“Liam?”
“Yeah?”
“We could be the two worst singers in the history of the entire world.” I don’t actually know anything about pitch or harmony or any of those things which signify good singing, but even my tone-deaf ears could hear how much of a train-wreck that was.
“Even worse than that girl who was really happy about it being Friday?”
“Yes. Even worse than Rebecca Black.”
Liam sighed. “I guess that means no more Christmas carols then.”
“What are you talking about? We’re going to sing all the freaking time. Did you know no one else lets me sing? Angel says it hurts her ears, and Jase says I throw off his rhythm. But you…” I poked him in the chest. “You can’t sing either. I can’t screw you up any more than you can screw me up.”
Liam’s laugh was rich and deep, and I briefly wondered how anyone who could sound so good laughing managed to sound so awful when he tried to sing. “And we’re out here in the middle of nowhere. No neighborhood dogs to upset.”
“Exactly! We’re going to become a freaking Disney movie, singing about anything and everything!”
And while that may have been a tiny bit of an exaggeration, we did sing every Christmas carol we knew over the next few weeks. We even decorated the tree. I folded soup labels into little stars and fashioned tinsel out of Pop-Tart wrappers. Liam cut a star out of a Cheerios box and stuck it on top. When Christmas finally rolled around it looked…
Well, it still looked like a really crappy tree covered in trash, but it was our really crappy tree covered in trash.
Christmas morning started like every other non-full moon morning. I woke up wrapped around Liam, burrowed into his warmth. That morning I sent up a silent prayer to Baby Jesus that Santa’s gift to me would be getting to spend a few extra minutes enjoying Liam’s body heat and smell without accidentally waking him up. In the end, though, I didn’t risk it. Yes, the cold sucked, but not as much as having to own up to the fact Liam and I snuggled every night.
I snuck out of the bed and tip-toed across the cabin. From behind the cans on the third shelf of the left cabinet I gathered two wrapped packages. Liam started to stir at the crinkling of paper, and I raced across the room and threw them under the tree. Then, I turned around, gathered as much air as possible into my lungs, and yelled with all my might, “It’s Christmas! It’s Christmas! Santa came! It’s Christmas!”
Liam threw the covers over his head, and I giggled. No wonder Angel did this every year. Torturing people with Christmas Cheer is fun.
Well, it would have been fun if I hadn’t broken my own heart by thinking of the little sister I missed more than geeks miss Firefly.
No, I thought to myself. You need this. Liam needs this. You will have a merry little Christmas, and not in the wrist-slitty Judy Garland way.
I wiped the moisture from my eyelashes and dove onto the bed.
“Come on, Sleepyhead! It’s Christmas!”
“Hey,” came a voice from his cocoon. “Could someone maybe tell me what today is?”
“It’s Chhhhrrrrriiiisssssttttmmmmaaassss!” I yelled, pulling back the covers.
Liam’s glower would have been much more impressive without the twinkle in his eye. “You know, a perky Scout is not only wrong, it’s really disturbing.”
“Up and at 'em, Grinchy McGrinch. I was visited last night by the spirits of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Buddy the Elf, and now I want keep Christmas in my heart all year long. Wake up so I get a move on it.”
Of course, mentioning being visited by spirits at night nearly made me cry again. I didn’t know where Alex had gone, but I hadn’t seen him since I fell asleep on the bus a million and a half years ago.
God, was Christmas always this depressing?
“Come on.” The words came out sounding more like an actual desperate plea than barely contained excitement. I plastered an overly wide smile on my face to compensate. “It’s time for Christmas breakfast.”
If Liam noticed my slip in enthusiasm, he didn’t show it. “Oh no, we’re not having spaghetti and maple syrup, are we?”
“One, that’s a dinner meal, not breakfast.” I pulled him up into a sitting position, but only because he let me. “And two, we don’t have any maple syrup because I’m living with the only Canadian in the world who doesn’t know how to make it.” I slid off the bed, only slightly wincing at the sharp sting of coldness on my feet. I had two pair of the super-expensive socks on, but that helps very little when you’re in the middle of the frozen tundra with nothing more than a tiny fireplace to keep you warm. “I do have a special breakfast treat for us, though,” I said, digging around in the cabinet, stretching on my tiptoes to reach behind the barrier of cans I constructed two weeks ago. My hand finally touched cardboard and I pulled it out with a flourish. “Pop-Tarts!”
Liam was across the room before I could even pry them open.
“You said we were out,” he accused, jerking the box out of my hand.
“I lied,” I said, grabbing the box back. “I was saving them for today.” They weren’t cinnamon toast, the traditional Christmas breakfast in the Donovan household, but brown sugar cinnamon Pop-Tarts was as close as I was going to get. When I realized we were down to only one box, I put them back so we would have a special Christmas morning treat. I knew Liam would have found it more of a treat if it had been some ridiculous non-breakfast flavor, like chocolate, but a Pop-Tart was a Pop-Tart, and any Pop-Tart was better than our normal breakfast of plain, no sugar or flavor added, oatmeal.
There was a strong chance I would never eat oatmeal or canned food again once I finally made it back to the real world.
And I would not think about how very little time I would have to eat anything before I would have to face off with Sarvarna and her Knife of Doom once we returned to civilization. It was Christmas. We were going to be festive, damn it.
We each ate a package of Pop-Tarts and agreed to split the last one on New Year’s Day. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I sent Liam to the tree.
“You bought me presents?” Liam never showed much emotion, but over the months I began to pick up on the slightest change in tone and facial expression and was able to decipher the stronger emotion lying beneath each. The slight widening of the eyes and nearly imperceptible twitching on the right corner of his mouth was new, but I knew what it meant all the same. Liam was touched by my big-hearted kindness. I saw the potential for one of those deep bonding moments Sam and Dean have all the time on Supernatural and reacted quickly.