The Holiday Switch

by Tif Marcelo

  Mom loops her arms through mine and Carm’s. “I know exactly what’s going to pep you up. Decorating the tree!”

  Carm and I groan at the same time, then break out into laughter. Christmas is no small feat in the Santos household. The switch from Thanksgiving to Christmas is like a slow chugging sleigh pulled by exhausted post–Christmas Eve reindeers. Decorating is the pinnacle.

  I don’t resist the pull of my mother’s arm, and we three attempt to exit my bedroom door at the same time. Unsuccessful, and giggling, we try again and emerge into the hallway, where the rumble and chatter from my family below echoes up the staircase.

  I let myself get swept up. Mom and Carm are right—I have to try not to worry.

  * * *

  We’re greeted at the great room with an explosion of red, green, and gold and “Frosty the Snowman” playing from the Wi-Fi speakers on the fireplace mantel. The normally dark brown hardwood is covered with decorations, from wreaths to garlands, to rolls of wrapping paper, stockings, and handmade parols. The pièce de résistance, our artificial family tree, stands bare and slightly crooked in the corner of the room.

  Almost immediately, my younger sibs start calling out our names.

  “Mom, can we eat the candy canes now?”

  “Ate Lila, I can’t get this ornament on the tree!”

  “Ate Carm, what do you want from Santa?”

  My ten-year-old twin brothers, Grant and Graham, run up and tug at Carm, who was long ago dubbed a big sister, and bring her toward the pile of stockings to hang on the mantel. Grant’s older than Graham by two minutes and twenty-seven seconds and has curly dark hair like Dad, while Grant has feathery and flat hair like Mom’s. Carm, who doesn’t have patience for the average person, has all the time for my brothers. She’s an only child and loves the attention she gets at my house.

  Irene, my fourteen-year-old sister, bum-rushes me so the pom-pom of her Santa hat pokes me in the eye. She has a sour expression on her face, a cross between an eye roll and a tongue-sticking-out emoji. Normal, basically. “Mom put me in charge of the Christmas lights. Please help me. I just can’t.”

  Patience is not her virtue.

  My dad, Arturo, in the eye of this tornado, is attempting to round everyone up like a Puppy Bowl referee.

  We are a brood. The Santos family consists of Mom, Dad, me, Irene, Grant, and Graham. The bottom line is that we are a lot, especially while putting up ornaments. It is not a peaceful process, with one person complaining, or a glass ball breaking, or two people fighting at any given time.

  But after a couple hours, it’s only Carm and me trimming the tree—the rest have lost steam. Dad is at the stove, his back facing us. He owns That’s A Wrap, a specialty gift wrap and stationery store in town, so he comes home in spurts when he’s got coverage at the store. Mom’s on the phone, probably checking in on the nurse staffing at Holly General before her shift tonight. But Mariah Carey is on the playlist, the fire’s roaring behind the screen, and the midafternoon sun has set just below the trees.

  It’s holiday perfection.

  “Tinola’s ready!” Dad turns, carrying a tray of small bowls. The soothing smell of ginger wafts in the air, and the announcement of his specialty, a chicken soup with green papaya that six out of six of us love—or seven, if you count Carm—makes my mouth water.

  “My stomach hurts,” Irene whines, lying prone on the carpeted floor in front of the fireplace.

  “Mmm-hmm.” I eye her. “Told you that cup of hot chocolate would do that.”

  She sticks her tongue out at me.

  “I’ll keep trimming the tree.” Carm hangs another ornament. “Besides, if I eat here and show up at home full, Trish’ll be irritated.”

  Carm calls her parents by their first names: Trish and Frank. Mom laughs, but if I did that…well, I don’t even try.

  “I’ll help you decorate,” Dad decides as I grab the tray of soup from him. Dad’s biggest thing is keeping everyone happy, occupied, and entertained. He eyes the watch on his wrist. “I’ve got another half hour before I have to head into work.”

  I pass out the bowls to Mom and the twins at the kitchen table. With only half of us seated, it’s a relief to stretch out, though at the same time it’s like I’m missing half my limbs.

  As Dad cajoles Irene and Carm into singing one more Christmas song, I sip my soup from a large spoon and revel in the comfort in my belly. Around the table, Mom’s, Grant’s, and Graham’s faces are turned down into their bowls. The routine is so ingrained that a pang shoots through me. In a few months, I’ll be the one missing from this table.

  And yet, what accompanies this thought is a frisson of excitement. Because it means I’ll be wherever I need to be. Studying in Syracuse’s grand library. Walking through campus with new friends. Settling into a chair in a lecture hall.

  “Why didn’t we mark these branches?” Dad growls from behind us, fluffing through the branches of the tree. “They’re uneven.”

  I look up from my bowl to the others at the table and meet Mom’s eyes, which crinkle in a smile. Dad is as predictable as the Grinch is grumpy. His next question will be about tinsel.

  “Why do we keep buying tinsel when it gets everywhere?” he huffs.

  And then, of course, the lights.

  “Ay nako, these lights! We need to buy another box. Maybe two.”

  A giggle rises up from inside me—I can’t help it. Dad always does this, while Mom hangs back, makes a cup of coffee, and allows him to do his thing until he relinquishes control. Then Mom will wrangle the rest of the decorations with great stylistic precision. Everything will go up smoothly in the end, and it will be beautiful.

  Reliable, just the way I like it.

  My phone rings in my pocket—it’s the theme song from Holiday by the Lake, which means it’s Ms. Velasco. Mom flashes me a look—a meal at the table means no phones. Even if it is from her best friend and my boss.

  “Please?” I stick out my bottom lip. “Maybe it’s about more hours.”

  She presses her lips together, but after a beat of silence, she nods.

  Yes. Pressing the green button, I stand and head toward the hallway. “Hello?”

  “Lila, dear. How are you?” Ms. Velasco’s voice is like a mouse’s with its toe pinched in a trap.

  “Fine.” I frown. “Is everything okay?”

  “Overall, yes. Specifically? No. We have a leak at the Inn, and we’re short-staffed. I need to stay on the Inn-side because I have the plumbers coming. Can you come in and relieve me at the gift shop? I know it’s last minute.”

  I open my mouth to accept, but then I turn back to the scene in the living room. With Dad leaving for work soon, and Irene perpetually not in the mood, Mom will need my help to put all of these boxes away before her 11:00 p.m. shift. Cleanup is the other half of this yearly event. I bite my lip.

  Mom hovers at the end of the hallway, a steaming refill of soup in hand. “What is it, Iha?”

  “Ms. Velasco needs help at the gift shop. The Inn has a leak.”

  “Tell her you’ll go, so long as you’re back by ten.”

  “Really? Thank you!” With that, I confirm my arrival with Ms. Velasco, and after letting Carm know, I head to my room to change into my uniform.

  Minutes later, as I step outside the front door, Mom holds me back. “Lila?”

  “Yeah?”

  She gives me a meaningful look. “Remember that with struggle, there’s opportunity.”

  It’s the same thing she told Dad when he almost lost his business four years ago. It’s meant to be motivational, but I also remember that, for Dad, things got worse before they got better.

  And worse is not on my to-do list.

  My mother’s advice echoes through my head as I leave my neighborhood and enter downtown, passing a wood and stone marker that says HOLLY, NY
. HOME OF HOLIDAY BY THE LAKE.

  Holly has a population of 14,533, a statistic I’ve memorized because it’s part of my job. (Tourists are very interested in these little pieces of trivia.) It’s also on the map as one of the most festive places to be during the holidays, which is immediately evident from the town’s decorations. Holly doesn’t play with measly decor. Each light post is wrapped in a netlike array of colored lights and has a snowflake fixture hanging from it. LED lights outline awnings and window frames that blink in coordination with the music being piped through downtown. From afar, the trolley rings its bells, and carolers positioned at opposite ends of the town sing holiday tunes. The town square’s Christmas tree, a fifty-two-and-a-half-foot majestic spruce, is lit by twenty-five thousand bulbs and sports a star that’s about five feet across. (More trivia!)

  And it’s not just for Christmas and New Year’s. Holly’s holiday decor is up half the year, only to be replaced by Valentine’s Day, Easter, Independence Day, and fall themes.

  But it doesn’t mean that the joy is always year-round. Four winters ago, a bad snowstorm caused a massive branch from an ancient oak tree to fall onto Dad’s store, collapsing the roof. We scraped by because of Mom’s job, but our family struggled in the subsequent years.

  The struggle was facing Christmas with no presents. It was watching my parents field phone calls from banks and insurance companies. It was seeing gossip spread like wildfire in town. After Ms. Velasco set up a HelpFund that exceeded its initial goal, people speculated that the accident could have been avoidable. Dad should’ve trimmed his trees like a good citizen, they said. Why should he benefit from all that free money? Maybe he even did it on purpose.

  Even worse than the gossip? The fact that my family was doxed. Someone posted our home phone and address in one of the local community boards. It was taken down, but not before a person, or people, took note. We lost our privacy. Mom and Dad were constantly receiving nasty snail mail. We had to disconnect our landline.

  Once, after getting dropped off late from Carm’s house, I came across someone lurking near our house, though they ran off when Mrs. Ferreira parked. She called the police from inside her locked car—it wasn’t the first time the police would be at our home. But no one could say for sure who it was and why they were there. Though it didn’t matter, because the damage was done. I remember feeling afraid for a long time. My parents hovered protectively over us and were ultra-cautious of their surroundings; they forbade us from participating in social media. To this day, my parents are jumpy about anything to do with sharing personal information.

  The bright side—or, as Mom might say, the opportunity? Dad spent more time with our family while he slowly rebuilt That’s A Wrap. I got to know Dad better than I ever had. I learned the value of a dollar. And I made the decision that I don’t want to burden my family more than I have to, with college and beyond. They’d saved some college money for me, but I decided I would make up what I could with scholarships, loans, and jobs. That, when I graduated from college, I would make enough money to support myself and help my siblings. That I would find work aligned with a reliable, well-paying profession. Which meant premed, and eventually becoming a doctor.

  But something else came from that fear: this need to express myself. I had just started the free library, and I was reading more than ever with all the ups and downs. Books distracted me; they gave me hope. I felt so strongly about certain books that I would journal about them in my spiral notebooks. Winter break of my sophomore year, after getting hired at the Bookworm Inn, Ms. Velasco shared some Holiday by the Lake–inspired blog posts from mega-fans, and the idea was born. I could pay forward the hope books had given me. I could blog from my laptop, even from my phone, anonymously, and for free. I could do it before or after my shifts.

  Blogging was against my parents’ rules. But it made me happy, and for those moments, struggle was nonexistent. And it wasn’t social media, technically. I wasn’t sharing any of my personal information.

  A mile east of downtown Holly, I flip on my turn signal and pull onto Bookworm Drive. The road leads into a dark canopy of tree branches that blocks out the moon, and the Bookworm Inn appears along the horizon like a beacon of light. The Velascos took over the Inn—which used to be an estate owned by one of Holly’s first residents—decades ago and restored it to its previous splendor. The town had gone through its own rough period when the local paper mill shut down, and the Inn was one of the reasons why the town survived—it employed many of its residents. But it was Ms. Velasco who brought in tourists from all over the country and expanded the business in a major way.

  I park behind the gift shop just as the back door slams open. Ms. Velasco stomps out in her galoshes and slicker, her face scrunched in a serious expression. That is, until her eyes lock on mine.

  Her face relaxes. “Oh, Lila. Thank you. I…There’s so much going on. We’ve got a store-full.”

  “No problem.” I lift up a plastic bag, which holds a takeout container full of warm tinola. “From my mom.”

  “Ah, she’s St. Nick in human form. If you can put it in the refrigerator in the break room, it will be my reward for making it through all of this.”

  “What would you like for me to do?”

  “I’ve got a plumber and everyone who has any expertise in water damage at the Inn, trying to fix the leak.” She hikes up her hood. “I need to deal with one of the guest cabins. Apparently it has a malfunctioning window. That pretty much leaves Teddy on his own in the gift shop.”

  “Teddy’s still here?”

  “He was supposed to head back to school tonight, but he was kind enough to stay until I got help.”

  “Does he know what he’s doing?” I flush, hoping my question doesn’t sound too rude, but Ms. V doesn’t seem to notice.

  “He got the four-one-one on stocking the floor, and he knows the basics of the register—he’s worked retail before—but…you’ll see. Anyway, I’m not sure how long it’s going to take, and you’re the only one who answered their phone. I left messages, so I can only hope we get more backup.” She winces. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s totally fine. I’m glad I can help. I want the hours.”

  “Great!” Her face lights up for a beat. “And just between you and me, there’s something exciting coming down the pipeline. I can’t breathe a word about it yet, not until next weekend’s staff meeting, but it’s changing the game.”

  “Oh, really?” Ms. Velasco’s words pique my curiosity. Changing the game? How much busier and more successful could the Inn get? The gift shop barely has a lull during the holidays, and the Inn’s reservations are solid through the middle of January.

  “Yep. Here, grab the keys to the register.” They’re hanging precariously on her pinky, and I snatch them before they fall.

  She walks backward, clearly in a rush. “I’ll be back as soon as possible.”

  “Okay!” I wave and enter the back door.

  The dull roar of customers fills the hallway, and I speed up.

  Wow, it’s busy.

  In the throng of people, I spot Teddy’s dark hair. He’s at the register, ringing up a customer, with a line five deep.

  “I’m sorry, sir.” His voice rises above the rest. “I can’t seem—”

  “Look, can you get someone else to help you?” The customer’s voice emits the truest sound of discontent.

  My customer service smile goes on at full wattage, and I slip behind Teddy.

  “Oh my God. Thank you,” he breathes out. “I can’t seem to—”

  “He can’t open the register,” the customer—a man wearing a Niagara Falls cap with a matching shirt—states, red-faced. “All I want is my change. Forty-nine cents.”

  “I mean. The thing won’t open.” Teddy frowns and presses random buttons.

  “Whoa-kay,” I say. “Hold up.”

  Teddy
and I switch spots. I palm a button on the side of the register, and the drawer pops open with a satisfying ring. I scoop up forty-nine cents and drop it into the customer’s hand.

  The man levels Teddy with an exasperated expression. “Really?”

  “It’s tricky,” I say with a shrug, even though it’s not. “Thank you for your patience, and I hope you come back soon.”

  The customer leaves with a huff.

  “Geez,” Teddy mumbles.

  Our introduction yesterday was casual and brief. Closer now, and less than a foot away, I get a better look at Teddy—at the one curl of hair that swoops just above his right eye, at the mole that’s perched on his right cheekbone. At how the Bookworm Inn polo shows the outline of his muscled shoulders.

  Muscles.

  But instead of attraction, or even empathy at his current predicament, annoyance courses through me. If I had simply been given these hours instead of Teddy, the gift shop would not be this chaotic.

  Since there’s no time to teach Teddy how to work the register, because the next customer is waiting for their turn, I say, “Listen. Why don’t you head out to the floor and clean things up or answer questions while I do this?”

  “But I want to learn what you’re doing here.”

  Annoyance escalates to irritation. “This is not the time for it, frankly.” As if to prove my point, the bobblehead display of Max, the stray corgi in the film and the real hero who leads present-day Estelle to Leo for their second meet-cute, crashes to the ground. The resulting gasp from customers and the sound of a toddler crying cause me to inhale deeply. “Now will you go?”

  “Fine.” He leaves my side.

  My focus shifts and I motion for the next customer. The line consumes me as I cashier and bag and greet, and I manage to all but forget about Teddy.

  After the rush is over, a mere half hour later (though it felt like two hours at least), I clean up behind the counter and then return loose items back to their correct locations in the store. Yet, upon quick inspection of the floor, the bobblehead display isn’t stacked where it’s supposed to be. The throw blanket display is empty, and the earrings are nestled in the tea and coffee section.