“Holy shit, that thing scared the crap out of me,” I say. Even though I’m the one who pressed the button, my heart races. “Is he a clue? How do we make him stop?”
The answer is . . . we don’t. The deranged Santa cuckoo clock is a fresh layer of hell here in Brian’s torture chamber. Three minutes later, Santa pops out of the clock and yells, “Ho! Ho! Ho!,” and once again I jump out of my skin. “Fuck, he got me again. Is he going to keep doing this? Can someone stop him? Or maim him?”
“Priya, give me that key you found. Does it fit in the clock?” Finn asks. This is the closest we’ve gotten to speaking since we arrived.
Finn tries the key in the front compartment of the clock even though it’s comically too large to fit. “Ho! Ho! Ho!” Santa pops out and bellows directly into Finn’s face like he’s aware he has the upper hand.
“We have to make that thing stop. I can’t take another”—he looks at the countdown clock above the door—“hour and twenty minutes of this!”
How have we only been in here for ten minutes?
“Does this go with your map, Theo?” Jeremy squeaks, holding up another kids’ coloring book page between his thumb and pointer finger like it’s a delicate artifact that must be handled with care, as opposed to the likely reality that it was purchased in a ten-pack on Amazon.
“Fantastic work!” Theo says, and does a fist pump above his head. The two of them hover over the desk trying to piece the two pages together or see if one decodes the other.
“Jeremy is really good at puzzles,” Finn announces to the room. “He does the Times crossword every morning.” It’s unclear if Finn is bragging about Jeremy for my benefit or Theo’s. If we were on better terms, I’d tell him that David does the crossword every morning, too.
Someone’s phone starts ringing.
“No phones!” Theo snaps. “No cheating either!”
“Jeez, I wasn’t going to answer it,” Finn says. “And how would I even cheat? I don’t think there are cheat codes for this on Reddit.”
“Who was it?” Jeremy asks over his shoulder.
“No one, just my sister,” Finn answers.
“Oh, you didn’t get to talk to Amanda this morning. We’ve gotta remember to call her back later.” Jeremy’s use of “we” doesn’t escape me. He must have met Amanda on her annual spring break trip, and I feel another twinge of jealousy that Jeremy was there and I wasn’t. I wonder what else have I missed out on in Finn’s life over the past year.
“I think we’re missing two more map pieces that go below these,” Theo mumbles to himself.
Finn’s phone starts ringing again.
“Ho! Ho! Ho!” Jack-in-the-Box Santa roars. He’s definitely possessed—there, I said it.
“Does anyone see any locks this could fit into?” Priya holds up the key again.
“I found a blacklight flashlight!” Jeremy announces.
“Maybe it will work on the map!” Theo is obsessed with the stupid map.
Jeremy weaves around me and Priya in the center of the too-crowded room and scans the black light over the map. “I don’t think this works on the map,” he tells Theo after a few seconds.
“I bet you can use it on the wall.” Priya hits the light switch and plunges the room into darkness.
“Hey! Turn that back on, I was looking at the map!” Theo protests.
“Ho! Ho! Ho!” Santa chimes in.
Finn’s phone starts ringing again.
“Can you get that? Or turn off the ringer? Or something?” I snap at him, forgetting for a second we’re not speaking. I think I might have a panic attack if I’m trapped in this room for one more second.
He rolls his eyes and picks up the phone. “Hey! Can I call you back in—” He stops short and turns toward the corner, plugging his other ear with a finger to hear better.
“Slow down, I can’t understand you,” he says.
After a few more seconds he says, “Wait, what?”
Then he’s banging on the door.
“Let me out of this room right the fuck now,” Finn shouts.
“Ho! Ho! Ho!” Santa answers in response.
“Oh, c’mon, Finn, don’t do that. We’ve gotta finish,” Theo says from where he’s hunched over his precious map.
“Brian, don’t let him out,” Priya says into the camera in the corner.
“I’m not joking, Brian. Let me out of here!” Finn yells, banging on the door some more.
Finn takes a step back and turns his face up to the camera. There are tears streaming down his cheeks. Oh, this isn’t about the terrible escape room. This is real.
Jeremy rushes to him and puts an arm around his shoulder. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
Finn opens and closes his mouth like a fish, more tears rushing down his cheeks, but no sound comes out. For the first time since we entered, the room is silent.
When he finds the words, he says them so quietly they’re barely audible: “My dad died.”
seventeen
Hannah
This year, December 25
It’s a steel-gray morning that hints at the possibility of snow. Maybe it will be a white Christmas. Despite my best effort to sleep in, I gave up just after seven and came out to the living room to read in the glow of the Christmas tree’s light.
The tree has gone from spartan to flamboyant as David and I spent the last month one-upping each other with increasingly eccentric ornaments. A David Bowie one from him, Santa riding a unicorn from me. A bust of Ruth Bader Ginsburg from me (the closest thing I could find to a lawyerly decoration), a glittery pickle from him.
On a normal morning, I’d be checking emails, but my laptop is packed away in my work tote until next year. The time away from my job is a relief, a weeklong détente in my losing battle with Mitch about my podcast pitch. Last week I caved and listened to an episode of Porn Stache, and it was somehow even more repulsive than I imagined. Not because I have a problem with porn, but because it’s a wall-to-wall block of misogyny. Sixty minutes of objectifying women’s bodies interspersed with ad breaks to sell supplements and meal-kit delivery services. If it comes to that, I’ll be job hunting in January. But for now, I push work out of my mind.
My body hums with excitement. I can’t wait to see how Finn reacts to the day we planned for him. I wish life had a 0.5× speed button, the same way my podcast app does, so I could sit in this day and savor it for as long as possible, especially since it might be the final year of our Christmas tradition.