by Tif Marcelo
Ms. Velasco follows the required labor laws for her under-eighteen hires and insists that schoolwork is priority, so all Bookworm Inn high schoolers are considered the super-part-timers, working no more than twelve hours a week. I worked most of these hours on the weekend, so it didn’t affect school at all. Ms. Velasco also encourages us to study during our breaks.
“I want to thank you for your enthusiasm and hard work, Lila. You’re such an asset to the gift shop.” She entwines her fingers; I don’t remember the last time she did that—at my first interview, maybe?
My heart hammers in my chest. The silence is ominous. Me and silence, unless I’m writing, is abnormal and suspicious. At home, it usually means one of my three younger siblings is up to no good. At my babysitting jobs, it was a great indication that a child has gone rogue.
My mind jumps back to the last time I got bad news and the silence that preceded it.
“I’ve got family coming to stay with me for the holiday season,” Ms. Velasco says.
“Oh yeah?” I blurt out, somewhat relieved at the innocuous news. “That’s great. I thought your family is all the way in California?”
“They are. My older sister has a son. Teddy—that’s my nephew I mentioned—is a freshman at Syracuse University. It’s a long story, but Teddy’s in a predicament and is staying with me until mid-January.”
“Okay.” What I’m waiting for is how this has anything to do with me. This arrangement sounds like drama. Ms. Velasco has mentioned her family only a handful of times before.
“So I’m in this position—” The jingle bells of the back door ring, snatching her attention.
A man with white hair, who probably wandered in from the parking lot, lingers after stepping in.
Ms. Velasco stands and heads to the office doorway. “Good morning, sir. This is not the entrance. You’ll have to go around the building and enter through the automatic double doors.”
A mumbled plea follows.
Ms. Velasco sighs. “Sure, sure, just this one time.”
The man is followed by his shuffling family, literally at his heels, as if the cold shoved them in. A myriad of voices verbalize relief from the chill. Then comes the gasp—they’ve probably discovered all the signed Holiday by the Lake memorabilia on the hallway walls. Another thing that elevated the gift shop: the movie props that Ms. Velasco managed to bring in.
When she finally sits back down, she whispers, “Newbs.”
We both giggle.
We can tell who’s new to the Inn. They murmur excitedly at the film memorabilia, shoved into every corner and hanging on every available hook from the ceiling. Like the empty popcorn tub used in the scene of Leo and Estelle’s first date, when they reached for the same kernel of popcorn. The vintage lighter Leo’s grandfather gave him when he died, which he used to light the bonfire when they snuck out overnight. Estelle’s pager, from which she received that pivotal message of the final twist in the movie.
“What do you think they’re going to buy?” I ask. At Ms. Velasco’s confused expression, I add, “It’s a little game we gift shop workers play. It helps pass the time.”
Ms. Velasco taps her chin. “I’ll bet, with how eager they were, that they’re going to buy a magnet and a sweatshirt each?”
“I’ll raise you a thimble and a shot glass.”
We both laugh; then Ms. Velasco’s smile slips. She stares at me with a remorseful expression.
Dread rises up inside me. “You were going to talk to me about something?”
“Yes. Teddy applied for a part-time seasonal position here, before you sent your email.”
“Oh.” The shock of it leaves me speechless. I was fully prepared to give up my hours for KC, but not for this…Teddy. And no, they aren’t my hours to give away, but the Inn is like my second home.
My brain undertakes the mental gymnastics to subtract my anticipated gift shop earnings from my bank account.
“I’m sorry, Lila.”
“No. I get it. I understand, but if there’s a chance here and there for extra hours, I’ll take it.” I force a smile and grit my teeth. Only the second half of that statement is true, but Ms. Velasco has always been kind, and she taught me everything I know about retail. She suffered through the first days when I had no idea how to talk to customers; she broke me out of my shell. I’ll just have to make up the hours somehow with babysitting.
“Great. Thank you for understanding. Speaking of, Teddy is on his way here to drop off some of his stuff before he goes back for his last week of school.” Her face lifts as another set of jingle bells rings out.
“Ah. Here he is.” She stands.
A guy walks into the office. He’s wearing a hoodie and comfy baggy knit pants with pristine white shoes. His skin is golden brown, and he has lush, wavy dark brown hair, which he pushes back with a hand. Tiny diamonds stud his earlobes.
My jaw slackens. Oh. My.
Teddy is not the little boy in the picture on Ms. Velasco’s wall. Far from it; if I passed him on the street, Teddy would definitely turn my head. First, because he’s Filipino, and there aren’t many Filipino people in Holly. Second, he’s cute. Cute in this brooding way that book boyfriends are often described, with prominent dark eyebrows and steely brown eyes.
He sets a duffel bag at his feet, and the clinking of several carabiners snapped into one of the straps momentarily catches my attention.
Ms. Velasco hugs him. “Anak. You look good.” She squeezes his shoulders like she’s trying to take him in. (I know I am.) “Wow, muscles.”
“Hi, Tita Lou.” He dips his head, as if shy.
My brain is still stuck on muscles.
“Lila?” Ms. Velasco’s voice yanks me back, and it’s only then I realize I was staring at Teddy.
“Yes. I’m sorry, I was looking at…Yes, that’s me, Lila.”
One of Teddy’s eyebrows lifts, and his lips curl into a grin. The kind of grin that says, You’re interesting, but in a wearing-a-Halloween-costume-in-December kind of way.
My neck heats, and I inwardly groan. This feels like the world’s most awkward meet-cute.
Ms. Velasco half laughs. “Exactly, Teddy, this is Lila Santos. Lila, this is Theodore, or Teddy Rivera, my nephew. You’ll be working together. All of us will be working together. It’s going to be such a special few weeks!”
“Great.” He nods but doesn’t say anything else. In the silence, his expression shifts minutely to what seems like wariness.
I can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic or indifferent, but it sets off my penchant for hospitality. I want to douse this weirdness like snow over a campfire. “Welcome to the Bookworm Inn, home of Holiday by the Lake,” I announce in perfect welcome pitch, like I’m a Holly tour guide, volume eight out of ten. “If you need anything at all, I’m here.”
Ms. Velasco claps. “Great. Let me get you to my—I mean, our—cabin. Lila, do you mind manning the fort? We can finish our conversation when I return.”
“I don’t mind.” I release a breath.
Please, go, before I ask him to sign the guest book.
“See you, I guess?” Teddy says, his eyes blank. The guy is obviously not happy to be here. Drama, indeed.
“Yeah, see you.”
The two make their way to the back, leaving me in the office with the sound of Bing Crosby piping through the speakers, Teddy’s arrival weighing heavily on my mind.
I just gave up my hours to my boss’s cute nephew. What the heck am I supposed to do about that?
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 12
“Whenever you click the refresh button, another angel gets its wings, I swear,” my best friend, Carmela Ferreira, gripes behind me. “What are you even waiting on? You’re stressing me out.”
Sitting at my desk in my bedroom, my eyes trained on my laptop screen, I click the refresh button once
more. “Syracuse with my financial aid package. One of my dog-walking clients. A babysitting gig. A note informing me that I’m being left an inheritance by a long-lost grandparent.”
“Someone’s been reading too many romance novels. But seriously, you’re way too aggressive with that pointer finger. Spill it. You’re still upset about the Inn.”
“No, I’m not upset.” Although the thought of Teddy Rivera and his cocked eyebrow in a Bookworm Inn sweater irks the living nutcracker out of me. What had been empathy for Ms. Velasco and initial acceptance of Teddy has turned, a full twenty-four hours later, into annoyance that I have to replace those hours I expected to work. “Ugh. Yes, okay, I’m upset.”
I spin in my chair and face Carm. Despite her earlier declaration, she looks far from stressed. Carm lazily swipes on her iPad while leaning back against my headboard—she’s most likely on social media. She’s of Portuguese descent, her black hair fluffed around her like a halo, and her legs are crossed in front of her, showing off her mismatched socks. If I turned on a white noise machine, she’d probably fall asleep. I, on the other hand…“Things don’t feel like they’re coming together.”
“It’s limbo,” Carm says, setting the iPad on her lap. “You remember what Mrs. Emerson said. This last semester is supposed to be a lot about the unknowns. At least you’re in with Syracuse.”
“Getting accepted isn’t the same as going.” Again, nervousness rises in my esophagus. Syracuse is my dream school, but it doesn’t come with a dream tuition. And there’s more to contend with: room and board, and fees, and books.
I also got into my second-choice (and less expensive) school; more schools are pending. I have options. But to be this close, to have worked so hard for something and then lose it because of money?
I hate it.
This time, to calm myself, I spin around and click on a folder on my desktop, then open a file labeled Books. An intricate spreadsheet opens, revealing a list of titles labeled as either Read or To be read, and a sentence or two for each book that will eventually become a review for TnT. Books that I’ve read are highlighted in yellow, and all that Day-Glo lights me up like the star of Holly’s enormous Christmas tree.
Because books. Books are an escape. Books are a reminder that opposites can exist at the same time, both good and bad, positive and negative.
My laptop screen closes, and I jump.
The culprit—Carm.
“Hey!” I say.
She crosses her arms, bangles jangling, and leans back against my desk. We’re dressed the same, in long T-shirts over leggings topped by a soft cardi. Looking now, I realize she’s wearing my cardigan. In our years of spending nights at each other’s houses, our closets have become fair game. She probably has about half of my wardrobe at her house, and vice versa.
“You can’t click this convo away.” She peers at me. “You’re doing your best. Have you seen our yearbook? You’re in it at least ten times.”
“Fourteen.” I grin.
She rolls her eyes. “Fourteen. So, whatever happens is going to happen.”
“Fine.” I heave a breath, hoping to avoid a pity party. I’m not going to discuss dollars and cents with my best friend. Besides, money might not be her worry, but getting into RISD, Pratt, or VCUarts is.
We all have something to deal with.
It works, because Carm grins. “Good. Because it’s our last holiday break together.” She points to a list she hand-lettered and tacked onto the corkboard hanging on my wall, titled Mission: Holly. “And you’ve used work as an excuse twice now to get out of completing anything on our list.”
Growing up in a holiday-crazed town didn’t mean that we partook in the touristy things. In general, locals avoid downtown as much as possible. Some even leave for the holidays. Holly’s like a beach town, except we’re on opposite seasons. But last Christmas, while Carm and I were high on candy and good cheer, we decided to complete the Top Ten Things to Do in Holly, New York list from our tourism website by the end of winter break senior year:
Kiss on the Bookworm Inn pier
Sled down Wonderhill
Eat deep-fried marshmallows at Scrooge’s Shack
Go ice-skating at Prancer’s Ice Rink
Try apple cider doughnuts at Comet’s Cider
Make an ornament with Mrs. Claus
Decorate cookies at Yule Be Baking
Carol while on Holly’s Main Street trolley
Hot chocolate and chess at the train depot
Take a picture with Holly’s Santa
Hence, Mission: Holly.
“See this list? We haven’t done a single mission,” she reminds me.
With Carm’s reminder, I deflate. When we made those plans, I didn’t anticipate the senior year crunch, and now everything seems to be coming to a head. I’d rather be saving money than spending it on doing touristy things that we all know are overpriced. “Speaking of Mission: Holly…”
She waves the notion away, her face scrunched up in a frown. “Nope, nope, don’t even! You’re not backing out on me. I will not have you lose your Christmas spirit.”
I backtrack, her disappointment hitting me as hard as my siblings’ when they don’t get their way. “No, I’m not backing out. And I’m not losing my Christmas spirit. Everything just feels like it’s changing so quickly.”
“I mean, because it is? It’s not all bad, though. We’re almost out of here.”
“You sound like my mom.” I smile, though it doesn’t make me feel better. It’s in the air—change. The dip in the temperature yesterday. Work. College. It’s as if everything has gone from zero to sixty in the last three months.
“TnT is still the same.” She slides a gaze toward the books that are stacked on my desk. One of the perks of running a free library is being able to intercept the books in rotation. “Still racking up the comments. Still reading a million hours a day, which trips me out. Who knew there were so many holiday books? So, not all of it is changing.”
Carm is the only person who knows about my blog. And since I don’t get to talk about it with anyone but her, I fall back into the topic like a pile of soft snow that’s perfect for snow angels. “I want to do something special for my second-year anniversary. There’s been an uptick in traffic. I should really take advantage of that.”
“When is it? Your blogging anniversary, I mean.”
“Second of January.”
Her eyes flash with excitement. “Oooh. You could start social media accounts for your blog. That’s a good way to branch out.”
“Yeah, but won’t people want to know who I am at some point?”
“Maybe it’s time to let everyone know who you are.”
I shake my head. “No. My parents would be furious I kept this from them. Two years I’ve been blogging—I almost feel like it’s too late to say something.”
“It’s never too late. But”—she presses her lips together, and her eyes glint—“I’ll keep thinking. Over our first Mission: Holly excursion.”
And we have circled back to her point. Carm is really good at that.
“Hey, Lila?”
I look up to my best friend smiling at me. Not the kind of smile that precedes a joke or a sarcastic remark, but a sincere one. “Yeah?”
“I know lots of things are changing. For me too. But we won’t change, okay?”
Relief washes over me. Carm can be so type B; she is my opposite at every given moment, but we balance each other out. It’s why, despite how much it’s going to pain me to pay for tourist attractions, I will do Mission: Holly.
“Okay,” I say.
“Great. Expect a schedule in your inbox by tomorrow.” She grins with all her teeth.
I laugh—I take it back. Carm is type B except when it comes to Miss
ion: Holly.
A knock sounds on my door, and a second later Mom steps in. Catherine Santos is wearing comfy clothing: leggings, fluffy socks, and her red-framed glasses that contrast with her dark brown skin. A reindeer antler headband holds back her shoulder-length black hair. And her hands are hiked up on her hips in a pose as she looks off into the distance with a bemused smile on her face…because she’s wearing the ugliest Christmas sweater on Earth. Sewn-in lights blink red, green, and gold, and fuzzy tinsel trims the sleeves.
I bark out a laugh, and it releases the tension in my chest. Every year she gets a little more extra.
“Whoa.” Carm heads to my mother. “That’s so ugly it’s beautiful.”
My mom beams. “It’s new. I grabbed it at Ye Old Sweater Shop. It was from last year’s stock, and look, since this light’s not turning on”—she lifts her left arm and exposes a dim red bulb—“I got it for fifty percent off.”
“I love it.” Carm’s touching all the doodads hanging from the sweater. “Don’t you, Lila?”
I approach them to get a better look at the entire ensemble. “Yep. It’s so…you.”
Mom is a pediatric nurse, and she has two sides to her: the serious and the goofy. She can also assess pain levels, and by the way she’s currently looking at me, I can tell she’s trying to determine mine. I was in a mood when I got home from work yesterday, and she got most of yesterday’s interaction with Ms. V and Teddy out of me. “Oh, honey. Still upset about the Inn?”
“Not upset, just disappointed,” I admit, because there’s no getting around it. While I can keep a secret, I cannot keep my emotions in check.
“Haven’t I said not to worry about work? It’s your last holiday at home. Enjoy it.”
“See?” Carm says with lifted eyebrows.
