose and his hair spiking up at various angles, he looked like a 1940s mad professor. Just as the opening credits started rolling, Em’s phone blinked and buzzed.
“Ugh, who could that possibly be,” she moaned, trying to kick the phone toward her hand. “Pass me my phone, Smokey?”
But even as the words came out of her mouth, she realized that it could be Zach and she sprang to a sitting position.
“Wow, I didn’t know you could move that fast after General Tso’s,” JD said, pumping his fist as he figured out which remote was connected to the sound system. Twangy banjoes played in the background as Em flipped open her phone. Sure enough, the screen notified her of one new message—from Zach.
What u up to? Wanna come help me hang lights?
Em blushed and her heart sped up to a hum. You don’t text a girl on Christmas Eve unless you’re really into her.
Furtively looking at JD, who was now wrapping an afghan around his legs and digging into the opposite end of the couch, she texted back: Just chilling at home—be there in a few. Her hands felt sweaty; her fingers slipped on the keys.
“I gotta go,” Em said abruptly. She focused on looking as normal as possible. She felt bad for ditching JD. But it was Christmas Eve, and she was a friend helping a friend, nothing more.
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“Whaaaa . . . ? You’re that scared of the damn otters?” JD
said, obviously thinking she was kidding. He let out a noise of protest as she got up from the couch and walked to the doorway that led into the kitchen. She addressed both her parents and JD
at the same time.
“I have to go help Zach with something,” she announced vaguely. “You know guys, they can’t do a thing without their girlfriends around.”
“Oh, is Gabby away?” Em’s mom asked, even though Em knew she’d mentioned it at least twice. (And if she hadn’t, Gabby certainly had.)
“Yeah—apparently Zach doesn’t know how to hang lights.”
Em couldn’t look at JD again; she didn’t want to see his disappointment. She knew JD wasn’t exactly Zach’s biggest fan. In fact, JD didn’t really like any of her friends. It was their only legitimate battle: He claimed they ignored him. Em accused him of being standoffish around anyone who regularly actually got invited to, and attended, parties.
“Are Zach’s parents at home?” Em’s mom asked.
“I don’t know. Yes. Maybe. He didn’t say. I’ll be home in, like, an hour.” Em was already bounding up the stairs, two at a time, pushing the guilt from her mind.
In her room she surveyed the clothes on the desk, and on the bed, and then made the conscious decision not to change out of her sweatpants and hoodie. After all, this was an innocent visit, right? But just before she turned out the lights, she went back to her dresser and leaned over to apply a bit of mascara and a touch of lip gloss.
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On the drive to Zach’s house, Em felt as though she could hardly breathe. She could feel those spring rolls roiling in her stomach. Despite the biting air, Em opened her window a crack, hoping that the fresh air would help clear her mind.
What was she doing?
Oh, nothing much. Just going to my best friend’s boyfriend’s house, late on Christmas Eve, under a ridiculous pretense.
Em rolled down the window a little more and took a deep breath—in through the nose, out through the mouth, like Gabby had taught her to do after taking a bunch of yoga classes.
She pushed the thought of Gabby from her mind.
I’ll only stay for a few minutes, she told herself, clenching the steering wheel as if to show the strength of her convictions.
There’s nothing wrong with a little harmless flirtation. Everybody flirts.
Gabby would flirt with an armchair if she could. The roads were empty and clouds covered the moon. She had to switch on her brights, and still she could only drive at a crawl.
As soon as she pulled into the McCords’ driveway, she saw Zach standing on his front walkway wearing thick Carhartt work pants and a flannel shirt. He was surrounded by twinkling holiday lights. He turned and smiled as she got out of the car. A blast of snowy air went straight through her. Zach looked like a model.
“Hey, it’s Santa’s little helper,” he called out, tossing her one end of a strand of colored bulbs. “Hook that over that branch by the fence, wouldja?”
Em did, then moved over to a shrub he’d already decorated with lights. She hoped she looked as good in the holiday 58
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glow as Zach did. She’d read once in Cosmo that everyone looks good in candlelight, and Christmas decorations were kind of like candles.
“Now I see why you needed me,” she said, adjusting the hastily strewn strings. “You’re clearly not cut out for holiday house improvements.”
“Hey, I think I did okay, considering I did it all myself,”
Zach replied. He put on a fake pout, and for a moment, the wind blew his hair over one of his eyes.
A shiver ran up Em’s neck and she adjusted her peacoat.
“Where’s your family?” she asked.
“My mom and my stepdad went to some benefit at one of his lawyer friends’ houses. Some guy who’s helping them get the permits for the new mall or something. Meanwhile, I’m supposed to be staying home and cuddling up with my precalc book.”
“I haven’t been over there yet—to the new mall,” Em said, silently kicking herself for sounding so boring.
“Whatever. My stepdad talks about it like it’s the new Empire State Building or something.” Zach kicked at the snow in front of him, his chin down but his eyes up, watching Em restring the lights. “I went over there one night to watch them working and it just looks like a pretty normal mall to me.”
“They work at night?”
“Overtime.”
“It must be freezing!” The cold made Em’s hands thick and numb. She could hardly string the lights; impossible to imagine constructing a whole building.
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“Yeah, it’s wicked cold.” Zach looked up at a darkened window on the second floor of his house. “No wonder my brother went to his girlfriend’s house for the holidays. She lives somewhere in California.”
Em followed his gaze. “But there’s no chance for a white Christmas in California,” she said softly.
“Or for awkward, fake, depressing family dinners,” Zach mumbled. Em could tell he was trying to keep his tone light, but his face looked pinched, as though the words had taken major effort.
“I know . . . I know the holidays must still be hard for you,”
Em said, hoping Zach wouldn’t think she was overstepping her bounds. Zach’s dad died suddenly during a golf game two years ago. Just bam, one minute he was teeing off, next minute he was on the ground with a heart that simply didn’t want to work anymore. Zach never even got to say good-bye.
Em and Zach had never really talked about his dad’s death before. Gabby said he hardly talked about it with her, and Em had never considered, until this very night, how weird it must have been for Zach to have his mother remarry so soon—
especially now that Ben, Zach’s older brother, was away at college.
Before she could think of anything else to say, he sidled up behind her, taking her hand. For a second, she thought he was only reaching for the lights, but he kept his hand on hers.
“I’m glad you came over, Em,” he said, turning her toward him. Thoughts of Gabby flew out of her head. She felt like a girl spinning in a music box. Like she was floating.
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“Zach, I . . .” She didn’t finish her thought. She’d dreamed about this moment, envisioned it a hundred times. But now that it was here, it felt . . . wrong. Gabby was her best friend and Zach was Gabby’s boyfriend and this was not how best friends and boyfriends were supposed to behave.
And then, like a kid, Zach was smiling again. “Hey! I almost forgot your Christmas present!” He dug into his pocket.
“It’s not wrapped. Sorry. But here.”
It was an ornament—one shaped like a puppy. The puppy was wearing a Santa hat, all askew, and emerging paws-out from a half-wrapped box, with a bow around its neck. It was smaller than her palm, but Em could barely keep her fingers around it, she was so happy.
“See?” Zach backed away from her a bit, without breaking eye contact; Em knew she must be grinning like an idiot. “I listened. I’m like Santa Claus.”
“Oh my god. A puppy! Just like I asked for. Zach, I—”
She looked up to thank him, just as Zach pegged her with a snowball.
“Hey!” She laughed breathlessly.
“I don’t want you to think I’m too nice,” he said, packing another handful of snow as he spoke.
She reached down impulsively and made her own snowball, chucking it at him before taking off across the lawn. She tucked the ornament safely in her coat pocket as she ran. She threw her head back, enjoying the way the air and snow stung her face.
He followed after her. He was laughing too. “You think you’re faster than me? I’m a running back, Winters!”
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She darted around a pine tree, grabbing some snow off one of its wide branches. Without even bothering to pack it into a sphere, she threw the whole handful over her shoulder. She was laughing so hard her stomach hurt.
“Great aim!” Zach teased her. “I think one of those flakes landed on my shoe.” He grabbed at her, and she took off around the side of the house, ducking behind a work shed. She heard Zach come barreling around the corner and skid to a halt, looking for her. She pegged him a few more times before he zeroed in on her location and came racing toward her, shaking his fist.
She giggled and zigzagged back over toward the driveway.
And then he wasn’t behind her. She slowed, and then came to a stop. The yard was still. She saw no movement anywhere—
on the path that had taken them around the house, on the front porch, in the woods all around her.
“Zach?” she called out tentatively. She took a step backward and looked around, but everything was dark and motion-less. It was like he had disappeared. “Zach? Okay. Not funny.
Come out. You know I’m scared of the dark, right? You win.”
Nothing. Except—was that a branch cracking off to her right? She whirled around. “Zach? Stop it! Come out!” She was laughing nervously now. The footsteps they’d made across the snowy lawn seemed to glow in the moonlight, and for a moment she thought she heard laughter from somewhere—not Zach, but a girl’s high, silvery trilling. But no. It had to be the wind. “Zach?!”
Bam! He came hurtling out of nowhere—he must have gone around the other side of the house—and tackled her to 62
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the ground, making sure to slip a handful of snow down the back of her sweatshirt as he did. She squealed and wriggled as the icy wetness burned into her bare skin. Then they were on the ground, panting. Em was looking straight up at the stars.
“Giving up so soon?” Zach’s voice was low. “I expected more from you, Em.” She could smell his cologne—something musky and also fresh, like the smell of pine. They were so close that if she only rolled over . . .
“Oh, you ain’t seen nothing yet,” she said without even thinking about it. She cleared her throat, trying to create some distance between them by getting up and brushing snow from her soaking sweats.
“I bet I haven’t.” Little points of light were reflected in Zach’s eyes as he stared up at her. Em’s stomach made a perfect revolution. Couldn’t he tell what he was doing to her?
“Just wait, McCord,” she said, punching him halfheartedly on the arm as he too got up. “I’m going home to build a snow catapult that will blow your mind.” She started walking fast across the lawn.
And then, just as she was about to get into her car, he called out, “Thanks for coming over, Em. It was great to see you.”
She turned to respond, which barely gave her time to register the white ball that sailed through the air and hit her square in the ribs. Zach pumped his fist in the air mischievously. “Bull’s-eye!”
In an instant, she was running back toward him. She was slamming into him. After another fraction of a second, a pause that felt like a whole, spinning eternity—time enough to 63
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choose, time enough to say no, time enough to step back, time enough to do everything she didn’t do—she kissed him.
As their bodies pressed together, she could feel his belt buckle through her peacoat, pressing against her stomach. He bit her bottom lip with the slightest pressure. She grabbed at the back of his neck. It was passionate, more so than any kiss she’d ever had.
Too soon, it was over. He pulled away, brushing her hair away from her eyes, then leaned forward and nibbled, once, on her ear. Em’s whole body felt like it was on fire.
“Wow,” he whispered in her ear, and then took a step backward, watching her, his arms around her waist. Em laughed nervously, desperate to know what he was thinking.
“Yeah.” She gulped. Em looked around, with the sudden conviction that someone was watching them. (Stupid, obviously: Who would be watching, on Zach’s secluded property, at 9 p.m. on Christmas Eve?)
His thumbs made figure eights around the small of her back. And now all Em wanted was to curl up on his couch and talk and kiss. She wanted him to run his fingers through her hair. She wanted to tell him that she still kept Cordy on her bed, that she would always remember what he’d said to her that day at the carnival.
But Zach stepped away from her. “You’ve gotta go home now, little Christmas elf. My mom and Tim will be home any second, and . . .”
The disappointment was physical; a slamming cold wall.
But Em tried to sound cheerful. “Yeah, okay. Yeah, of course.”
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again, and what their kiss had meant, but she swallowed back the words.
“Hope Santa doesn’t find out we’ve been naughty,” he whispered. He took a step away and Em felt herself, almost involuntarily, reaching out to grab his hand. This was about more than just a kiss. It was so much bigger. He looked at her.
“Have a good night,” was all she could say. He squeezed her hand, before dropping it. For a second she stood there in the soft glow of the holiday lights. Then she turned, and he watched as she got in her car and drove off.
On the way home, Em turned up the radio and sang along, full volume, to the oldies station. The same bowling ball was still sitting in her stomach, but now it felt like it was floating on a sea of whipped cream—still heavy, but surrounded by giddy sweetness.
She and Zach had kissed. Zach had kissed her. The memory was looping in her mind.
“I think we’re alone now,” she sang-shouted.
And then her headlights lit up a figure standing by the side of the road. For a moment Em saw only the person’s face in the mist, a gaping mouth, frozen in a scream. . . .
Startled, Em jerked the wheel to the left, then yanked it back in the other direction. She could feel the tires skidding back and forth, quivering uncertainly. Her car went lurching off the road as she desperately braked—too fast, too jerkily. She was on the rumble strip, and then in a shallow drift of snow.
She felt the front passenger side collide with and crunch into a low stone guard wall, jolting her entire body forward so her 65
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chest nearly hit the steering wheel before her seat belt jerked her backward.
Then everything was silent, except for the radio still blaring: “There doesn’t seem to be anyone a-rou-ound.”
Shaking, she loosened her hands from the steering wheel, punched the radio dial to turn it off, and unbuckled her seat belt. She didn’t think she was actually hurt, but her heart was pounding, and there was a faint trail of smoke rising from the hood of her car. She fumbled with her purse, got out her phone, and dialed Zach’s number. She was still only a few miles from his house—he would come pick her up. No answer. She tried again, and it rang and rang. After one last attempt, she called JD.
“Em?”
As soon as she heard JD’s voice, Em started crying.
“JD. I went off the road. On Rolling Hill, down by the stone wall? I don’t know what to do.” Her wailing filled the emptiness of the car, the stifling silence.
“Don’t move. I’ll come get you,” JD said. “I’ll be there in a few, okay? Just stay in the car and keep warm.”
“Okay . . . okay,” she sniveled and hung up, putting her head in her hands. Then she suddenly remembered: The figure.
The girl. The one she’d seen in the dark, the vision that had made her swerve. Was there someone out there? Em opened the car door and called out into the darkness: “Hello?”
Gingerly, she stepped out onto the road. Snow was starting to fall again, and unlike the flakes the other night, this snow meant business. It would be a white Christmas. She looked around, trying to remember just where she’d seen the woman, 66
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the figure, whatever it was. Then she saw something—something dark, crumpled on the other side of the road. Oh my god.
Her eyes started to water again and she pulled her hood over her forehead, as though another layer would quiet her racing mind.
“Hello? Are you okay?” She moved closer; her breath caught in her chest. And then all the tension rushed out of her at once. It was a coat, lying there on the asphalt.
“Hello?” she called again as she walked over to pick it up.
She looked around, terrified that she might stumble on the girl who owned the coat, lying prone somewhere in the snow. The girl couldn’t have just disappeared.
But as she bent down to grab the coat, a curious feeling of dread spread through her. In her hands, the coat felt heavy. Then the hot-pink lining glinted up at her. And there, pinned to the breast of the BCBG coat, was a heart-shaped rhinestone pin.
“What the . . . ?” She breathed out.
She had found Gabby’s coat after all.
Em spun in a full circle, as though she might find some explanation in the dark trees, the swirling mist, and the empty road. The coincidence was too much.
She walked back over to her car, holding the coat gingerly in front of her as though it were alive. When she got to the open door, she tossed the coat in first, over toward the passenger side, not caring that it landed on the floor. The last thing she wanted to be staring at was Gabby’s favorite coat. And then, as she sat down to wait for JD, she felt something beneath her, stabbing her leg. She pulled back.
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Resting on the black leather was a beautiful red orchid, more intricate than any flower she’d seen. Certainly nothing that was in season in Maine right now. Its petals looked like pieces of sugared icing. Its color was the deep, dark red of fresh blood.
Em plucked it from the seat between her thumb and pointer finger, twirling it in her hand. Zach must have left it for her—
maybe when he went missing for those few minutes? But why didn’t she notice it when she got in the car before?
Em shook the doubts from her mind. Zach had left it for her, as part of her present. He must have. And yet, looking at this . . . thing, she couldn’t shake the sensation of being creeped out, and she was careful to zip up her bag tightly when she’d tucked the flower into its depths, as though it might reach out and swallow her.
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