“Go where?”
“To Meg’s. You’ve had that package sitting there for weeks.” He points with his thumb. “It’s about time we delivered it.”
Meg’s Christmas present sits on the table by the door—a blue, misshapen, snowman-covered lump. I probably should have put it in a box before wrapping it, but that always feels like cheating. It arrived a few weeks ago, but with Meg grounded, I couldn’t go to her house, and I didn’t want to take it to school and have her open it with Grayson and Roman and any random passerby looking on, even though that’s what she did with mine.
Granddad is at the door already. He walks now as if his hip is his own, instead of comprised of some foreign material cemented onto his bones like there was a crack in his foundation.
“We’re going for a drive,” he calls into the kitchen. “Back in time for turkey.” He slips his coat on, fishes keys out of the pocket, and jangles them in my direction like a lunch bell. “Let’s go, slowpoke.” Then he picks up my gift and disappears out the door, leaving me to scurry after him.
MEG
STUPID POLAR BEAR. KENZIE KEEPS HUGGING IT AND PETTING IT AND pretending to feed it candy canes.
“I’m going downstairs,” I declare, snatching up my new fluorescent wheels and the wrench that came with them. In the laundry room, my board is in its usual place, but wheel-less. The metal rods stick out like stubby arms and legs. I examine the new wheels in my hands. The wheel nuts are inside their imitation candy Life Saver doughnuts. Mom must have done her research and had the nuts from my old wheels transferred over at the shop.
The wheels go on easily with a few twists of the wrench, and within minutes the board is in the middle of the laundry room floor, balancing on its shiny new rollers. I hop aboard, shift my weight, pop an ollie. Or at least try to.
My knee bashes into the washing machine as my phone rings. I curse, loudly, rubbing the bruise-to-be.
“You are always in the way!” I kick the machine. “Ow!” Stupid, hulking thing. I pull my phone out of my pocket.
Stephen-the-Leaver is calling.
I could answer it. Could listen to him wish me a Merry Christmas. Thank him for the gift. And then what? Then he’d pick up Kenzie and Nolan for Christmas in a couple of days and they’d get to spend a second Christmas with their dad, and I’d have a stupid stuffed polar bear to stare at alone in my room, remembering when he was my dad, too.
“Stop calling me!” I shout at the ringing phone. “I don’t want to talk to you.” I jab the ignore button. Then, when that doesn’t feel like enough, I stab about in the menus until I find the right option. And I block him. “Now you can never talk to me,” I tell the phone. If he wanted to talk to me, his not-my-real-daughter, he should have told that to the judge.
I kick the washing machine again. Even though it’s only a halfhearted kick, it still hurts.
I abandon my skateboard to the washing monster and trudge out into the rec room, where I sprawl on the floor, limbs stretched out into a star, eyes fixed on the ceiling.
Stupid Stephen-the-Leaver ruining Christmas.
I roll over onto my stomach and rest my chin on my hands. From here, I can see under the couches. The carpet needs vacuuming. A hundred-year-old Cheerio has made its home under the couch beside a Barbie hairbrush. At least that means we probably don’t have mice.
I sweep the rest of the carpet—with my eyes, not a broom, though there’s enough grunge under the couch that a broom might be surprisingly effective. The shabby brown rug stretches to the back of the room, under the shelving units piled with toilet paper and packages of noodle soup, where it curls up against the wall. Curls up, away from the floor.
I hop to my feet, grab at a fortunately-not-that-heavy shelving unit, and pull. The shelf lurches away from the wall, dragging the carpet with it.
The carpet isn’t glued down! Or nailed, or whatever it is that construction men normally do with carpets.
When Mom clomps downstairs in her slippers a while later, I am shoving the last shelf back into place.
“Meg, the door is—What’d you do down here?” She surveys my handiwork. The couches still face the TV, but I shoved them back to clear more floor space. I’ve returned the shelves to their proper places against the walls, though the toilet paper and Mr. Noodles are still in mounds on the stairs, where I displaced them temporarily. And the totally unnecessary rug is rolled into a long brown log, pushed up against the side wall.
Sweat prickles along my hairline, and I swipe it away with my pajama sleeve. “I want to skateboard,” I tell her. The gray cement floor boasts patches of discoloring and rug residue, but it’s no rougher than the currently-snow-covered-and-unusable pavement outside. Better, probably.
Mom doesn’t descend any farther into the basement, just hovers on the stairs, blinking. Her black hair’s pulled back into a puffy bun, but the penguin-patterned robe hanging loose off her shoulders cancels out any severity in her expression. On Christmas Day, we wear pajamas. It’s basically an unbreakable rule.
“Meg—” she starts to say.
“It’s not like we even use this space much,” I say, cutting her off. I am not having my past hour of hard work erased. No one ever seems to think my ideas are good, but this one is. “And I’ll stop bashing dents in your washing machine. I’ve probably taken years off its life already.”
“Meg—”
“And that carpet was disgusting anyway. There’s probably fungus living in it. Or parasites. Or fungus-eating parasites.”
“Meg! I just came down to tell you that Kat’s at the door.”
“And exercise is healthy, and—wait, what?”
“Your friend Kat. She’s at the door.”
“Oh. Our front door?”
“Yes, our front door. She’s waiting for you.” She turns and glides back upstairs, penguin robe flowing behind her. At the last step, she calls over her shoulder, “Just clean the toilet paper off the stairs, please.”
I dart up the stairs three at a time. I haven’t seen Kat since our last day of school, which was basically an eternity ago. I burst out the basement door, dart down the hallway, and suffocate her in a hug.
“Oof,” she grunts. “You’re squishing your present.”
I pull away. “Merry Christmas!”
“You too. Nice pajamas.”
She looks surprisingly put together for Christmas Day. Hair smoothed back into a flawless ponytail, dark jeans, cheeks flushed pink—though that could be from the cold and not from the tiny bit of blush she sometimes wears. She could be hiding a pajama top under her fluffy coat, but considering the look of the rest of her, probably not.
“You’ve seen these before,” I say, holding out an arm to show off the lime-green frogs hopping around a light-blue background.
“Not at three in the afternoon, though.”
“Dude, it’s Christmas. It’s basically a sin not to wear pajamas. You should go home immediately and change.”