Jingle Boy by Kieran Scott Read Free Book Online

body, and started to back out of the room. I held my dad under his armpits, and his torso hung limply between us, like a hammock full of rocks. We got downstairs awkwardly but quickly and toddled our way toward the front door. I backed up to it, picked up my foot, and kicked it as hard as I could. The wood splintered and the door flew open. My mother and I ran down the walk and across the lawn, finally laying my father down on the dying brown grass near the curb. A fire engine skidded around the corner, sirens blaring, lights blazing, and screeched to a stop behind us.
    “Oh, Paul, he’s not . . . ?” my mother said, kneeling next to my dad. She reached out to touch him but then pulled back her hand. “Is he dead?”
    I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to find out. But I bent over my father’s mouth and listened. There was his breath, shallow and slow, but there.
    “He’s breathing,” I said, relieved.
    “Oh, thank God!” My mother collapsed on my father’s chest, clinging to him like Scarlett O’Hara in
Gone with the Wind.
(Mom made me watch it in the fifth grade.)
    I tore my eyes away and looked up at my house. My house that apparently wasn’t going to be there much longer. The entire roof was engulfed in flames and the second floor wasn’t faring much better. The firemen shouted orders to one another and before long, a wide stream of water was blasted at the house, a couple of skinny guys not much older than me struggling with the dancing hose.
    “What do we got here?” an EMT asked, seemingly appearing out of nowhere and dropping to the ground beside my mother. I looked around me for the first time and noticed that there were now three fire trucks, an ambulance, a few police cars, and a nice-sized crowd of neighbors gathered on the street.
    “He’s unconscious,” she said as the EMT unpacked his bag. He slipped on a stethoscope and checked my father’s heartbeat.
    “Any idea what happened?” he asked, his slick black hair gleaming in the light from the fire.
    “I . . . I was in the kitchen baking and the lights flickered,” my mother said. “There was this loud buzzing sound, then a pop, and then I heard him shout.”
    “Sounds like he may have been electrocuted,” the EMT said.
    “Electrocuted?” my mother wailed.
    “’Scuse me, kid!”
    Dazed and light-headed, I stepped out of the way as two more emergency workers jogged through with a gurney and placed it beside my father. In a few minutes they had lifted him up and strapped him down and were loading him into an ambulance. I watched all of this happening in a sort of detached, spectatorly way, as if it were happening to someone on
ER.
    My mother beckoned to me from the back of the ambulance to get in, but I turned away from her. The fire was really quite mesmerizing. There was my room, going up in smoke and flame. Strands of Christmas lights dangled from the eaves. The Christmas wreath from the front door had flown off when I’d kicked the door down and it lay on the ground, a few tiny flames dancing around it.
    “Oh, jeez, would you look at that,” someone said behind me.
    My eyes traveled up from the sad-looking wreath and fell on Santa in his little flying saucer, his arm raised in a wave just like the Santa in my dream. As we watched, the flames took poor Santa, first melting the ship out from under him, then crawling up his body and pulling at his face. I couldn’t tear my eyes away as he morphed from the cherry-cheeked, twinkle-eyed jolly old Saint Nick into a sadistic painted clown, laughing maniacally down at me from above.
    Misfit! Misfit! Misfit!
    “Christmas really is punishing me,” I whispered.
    “Paul! Paul!” Holly’s voice penetrated my descent into madness. “You’re okay!” she shouted. She shoved her way past a couple of policemen and hit me with the force of an avalanche, nearly knocking me over as she hugged me.
    “Ugh! You’re okay!” Her hands whacked at my back as she clung to me.
    When she