Jingle Boy by Kieran Scott Read Free Book Online Page A

pulled away, I could tell she’d been crying. Her whole face was white except for her very red nose.
    “Come on,” she said, tugging at my arm. “We have to go. We’ll follow the ambulance.”
    The ambulance. Right. My father. Right. What the hell was wrong with me? There were more important things than my stupid house and a melting Santa. I finally turned away from Santa and his spaceship, now a widening puddle of plastic goo on what was left of my roof.
    Voices whispered as the crowd parted around Holly and me.
    “That poor family . . .”
    “And at this time of year . . .”
    “They have more Christmas spirit than the rest of us combined. It’s just a shame. . . .”
    Suddenly I heard a tremendous crash and the spectators gasped, inching a bit farther away from my house. I didn’t even look back to see what had happened, but as I ducked into the car, a little kid hid his face in the folds of his father’s coat, sniffling.
    “Santa must be dead,” he said sorrowfully, his red mittens clasping his father’s leg.
    I couldn’t help agreeing.

SANTA BABY, I WANT A YACHT AND REALLY THAT’S NOT A LOT
    MY HOUSE LOOKED LIKE A PIECE OF ROTTING FRUIT. There was this big, black, gooey, bubbly, smoky hole in the top right side of it that made me think of the mushy spot on an otherwise perfect apple. We had been at the hospital for a few hours and most of the firemen had packed it in and gone home, but two large guys with soot-blackened faces met Holly’s car when we drove up. One of them had a clipboard. Neither of them looked very happy. I could relate.
    “I don’t want to go in there,” I said from the backseat of the Bug.
    “Paul, just remember, your father is going to be okay. Focus on that,” my mother said. But her face had gone whiter and whiter the closer Holly pulled to the house. She was holding herself together by a very skinny, fraying thread. My mother rarely, if ever, lost it. And when she did, it wasn’t pretty. Like the time I, purely by accident, drove her car into the pond at Van Saun Park? I really thought she was going to pop a vital organ. I hoped tonight didn’t turn out like that night had, because if she lost it, I was definitely going to freak. And without my father around to be all level-headed, we’d be in serious trouble.
    Mom climbed out and started to talk with the firemen. I took my dear sweet time hoisting myself out of the low backseat. I was in wallow mode. I’ll be the first to admit it. Yes, it was true, my dad was going to be okay. He woke up at the hospital and even managed to tell a joke or two. (“The good news is, we won’t need a tree this year—you can just plug
me
in!”) But his body had been through a major trauma and he couldn’t move without pain. The doctors predicted it would take at least two weeks for him to recover.
    Two weeks. That was half of December. Practically the whole Christmas season. Things would not be the same without my father around. But who was I kidding? Things weren’t going to be the same any way you looked at it. My house was barbecue. Blackened
Cajun
barbecue.
    “We’d like to take you inside and show you the damage, ma’am,” the taller, older fireman said, attempting a polite smile. He had a bushy white mustache that had turned gray from all the ash, and his light blue eyes seemed tired.
    Mom started up the walk between the two firemen and Holly stepped up beside me.
    “That can’t be good,” I said, staring at the dent in the house where my room used to be. Beams and boards jutted out of the roof at unnatural angles, and one of my windows was just not there anymore. I couldn’t even imagine what it looked like inside. Tonight my mother’s favorite saying—“Paul, your room looks like a bomb hit it!”—had somehow come true.
    “Look at it this way,” Holly said, shoving her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. “At least now you can redecorate!”
    I snorted. It was a valiant stab, but all it did was bring home