Miracle on 49th Street

by Mike Lupica

  “I never gave you your mad money back from the last time I went to New York, that’s why!”

  She jumped off the bed, ran over to her backpack, unzipped a side pocket, and pulled out the envelope with Sam’s stash in it.

  “Aha!” she said.

  Now Sam was the one who looked sad.

  “Not exactly,” he said.

  “Explain.”

  “You spend any money in New York?”

  “A few dollars when I ran off that day, that was it.”

  “I gave you everything I had,” Sam said. “One hundred and twenty dollars. That means the price of one ticket, with a little left over.”

  “Only one of us can go,” Molly said.

  “No,” Kimmy said from across the room. “You can both go.”

  Molly hadn’t even heard the door open.

  “I’ll loan you guys the money,” Kimmy said, standing there in the doorway.

  “You heard?” Molly said.

  “Not all of it,” she said. “I did have to try some clothes on. But I heard enough.”

  She smiled. “Don’t you know that I hear everything around here?”

  She told them to hold on, ran out of the room in her new Seven jeans, and was back in about a minute, a neat stack of money in her hand.

  “There’s enough,” she said. “I counted it.”

  The best Molly could do was “thank you.”

  “I’ll cover for you guys with my parents,” Kimmy said. “Now go see your dad.”

  “You know?” Molly said.

  Kimmy gave her a look like she was the slowest kid at the Prescott School for Good Girls and Boys.

  “What part of ‘I hear everything’ aren’t you hearing?” Kimmy said. “Now, go or you’ll miss your train.”

  The fast train went slow, because of the snow on the tracks, the conductor kept saying. So it was nearly four-thirty when they finally heard the announcement that they were a few minutes from “Penn Station, Eighth Avenue and Thirty-Fourth Street, New York City.”

  “Hey,” Sam said. “Isn’t that your favorite movie? Miracle on 34th Street?”

  “It is,” Molly said.

  “So this can be like your version of it,” Sam said.

  “The miracle is that we’re here,” Molly said. “But we’ve still got a few more miracles to go.”

  They had decided that Sam wouldn’t call his mom until they got to New York, since neither one of them knew if there was some way Amtrak could stop the train if they thought they had runaway kids on board. The story they’d cooked up: He’d tell her that Molly was going, and he couldn’t let her go alone, but that it was all right, Josh was meeting them at the train.

  Sam said, “So we’re basically telling only one little white lie for a white Christmas?”

  “The part about Josh.”

  Sam said, “I can work this gig.”

  He walked down to the end of the car and Molly could hear him talking fast.

  At the very end, Molly didn’t hear the white lie. Just the classic cell-phone lie of all time.

  “Mom? We’re breaking up…can you hear me? I love you, too…I’ll call you after the game….”

  He came back, pumping his fist, and sat back down next to Molly.

  “When you’re good, you’re good,” he said.

  “Except,” Molly said, “when you’re great.”

  The train pulled in. They followed the rest of the passengers up a long stairway and into what looked like the main station, about ten times bigger than Back Bay station, more crowded than Molly thought it could ever be on Christmas Day afternoon, with people arriving in New York or getting ready to leave New York, the huge board with the announcements and track numbers constantly changing.

  “How do we know where to go at the Garden to have them find Josh?” Sam said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Molly said. “We’re not going there.”

  They got out of the cab and ran past Radio City Music Hall, past the sign across the street that said “NBC Studios.”

  They came around the corner, Sam grumpy and wet and saying “mush,” and came to a dead stop because there it was:

  The biggest Christmas tree in the world, lights on. The lights looked even brighter because of the snow and because it was almost dark now. Molly put her head back as far as it would go and felt like she was looking up at the tallest skyscraper in New York. Or anywhere.

  There were more people than Molly expected, even in this snow. Just as Molly and Sam got there, one couple handed their disposable camera—like the one Josh said he’d used that time—to the security guard, asking him to take a picture of them, moving the guard back so he could get as much of the tree as possible into the shot.

  Sam wasn’t looking at the couple.

  He was looking up at the tree.

  “Wow,” he said.

  “You can say that again.”

  “Wow.”

  “It was a figure of speech,” Molly said.

  “Sorry if I don’t know all my lines,” he said.

  Molly took him by the arm.

  “C’mon,” she said.

  Sam said, “Where are we going now?”

  “Skating,” Molly said.

  She had told him the story about her mom and Josh and the Holiday Festival and the tree in the cab.

  “I need to be skating when he gets here,” she said.

  Sam said, “Where are we?”

  “New York.”

  “Very funny,” he said. “I mean the exact address.”

  “Forty-ninth Street, I’m pretty sure.”

  “Miracle on Forty-ninth,” he said. “That’s what we’re looking for here.”

  Molly said that worked for her.

  When they got to the bottom of the steps, Sam said, “Mols, what if he doesn’t come? He thinks you’re in Boston. He’s getting ready to play a game on national TV.”

  “He’ll be here,” Molly said.

  That’s when she saw the sign. “Rockefeller Plaza Skating CLOSED Christmas Day.”

  CHAPTER 30

  It was five-thirty now.

  The game was scheduled for seven.

  “It was supposed to be open,” she said.

  “But it’s not, Mols.”

  “I was supposed to skate, and he was supposed to be up there,” she said.

  “You’re not going to cry, are you?” he said. “Please don’t. I hate it when you cry.”

  “I’m not crying,” she said. “I’m mad.”

  “Okay,” he said. “You’re mad. I’m cold.”

  “He’ll still be here,” Molly said.

  Sam didn’t say anything, just started up the stairs, so Molly followed him. They walked back to the base of the tree, where Molly had seen the star that time.

  Sam pointed through the opening on the street to their right.

  “Hey, see that diner?” he said. “I think it’s open.”

  “You can’t be hungry. You ate three times on the train,” she said. “I was afraid you were going to clean out the rest of our money.”

  “No, I’m not hungry,” he said, “but I need some hot chocolate bad.”

  “Fine,” she said.

  “You’ll wait here?”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Molly said. “Get me one, too.”

  He put the back of his glove across his face to get the snow off it.

  “We can’t stay forever, Mols,” he said. “’Cause then this will get real crazy. Not that it isn’t already.”

  “See if they can put whipped cream on mine,” she said.

  Sam the Snowman, trusty sidekick, trudged slowly through the snow. Molly went back to the railing and looked down at the rink, where the movie was supposed to end. The ice was covered evenly by the snow, like the thick, white comforter she had on her bed.

  Sam was right.

  It had been crazy all along.

  She started to cry then. No need to fight back her tears anymore, no need to hide them. Nobody the
re to see. Molly cried hard, the tears blurring her eyes as much as the snow did.

  “You were supposed to be down there,” a voice from behind her said.

  She turned around.

  And there he was.

  No cap today, hiding his face from the fans. So it looked like his hair had turned white.

  He was wearing the leather jacket.

  Molly said, “The stupid rink was closed.”

  “So, anyway,” he said, like they were already halfway into the conversation, “I’m waiting to get on the bus with the rest of the guys, and I’m thinking this is gonna be my one shot to see the tree this year. So I told Coach I was gonna walk to the Garden.”

  “Even in the snow?” Molly said.

  “Snow never bothered me before when I had to get to this tree,” he said. “Plus, sometimes you meet the best people here you’ll ever meet in your life.”

  Molly, being Molly, forever Molly, put her hands on her hips then, cocked her head.

  “Hey,” she said, “don’t you have a game to play?”

  He scooped her up into his arms, lifting her like she didn’t weigh anything at all, like she was as light as the snow, as if he wanted to lift her all the way to the top of the tree and sit her on top of it.

  Then he was hugging Molly finally, and she was hugging him back.

  “First I had to come get my daughter,” he said.