“What’re you up to?” he asked, pointing at Summer’s notebook.
“My history project. I got an extension till after Christmas, but now I need to find a new subject. Austin suggested someone, this great-uncle of his, but I don’t know. …”
“Who else do you have in mind?”
“Well, there’s that Vietnam vet, the guy with the beard who runs the Dairy Queen. But he seems a little too enthusiastic about showing me his scars.”
“So use Austin’s uncle,” Diana said, propping herself on her elbows. “What’s the big deal?”
Summer noted her cousin’s wry grin. Diana knew what the big deal was, of course. “It would be a little awkward, is all.”
“Awkward because you blew him off?” Diana pressed. “Or awkward because you regret blowing him off?”
Marquez winked at Diana. “She’s in denial.”
“Yep. She’s turned down three perfectly acceptable dates this semester, all because she’s pining for the Big A.”
“Well, two, anyway. Remember that last one who asked her out, the one who always wore the X-Files T-shirt?”
Summer crossed her arms over her chest. “I wasn’t pining.”
“Come on, Summer,” Diana prodded, “you need to accept your feelings.”
“I really wish you two hadn’t taken that Intro to Psych course,” Summer said.
Marquez wagged a finger at her. “And don’t forget I have my very own shrink.”
“That doesn’t qualify you to analyze me.”
“No, but it definitely qualifies me to annoy you.”
Summer looked up at Marquez and laughed in spite of herself. It was true Marquez had a special talent for annoying her, but Summer was grateful for it. She’d rather have the wild, obnoxious, wise-guy Marquez than the closed, secretive girl Marquez had been last summer. Back then Marquez had been struggling with an eating disorder so severe she’d ended up in the hospital and nearly scared her friends to death. But now with the support of Diver and her friends and her shrink, Marquez was most of the way back to her old hell-raising self.
Summer composed her face as she thumbed through her notebook, smearing suntan oil over her scribbled notes. “I just think if you ask someone to give you some space, that someone deserves the same space himself.”
Diana looked at Marquez. “This is all because that someone is dating a Grind wanna-be with a nose ring,” she said in a loud whisper.
“Diver,” Marquez said, “you’re Austin’s roommate. What’s the deal with Esme, anyway?”
“Deal?”
“You know, are they serious or what?”
Diver looked perplexed. “They go out sometimes.”
“Duh,” Marquez said. “We know that. We want to know details.”
“Juicy details,” Diana concurred.
“No, we don’t,” Summer said.
“I hardly ever see Austin,” Diver said. “We both work so much, it seems like we’re never even in the apartment at the same time. And anyway, Esme’s his business.”
“Guys!” Marquez groaned. “What exactly do you talk about, if you don’t talk about relationships?”
Diver grinned. “You know. Guy stuff. Carburetors. Football scores. Burping technique.”
“Let me put it this way, Diver,” Diana said. “How many toothbrushes are there in your bathroom?”
“Two, I guess.” Diver bit his bottom lip, giving it some thought. “Red, blue. Austin’s and mine.”
“See?” Diana said to Summer. “It can’t be that serious. There’s hope.”
“Diana’s right. You’ve got to go for it, girl.” Marquez wiggled her brows suggestively. “It was obvious at the tree lot that he’s still in love with you. He was sending you clear signals.”
“He was not. He was just being friendly.”
Diana shook her head. “Didn’t you notice his body language? The tilted head, the flirtatious smile”
“Don’t forget the pouting, come-hither lips,” Marquez added.
“You’ll see when you take psych. It’s scientific,” Diana said. “Austin was sending you signals.”
“Yeah?” Summer said. “Then what exactly did Austin’s hand on Esme’s butt signal?”
Diana shrugged. “It signals he’s conflicted.”
“I see.”
“And it’s your job to unconflict him,” Marquez added.
Summer lay back in the chaise longue with a sigh. “Look, it’s simple. I told Austin to get on with his life. It’s over between us. I had my chance. I wasn’t ready when he was ready. And I’m okay with that. Now could you two please try to be okay with it too?”
Diana looked at Marquez. “Her arms are crossed, her hands are clenched.”
“And I think her right eye is twitching,” Marquez added.
“Which means what, exactly?” Summer demanded.
Marquez patted her on the head, grinning. “Poor thing. And we thought Austin was conflicted.”
3
The Most Fakest Reindeer of All
“Why couldn’t we have been elves?”
Marquez demanded, her voice muffled inside her papier-mâché reindeer head. She adjusted her antlers with an annoyed tug. “The elves get those cute little red cheerleader skirts.”
“Quit whining. I’m the one who has to wear the light-up nose, which keeps falling off. It’s like having the world’s biggest zit. Besides, you’re doing a good deed.”
“No wonder I’m in such a bad mood.”
Diana grinned. Marquez was just being ornery. Even sweating in her faux-fur Rudolph costume, Diana found it easy to get caught up in the spirit of things.
A friend and fellow volunteer at the Dolphin Interactive Therapy Institute, where Diana had been working for over a year, had urged her to help at this Christmas party for low-income families, and Diana was glad she’d agreed to sign up. She surveyed the large, festively decorated hall. Red-and-green crepe paper hung from the ceiling, Christmas carols blared from a pair of speakers in the corner, and along one wall a table sagged under the weight of donated baked goods. Children raced about, propelled by sugar and anticipation. Santa was due to arrive with gifts at any moment.
A chubby little boy in a red bow tie tugged on Diana’s mittened hand. “Make your nose light up,” he commanded.
Diana yanked obediently on the string hidden inside her right sleeve. Her nose lit up. She bent down to get at eye level.
“Who’s the most famous reindeer of all?” she asked, but for the third time that day, her nose popped out, bulb and all, dangling by a black wire.
“Most fakest is more like it,” the little boy grumbled.
“Watch it, kid,” Marquez warned. “She’s tight with Santa.”
Diana rushed to a corner to reinsert her nose. “How do those Disney World people do it?” she wondered. “Stuck in those Mickey Mouse costumes in ninety-degree heat …”
“For starters, they get paid,” Marquez muttered. She jerked her head toward the exit. “I gotta pee and get some air. Want to come?”
“We have to be back in time for presents.”
“Come on. Even Rudolph has to relieve himself now and then.”
The girls grabbed their purses and headed discreetly down the hall toward the women’s rest room. Diana poked her head in the door, then retreated.
“We can’t go in there,” she reported. “It’s full of kids. They see us headless, they’ll have nightmares for years.”
“Kids are pretty sophisticated, Diana,” Marquez replied. “I kind of doubt they’re buying you as a reindeer. I mean, you’re carrying a purse. How many reindeer haul Tampax and Tic-Tacs around with them?”
After a few minutes of searching, they located another rest room at the end of a row of offices. It featured a small, separate lounge area with a yellow vinyl bench, two chairs, and a well-used ashtray.
A young girl, maybe seventeen, lay on the couch. She was on her side, head propped on a duffel bag, hugging her knees. She opened her eyes
and stared at the two costumed intruders without reaction.
“Oh,” Diana said, “sorry. We just wanted to take our heads off.”
“Be my guest.” The girl waved her arm. “I don’t exactly own the place.”
“I thought maybe you were … you know, napping or something.”
“Thinking,” the girl said flatly. She had white-blond hair, dark at the part, and eyes rimmed with thick eyeliner. Her face was as pale and empty as a blank sheet of paper.
Marquez yanked off her head. Her olive skin had a sheen of sweat, and her curls were even more incorrigible than usual. “This thing’s better than a sauna. I’ll bet I lose three pounds of water weight.”
Diana cast her a watch-it look. Marquez still showed a tendency to obsess over her weight once in a while, and Diana always pounced on it.
“I didn’t mean anything by it, Mom,” Marquez said. She poked Diana with her antlers.
Diana ripped off her own head. “Prepare to die, you knave!” she cried, making a quick sword thrust with her antlers.
Marquez countered, dancing across the floor. “She thrusts, she parries, she goes in for the kill!” she shouted, aiming her antlers at Diana’s throat.
Just then a stall door opened. A little girl came into the lounge. She blinked doubtfully at the dueling half reindeer, her mouth pursed.
Diana yanked on her reindeer head. “Marquez,” she hissed, “your head.”
“What?”
“Put on your head.”
“It’s a little late for that, Diana.”
“My name is Rudolph,” Diana told the little girl. She knelt down. “And what’s your name?”
The girl stared at her, unmoved. She had shimmering white-blond chin-length hair, like the girl on the couch. Diana wondered if they were sisters.
“She’s okay,” the older girl said. “I told her Santa’s bogus.”
“Bogus!” Diana exclaimed, making a show of lighting her nose. “I happen to know Santa, and—”
“Give it up, Diana,” Marquez advised.
Reluctantly Diana removed her head. She smiled lamely at the little girl. “Want to see how I light up his nose?”
The girl watched, huge blue eyes focused in total concentration as Diana demonstrated.
Marquez took a chair. “I’m sure I believed in Santa till I was, like, six or seven. How old is she?” she asked the older girl.
“Four and a half.”
“Your sister?”
“You writing a book?” the older girl snapped.
Marquez pointed to the book lying next to the girl’s purse on the floor and then nodded at Diana. “Actually, her mom’s the book writer.”
Diana groaned. The well-thumbed paperback was one of her mom’s best-sellers, Sweet Savage. The cover featured a breathless maiden and an Indian with pecs so large he could have used an underwire bra.
“No way. That’s your mom?” the older girl asked, sitting up. “Mallory Olan?”
“That depends. Did you like the book?”
“Yeah, for a bathtub book.”
“Meaning?”
“You know.” The girl shrugged, showing a glimmer of a smile. “You read it while you’re taking a bath, and if you drop it, it ain’t the end of the world or nothin’.”
“Finally, an astute critic.” Diana grinned. “Yeah, she’s my mother. I’m Diana Olan.”
Marquez smiled. “And I’m Marquez.”
“Maria Marquez,” Diana added.
“But anyone who calls me Maria risks a painful death.”
The girl hesitated. “I’m Jennie.”
“So you like her mom’s books, huh?” Marquez asked.
“Well, they’re, like, totally unbelievable, I know that. But it’s a way to escape for a little while. Go on a trip, kind of. Sometimes, you know, you just need some time away.” She eyed Diana with a mixture of curiosity and wariness. “You must be really rich.”
“Stinking,” Marquez said.
Diana shifted uncomfortably. Marquez, whose dad had lost his job a while back, enjoyed harassing her about her money. Diana tried to be generous, tried not to make a big issue out of it, but it was always lurking beneath the surface of their friendship.
The little girl tugged on Jennie’s sleeve. “Can we go to the party, Mom?”
Diana shared a look with Marquez. Like Diana, she was doing the math. Maybe Jennie was older than she looked, twenty, twenty-one. Still, it was hard to believe this was actually her kid.
“In a minute,” Jennie said, gently combing the little girl’s hair with her fingers. “Here.” She pulled a dirty stuffed lamb out of her duffle bag. “Play with your lamb for a minute.”
“There’s lots of good food at the party,” Marquez said. “Punch, Christmas cookies. You should definitely check it out.”
The little girl looked at her gravely. “Last year we forgetted to have Christmas.”
“Quiet, Sarah.” Jennie shrugged. “The truth is, we’re sort of crashing this party. A friend of mine on food stamps told me about it. You’re supposed to sign the kids up at social services, but it slipped my mind. …” Her voice trailed off. “So, anyway, you live around here?”
Diana nodded. “On Coconut Key.”
“You must live in, like, a mansion or something.”
“No, just a little rental place.”
“But your mom—”
“Well, yeah, she has a house on Crab Claw Key.”
“It looks like Barbie’s Dream House,” Marquez volunteered.
“Lots of bedrooms,” Jennie said quietly. It was not exactly a question.
“The party, Mom,” Sarah said softly.
“In a minute.” Jennie smiled at Diana. “So where exactly do you two live?”
“Those bungalows at the end of the key near FCU,” Diana said. “You know the ones on Full Moon Beach? Nothing fancy. But a nice view.” Diana looked at Marquez and cleared her throat. “Well, we should get going, Blitzen.”
“I gotta pee first,” Marquez said. “It’s going to take me an hour to get out of this costume.”
Diana left the lounge and went to the sink to brush her hair. She couldn’t see Jennie and Sarah, but she could hear Jennie talking softly to the little girl.
With a sigh, Diana splashed some water on her face. These costumes were way, way too hot for Florida. She wondered if they could be dry-cleaned. She wondered if they’d ever been dry-cleaned.
When she returned to the lounge, Sarah was sitting on the couch. Jennie was gone.
“Where’s your mom?”
Sarah shrugged. “Coming back.”
“Oh. That’s good. That way you’ll be just in time for Santa Claus.”
The little girl nodded solemnly.
A few moments later Marquez joined them. “Where’s Jennie?”
“I don’t know. The little girl said she was coming right back.”
Marquez started for the door, but Diana hesitated. “Maybe we should wait till she gets back,” she whispered.
“We’ll miss the big Santa entrance. Aren’t you supposed to be there, Rudolph-with-your-nose-so-bright?”
Diana glanced at the floor. Jennie’s book was gone—her purse and duffel bag too.
She smiled nervously at Sarah. “You wait here, Sarah. We’ll be right back,” she said.
Diana grabbed Marquez’s arm and slipped out the door. “I have a bad feeling about this,” she said. “Do me a favor. Check the hall for Jennie. And maybe the parking lot too.”
“You think she just … left her here?”
“Her purse is gone.”
“Oh, man.” Marquez started down the hall. “Wait here.”
Diana returned to Sarah. The little girl was talking to her stuffed lamb. There was something tucked under the frayed ribbon around the lamb’s neck. A folded square of paper.
“What’s that, Sarah?”
“My mom put it there.”
“Could I look at it?”
Sarah handed her the little w
orn lamb. The folded paper was a page torn out of Jennie’s book.
Around the margins was a hastily scribbled message: Please take care of Sarah till I get back. I promise I just need a little time. Merry Christmas.
Summer was lying on the redwood deck, her head resting on her U.S. history book, when the phone rang in the living room. Her sun-stun was so severe it took her a moment to find her way to her feet. She pulled open the sliding glass doors and caught the phone on the fourth ring. “Hello?”
“Get the tree home safe and sound?”
Summer felt her breath catch. She hadn’t heard Austin’s voice over the phone in a long time. “Yes,” Summer said, trying to even out her breathing. She surveyed the overdecorated, feeble-looking stick in the corner. “In fact, it’s wearing a string of lights, some tinsel, and a few candy canes. It looks regal. Sort of.”
She tried to ignore the long silence that followed. Austin had called her, after all. It wasn’t her duty to make it less awkward. Besides, she couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Look, I was thinking about that project of yours,” Austin said. “The history thing? I really think my great-uncle Harris might be just what you’re looking for. Get him started on war stories and he can go on for days. That’s what you need, right? Like an oral-history kind of thing?”
“Yeah,” Summer said cautiously. “But I think I’ve sort of got somebody lined up.”
“Oh.”
“That Vietnam vet at the Dairy Queen. He was supposed to call me this morning to set something up.”
“I don’t know, Summer. Every time I go in there, he tries to show me his scars.”
“Yeah, he tried that on me too. I guess that could be a drawback.”
“Harris lives in Cape Heron. It’s about an hour’s drive from here. I could give you his number.”
“Okay. Just in case the Dairy Queen guy turns out to be too weird.”
Austin paused. Summer heard him whispering something, then the sound of a girl’s muffled voice.
“Listen, the thing is, I’ve been meaning to see Harris, anyway. So I could give you a lift over. You know, if you wanted.”