“Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a–“

”Fucking shut up with that shit,” Giordi grunted from the living room. Maude had knocked the tree over again, and Dora had left Giordi to upright it again while she “dealt with the dog.” She didn’t have the heart to throw the pooch outside, though, and so just spoke rather sternly to her and then pointed her to the kitchen where Joslyn and Samantha were beginning the cooking preparations. Orlando had already been sent to the store twice and this time, stomping out in mock-anger, had insisted it was the last time. Though Christmas itself was still two weeks away, the stores were mobbed with overzealous shoppers clawing their way to coveted items: Nintendo game systems, red ribboned boxes of chocolate, the last tub of cocoa butter at the Body Shop. Despite the cheerful carols streaming from the speakers of every department store, this was a vicious time of year.

“Fine. Which carol do you want us to sing?” Joslyn huffed, sticking her head in the doorway just in time to witness Giordi almost toss the tree over in the other direction.

“None.”

“Well we’re going to sing something, so you’d better–“

”Oh the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful . . .” Samantha had started the song this time, and for some unfathomable reason, she had always intimidated Giordi. He couldn’t snap at her – which was lucky for her, because she was maybe the only person not getting snapped at lately. Joslyn’s impending departure for home had her in a terrible mood; she was not looking forward to another uncomfortable holiday with a family that all hated each other anyways. Giordi had been put on academic probation, which his parents were not happy about. Dora was under the weather and dreading driving home for Christmas, and upset that Grant refused to go home with her, preferring to stay in their empty house for the two weeks because his only family wasn’t celebrating together this year, spread around the globe as they were. She put on a brave face, but what did he have against her family? And Orlando . . . he was generally rather moody, and both Joslyn’s trip home and his own holiday stresses, plus yet another unsuccessful audition, had him on edge.

Joslyn sent Maude a sympathetic frown and insisted to no one in particular, “I just don’t know how anyone can be so opposed to Christmas carols. I mean, maybe you don’t love them, but to hate them?”

“They represent all the love I didn’t receive as a child.”

“Please. Your parents adore you. Don’t try to play the victim.”

“That’s right, you’re the victim,” Giordi rolled his eyes. He didn’t know the whole story, but he’d heard vague explanations of her family, and had summed her worries up in a few short epithets: estranged father, neurotic mother, one perfect brother, one drug-addicted brother, one dead brother. “Like we don’t all have dysfunctional families . .. “

”Hey, lay off, Giordi,” Dora scolded, swatting him in the arm with a rag. She detested the bully in him that peeked out during his moodiness.

Fortunately, Joslyn hadn’t heard what he had said, only that he had said something, and shot back, “What was that? Enunciate, Giordi. I don’t understand gibberish.”

“You wanna go, little girl? Come on, man up, show me what you’re made of.” He was teasing, smiling now, but Joslyn wasn’t ready for the sudden mood change. She was annoyed with him and his pompous bandana headbands and his buggy eyes and his toothy grin that always preceded a barking laugh. She needed a holiday from him. “Your brother was a boxer, wasn’t he? Surely he thought you something.”

“Shut up, Giordi. Just bug off and let us sing our Christmas carols.”

Her clear annoyance with him gave Giordi a small thrill, though; he liked the way her cheeks flushed when she got riled up, so he kept pushing, “Come on, Joslyn. Let’s–“

”Giordi, not right–“ Joslyn began, spinning with the pot of oil in her hands. Unfortunately, all the bickering had agitated Maude, who now paced the kitchen with an unhappy limpness in her tail. It just happened – pure accident, of course – that she was perfectly in the way when Joslyn spun around.

Orlando walked through the door just in time to see Joslyn spill a pot of boiling oil all over herself, then crack her head against the countertop on her way to the floor.

The blinking tree in the corner, and the holly garlands taped around the counters and window sills made the hospital waiting room look even drearier than usual, as though reminding all those poor unfortunate soles perched in abrasive blue chairs that, not only were they in for a long wait, but they or someone they loved was hurting at Christmastime.

Fortunately, Joslyn was not kept waiting. Orlando liked to think it was simply because the hospital staff were quite familiar with him by this point; even within the past six months, he had broken a finger back in July playing football (very poorly) with some friends, and then cracked his skull back in October, tripping on a damn chord some bastard left lying across the sidewalk. Neither were good stories to brag about later, but both had landed him at the Royal London Hospital. It wasn’t his familiarity that had earned Joslyn top priority at the hospital, though; it was the seriousness of her injury. In the face of emergency, level-headed Samantha had calmly explained they shouldn’t wait for an ambulance, and so while Orlando sprinted into the car and then the hospital with Joslyn alternately hanging limp or screaming in his arms, Dora had chewed her lip bloody.

He twitched in the chair, not looking at Samantha. Joslyn and Dora had been in with the doctors for quite some time. He wasn’t sure how serious Joslyn was hurt. They hadn’t waited to check where or how badly she was burned; only at the last moment, Grant had tossed Samantha a towel for the blood dripping from the back of Joslyn’s head.

Merry fucking Christmas.

“Should we call Giordi and Grant?” Orlando started to ask, but the doors on the far side swung open and both girls came stumbling out, Joslyn with most of her weight on Dora, whose face almost triumphed the ghastly white of Joslyn’s.

Orlando and Samantha both leapt up to meet the two halfway, but to Orlando’s sigh, Joslyn asked curiously, “Have you been here the whole time? You aren’t supposed to be here!”

“What?”

“She’s loopy, Orlando,” Dora warned, twisting as Joslyn nearly slipped from her hold. It appeared Joslyn was leaning entirely on Dora; fortunately, she was quite a bit smaller. “Concussed, and they have her on so much pain medication . . .”

“I’m not . . . wait, what?” There were small water droplet burns on her left cheek, small but shiny in their rawness. A large white gauze bandage had been loosely wrapped around her neck and shoulder where the oil had contacted much more of her skin, though fortunately, none of it had been as bad as it could have been; her sweater had done a job of protecting her chest, and Joslyn’s reaction to jerk her shoulders up in fright had saved her neck much more serious burns. The doctor had lamented that there would of course be scarring, though with the proper skin treatments, it would hardly be noticeable to anyone not looking for it. As for the back of her head, the ex-rays hadn’t shown any fracture, though the brain was definitely swollen, and the gash had taken four staples to close up. Dora had passed out twice in the room, was finally kicked out into the hall, and now felt like at any moment all the food she had nibbled on all day would come roaring up from her stomach.

Orlando caught himself before the frown totally seized his face, and instead offered, “Want me to carry you to the car, Joz?”

“Why would you do that?”

“So you don’t fall,” he returned, mimicking her pitch change. It was habit to make jokes, even in serious times; it didn’t mean he didn’t want to hold Joslyn and squeeze her until the pain she must be in stopped. For better or worse, though, she seemed to be flying far too high to even realize her own pain. Her eyes narrowed and widened almost rhythmically as she stared at the fairy lights around the lobby.

“Is it someone’s birth– oh! Jesus!”

“Come on, sweetie. Let’s get you back to the house so you can lay down,” Samantha suggested, stepping forward to slip between Joslyn and Dora. “Orlando, take Joslyn’s other side . . .” The four of them made quite a chain as they wound their way to the doors. Orlando ran to retrieve the car, then had to stop twice on the drive home for Joslyn to puke out the window.

“I never understood why people do drugs because they don’t make you feel good. My brother said that they– geez, it feels like someone’s blowing into my ears,” Joslyn sighed, pressing her fingers so roughly into her ears that Orlando feared she would poke out her own eardrums. Her pulled her hands away, then almost smiled when Joslyn smoothly let her unburned cheek fall against his shoulder. She tucked perfectly into the crook of his neck and made some small comment at the vibration in her jaw when he spoke. It hurt her head, though, making her eyes water, and so Dora spoke nonsense to her, keeping a close watch on her eyes to make sure she stayed awake.

“It’s just that if she falls asleep and slipped into a coma, we wouldn’t know for some time,” Samantha explained to Dora’s questioning of not just letting her sleep. “We’ll keep her awake for an hour or so and then see. That’s what we always did with Orlando.”

“Orlando? My Orlando?”

“Your Orlando,” he quickly assured her before either of the girls could say differently. Damn straight he was her Orlando.

Grant and Giordi were both waiting in the front windows, and had the door open before the car was even to a stop. Dora had called during the drive, and so even as Orlando and Samantha helped Joslyn into the house, Grant was showing them where he had set up a small nest in the living room for the wounded one: pillows and blankets on the couch, a trash can if she needed to throw up, several glasses of water, a packet of crackers, and the stuffed tiger that usually perched on the foot of her bed. He could be awfully thoughtful when he made the effort.

Joslyn stumbled as they took the step down into the living room, and Giordi dove forward to catch her, but Orlando physically put his arm in the way.

“I–“

”Watch out,” Orlando commanded shortly, shoving past and lowering Joslyn to the couch.

Giordi stood to the side, red-faced and sheepish as the others fluttered around Joslyn, tucking her into the couch, forcing water and crackers on her, feeling her forehead, staring into her eyes as though the dilation of her pupils meant anything to them. She, meanwhile, babbled on like a loon, making remarks about the darkness of Dora’s hair – “Didn’t you used to be blond, Isadora?” – or the crooked Christmas tree – “Did it grow like that?” He wondered what had been said about him; that he had caused the whole thing? He had only been teasing her! It had been Orlando’s dumbass dog that tripped her.

“I feel like I’m dying,” Joslyn sighed dramatically, flopping onto her back. She groaned, pushed herself up, and puked into the trash can, then limply accepted when Dora returned with a new shirt for her to slip on. “I need rum!”

“You don’t even like rum,” Grant snorted, handing her a glass of water instead. He gingerly pushed her hair back to inspect the small burns on her face. “You lucked out, girl,” he sighed. “Think how much worse this could have been.”

“I could have poked my eye out!”

“You . . . uh, well, I don’t know that you could have –“ he stammered, but Joslyn was already giggling again, rubbing the stuffed tiger against her right cheek.

“God, what do they have her on?”

Dora shrugged, “I don’t remember. I was . . . it was rough, I mean. I can’t remember what actually happened in there and what’s just a bad episode of Casualty.”

No one spoke for a few minutes. What was there to say? Joslyn had been reduced to a vocal preschooler; Giordi felt guilty and yet wrongly accused; Dora still felt a bit woozy; Orlando just wanted everyone to leave so he and Joslyn could curl up and watch a movie or something.

“Well, we might as well keep going with the day,” Samantha finally suggested. “I mean–“

”Hey, let’s open presents!” Joslyn suddenly suggested in a loud, cheerful voice. “Oh, my head.” Watching her was like watching a schizophrenic, or a one-woman show at best. She would make a cheerful declaration, then instantly retreat as her exuberance allowed the immense pain skimming below to surface momentarily. It was going to be a disaster when her pain meds wore off; already the bottle of pills the hospital had given them was at the ready on the kitchen counter.

“Perhaps we should wait until you’re actually going to remember–“

”Ugggggh, I just want to go to sleep, if we’re all going to be honest with each other,” Joslyn suddenly groaned, again burying her face in the Tiger’s back. The waves of pain were getting more intense now that she was sitting still on the couch and away from the lethargic drain of the hospital.

Giordi sat on the chair across the coffee table and agreed, “Let’s open presents. It’ll keep her distracted for a while, right?”

“When can we let her go to sleep?”

“Yay, presents!” Joslyn clapped groggily, pulling her legs up onto the couch with some difficulty due to stiff muscles. Doing so sent a spike of pain up her spine and she visibly cringed. Instantly Orlando and Dora were on either side of her, more than happy to open presents.

Grant pulled the camera up from the mantle and insisted, “Okay, smile Joslyn!” The flash made her wince; in the photo, her smile was overly cheerful, and her eyes showed the effect of the drugs. He bit his lip to keep from laughing, “God, she’s going to kill me for photographing this, isn’t she?”

“Someday we’ll laugh,” Samantha muttered, taking it upon herself to divvy out presents since no one else seemed in the mood.

When Joslyn awoke, the house was dark and silent. It took her longer than she was comfortable with to piece together where she was: on the couch in the living room with Maude curled up on her numb legs. She could hear at least two other people breathing heavily, and after her eyes had adjusted a bit more, used the light from the Christmas tree to make out Orlando and Dora curled up together on a pad of blankets on the floor and Giordi in the comfy chair. A light was blinking in the kitchen, and Joslyn’s face, neck, and chest felt like they were on fire. Too roughly, she put her fingers to her face, then winced. Faintly, events came back to her. Boiling oil making contact with her skin. Things didn’t feel too bad from the touch of things, though, all things considered. But God, her head hurt. She gave a small yelp when her nails found the staples piercing her skin at the back of her head; crusted flakes of black blood fell onto her butterfly tattoo. She felt sticky and sore, and her head throbbed deep into her spine.

It wasn’t easy to move Maude, who took on the characteristics of a bag of bricks when asleep. Joslyn rubbed her arms, which hurt from even just wrestling with the dog. Careful not to stub anything on the coffee table, nor knock over the trash can, Joslyn stumbled in a thick haze to the kitchen and turned on the small light above the stove. It cast just enough light by which to see the pile of dirty dishes in the sink, the bottle of pills on the counter, the cold coffee still sitting in the carafe. A sudden wave of nausea rolled over her head, which Joslyn braved by bending over and resting her forehead against the cool counter. The living room was suffocatingly hot, but the tiled kitchen felt a bit better.

The window over the sink glowed dimly from the street lights outside. Joslyn stumbled over to look out at the quiet night and couldn’t help but grin faintly at the small globs of fluffy snow drifting down, occasionally sticking to the glass. It hadn’t snowed much since she had been here, despite the cold, but she had still experienced her first snowball fight. Hopefully after Christmas, there would be more snow to accompany the cold; Orlando assured her she would get to build snowmen and make snow angels before the flowers began to bloom. Perhaps no one else felt “glob” an appropriate description of snow, but Joslyn’s expectations of perfect little flakes falling from the sky had been dashed by the realization that the flakes, in fact, bunched together and formed globs of snow. It had been a rude awakening to a desert dweller.

Outside looked freezing, but her skin was on fire, so Joslyn stumbled to the entry way, bothering only to slip her feet into a pair of Dora’s shoes left carelessly by the door. It swung open with surprising force, pushed by the wind, and her hair instantly whipped around behind her as she stepped out. Once in the winter wonderland outside, though, the wind died down, and Joslyn felt she truly had stepped into another world. The narrow street was silent; the cars on the curb, the mailboxes, the fences, the garbage cans, and the rooftops had all accumulated a thick white coating. The sidewalks glistened beneath the lamplight, and the city lights reflected on the grey clouds overhead, giving them an eery yellow glow.

“Here, lovey.” Joslyn turned her head sharply, then gasped at the pain in the base of her skull from the rapid action. This quickly dissolved, though, as Orlando slipped a blanket around her shoulders and rubbed his hands up and down her arms. “All right?”

“No,” she sighed, leaning back so that her head tucked under his chin again. The cool air pressing against the exposed staples numbed the pain.

“I’m sorry. Are your feet on the ground, at least?”

“Kind of. I still feel pretty fuzzy.”

“How are your burns?”

“You tell me. I’m scared to look in the mirror.”

“Really, they don’t look that bad. I mean, I haven’t seen the ones on your neck, but no one’s going to look at your face in a month and know you were burned,” he assured her loquaciously. When he wanted to emphasize a point, he talked too much, but it meant he was sincere at least. “Do you remember anything at all?”

“Yeah, I actually think I remember everything, just very . . .distantly, as though I watched it all in a movie.”

There was nothing else to be said, or asked, and Orlando didn’t want her dwelling on her burns. Something happier to talk about, perhaps, that would distract her from the itching sensation crawling up her neck.

“So home . . . where exactly are you headed home to this Christmas?” Orlando asked, pulling the blanket tighter around her when she involuntarily shivered. The cold felt good, but her nose was turning pink.

With a sigh, Joslyn answered, “My mom’s in Vegas, so I’ll spend the first week with her, and then maybe go see my dad in New Mexico for the second week. It sucks that they live so far away from each other now, you know? Makes seeing both on holidays a lot more complicated. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t bother going home for Thanksgiving this year.”

“Two weeks . . . and then you’ll be back here?”

“Yep. And you’re headed back to Canterbury?”

“Yeah. Mum, Dad, and Gram are all excited. I feel bad sometimes, not getting down to see them as much as I should. It’s only a couple hours away, but . . .” he trailed off.

She nodded, “I know. At this point in our lives, we’re trying to forge our own path. Family can kinda hold you back, even if they don’t mean to.” She paused, then added, “But as much as I would love to continue this–“ Before she could finish, she ran to the bushes and threw up again, nothing but stomach acid.

“Poor little Joz,” he offered with genuine concern, rubbing her back until she’d stopped dry-heaving. “Come on, this cold can’t be good for you.”

“It’s too hot in the living room. It makes my head hurt worse,” she explained, accepting when he steered her back through the front door and locked it behind them. “I just want to lay out on the kitchen floor with the cool tile.”

“Well come on, I’ll camp out in there with you.”

“Yeah?”

He motioned for her to go on, and gathered a few blankets and pillows from the campsite in the living room before meeting her there. She had stretched out her stomach, resting her right cheek on her arms. Her eyes were closed, her dark lashes brushing against her pink cheeks, but her fluttering lids assured him she hadn’t fallen asleep yet.

“Here, pillows?” Orlando tossed the stuff down on the floor; she accepted a pillow, bunching it up in her arms and watching as he flopped down on the floor beside her. “You know, someday we’re going to be too old to sleep on the floor like this. Can you imagine? It’ll hurt our backs and fake hips and shit.”

Joslyn snickered and shook her head, “You know, I was just about to say . . . and then you say that and ruin it.”

“What were you about to say?” He had stretched out on his stomach beside her and stared intensely at her, the whites of his eyes reflecting the faint glow of the street lights through the windows, their darkness threatening to pull her into a deep sleep.

She returned his stare only until a deep yawn seized control of her face, stretching her burnt skin, and bringing tears to her eyes.

“Aw, don’t cry, love. I”ll still be here when you get back!”

A small smile was all she could manage as the warmer house encouraged her fogginess to return. Nonetheless, she answered, “What I was going to say is that, really, you’re a nice guy. When you aren’t being a total douche.”

“And you’re a shitshow when you’re concussed and strung out on painkillers.”

“Ugh, bug off,” she rolled her eyes and made to turn away. It would hurt to sleep with her burned cheek on her arm, though, and so she was forced to continue facing him.

“No thanks, love. I think I’ll stay right here . . . good night.”

“Night,” she whispered back, his own whisper making her feel as though she needed to keep quiet, as though they were sharing deep secrets in the quiet, dark kitchen. Maude’s toenails clicked on the tile as she came ambling in to see what the muffled voices in the kitchen were going on about, but Joslyn was asleep before Maude settled by their feet, content with her head on Orlando’s shins and her legs wound up with Joslyn’s ankles.