7. Winter

Richie and the gang make it through December.

December 25th

“Silent night, holy night

All is calm, all is right

Round yon virgin, mother and child

Holy infant so tender and mild…”

I hit pause. It was Travis’ acoustic guitar version of the song that he’d put online. It was certainly different from any iteration I’d heard before, to say the least. My eyes drifted over to the window, out to the thin layers of frost coating my neighborhood.

It’s crazy; when I was a kid I looked forward to playing in the snow for hours every Christmas, but these days the 25th seemed to pass by without a flake in sight. Think of any Christmas song, any single one and chances are snow or something of the sort is mentioned somewhere in the lyrics, if not a part of the title. Snow and Christmas are practically synonymous, like Halloween and costumes or Easter and eggs, and nowadays they’re hardly ever seen together my side of the globe. Maybe it’s global warming or pollution or something to do with Earth’s rotation changing over time or something smart-sounding like that. Maybe getting used to green Christmases is just another unspoken condition of growing up.

Holidays at my house were never too big a deal. The ‘family’ of chez Harris consisted of a single uncle and single nephew, neither of whom are exceptionally open emotionally. Thanksgivings were just regular nights with slightly more effort put into dinner. Christmas wasn’t far behind on the scale of neglect; this year we hadn’t even gotten a tree. I figured the need for one hadn’t really been there since I became too old for distant family members to feel obligated to buy me things. As far as my social life was concerned, Christmas was a trip to the mall: A box of guitar picks for Travis, miscellaneous sports gear for Theo, some books for Carrie and a fifteen dollar iTunes card for CJ (‘Tis the season for giving.)

“Hey, Richie,” my Uncle called, as I downed my third cup of eggnog. “You got a gift.”

“From who?” I called back as I made my way down the stairs. “Did Aunt Ruth get me another tie or something?”

“There’s no name attached. It doesn’t even say your name.”

I got to the living room, where I saw him holding a medium sized, flat, rectangular box wrapped expertly in green paper with cartoon gingerbread houses all over it.

“What’s it say?”

My Uncle shrugged as he read the only words on the paper’s tag.

“To ‘Superboy’...?.”

I walked over in surprise and he handed me the box. I tried to unwrap it delicately for about fifteen seconds, then just gave up and ripped the gingerbread paper away. What hid underneath it was a big, heavy sketchbook, along with a pack of all kinds of pencils, pens and erasers. It was a better art kit than I knew existed. I opened the sketchbook and on the first page, written in bold purple marker, were the words ‘Merry Christmas.

December 31st

The second we stepped out of the train terminal, the five of us were caught in the shoves and prods of the infinite stampede that is Time Square. Indistinct chatter swelled around us, and above was sparked alive by flashing lights and neon signs. I hadn’t spent New Year’s Eve in Time Square since I was a little kid with my Uncle T, but now here we were. Theo and CJ and Travis and Carrie and Me. I was beginning to like the ring of that.

“Watch where you’re going!” CJ snapped at a stranger as we hustled down the busy street.

Theo called out, “Next person to shove me is getting hooked.”

Our collective personal space was suddenly respected by all.

“It must be nice to have muscles.” Carrie said, somehow still her calm self in all this calamity.

“Doesn’t personality count for anything in these days?” I replied. She answered me only with a shrug and half-grin.

I think we’d all forgotten how much walking was involved in this process. It felt like hours of navigating through the masses until we reached our destination. The cold was numbing my ears within minutes of it.

“Yo, check it out.” Travis pointed to a group of fifty or so people stopped around a huge billboard. It had a big camera set up, and a projector that placed the image of the crowd on the massive screen. It would zoom in on random members of the crowd and take a picture of them, now everyone was nudging each other in a fight for the camera’s attention.

“Come on!” Theo said, grabbing Travis, causing us to all grab each other in chain link fashion as he lead us to the center of the crowd.

“Over here!” Travis cried, waving his arms.

“You know it can’t hear you, right?” Carrie said dryly.

CJ jumped as high as she could, which I learned is nowhere near as high as I would have thought. The camera swept over toward our direction. We all hopped and stumbled trying to stay in it’s range. It suddenly zoomed in, landing on Theo. He fell right into a male modeling pose in a second of course, but it didn’t take the picture. Instead, it quickly shifted over to Travis and CJ. It took them longer to get camera ready, as they stood there for a second looking dumbfounded. Without warning, it switched again to Carrie and I.

“Quick, pose!” I shouted. With utmost urgency, she threw her arm around my shoulder and flipped a peace sign as aggressively as I’d ever seen it done. I did the same, and a bright flash temporarily blinded us, then we all looked up to see our faces frozen there. Mine and Carrie’s, surrounded by a bunch of random heads of course, but we were front and center.

“Lucky.” Travis said bitterly as we all pulled out our cell phones to snap pictures of the billboard.

The camera crews weren’t too far of a walk away. They, along with the seemingly infinite sea of tourists, had gathered to watch the ball drop. It didn’t take long for the five of us to find a comfortable place in line.

“So,” CJ began, trying to pass the time as we stood there. “What’s everyone’s New Year’s Resolution?”

My eyes drifted to the surrounding lights above us. I hadn’t really give a resolution much thought.

“I know mine,” Travis called, naturally going first to impress CJ. “This is the year I get that record deal finally. Out of high school and into the music biz…”

I couldn’t biologically roll my eyes with the appropriate force, so I changed the subject.

“What about you, CJ?” I asked, genuinely curious as to what she might say. Her eyes sparkled warmly as she smiled thinking about it.

“To drop all my grudges,” she answered. “Life’s too short to stay disconnected from people. And I already have too many faces lost in the past.”

Okay, whatever that means…

“You got one, new girl?” Theo asked Carrie. I wondered how long she’d have to be in the group before he stopped calling her ‘new girl’.

“Nah,” Carrie replied, dismissive as usual. “It’s kind of arbitrary isn’t it? The ‘resolution’ thing… We identify the problems we need to fix and the goals we need to work toward, then we push off handling any of it until the beginning of a new year. And even then we stick to it for two weeks and out the window it goes. I’d rather not make promises I know I won’t keep.”

“Like being less of a buzzkill.” I interjected. She stuck her tongue out at me and blew a raspberry sound.

“Mine’s pretty simple,” said Theo. “Actually it’s the same as every year. Just to be a better version of me than I was. Whatever that might take.”

I didn’t know what I expected his answer to be, but it sure wasn’t that. I thought back to every dumb thing I’d done, every time I’d disappointed someone, every embarrassing moment within the last 365 days, and I wondered what it would be like to magically reboot myself to a Richie 2.0 who couldn’t ever do any of those things. For some reason, the thought of it made me uneasy.

At this point, there were about twenty or so minutes to midnight. Travis had been saying all kinds of dumb, pseudo-romantic subtextual comments to CJ, trying his hardest to insinuate they be each other’s New Year’s kiss without actually saying it. But the second CJ had to check her phone, he snidely whispered at Theo,

“Bet you wish you and V were still together, huh? No kiss on New Year’s Eve?”

Theo ‘pfft’-ed with the utmost disregard, before cupping his hands around his mouth and calling out to the crowd of thousands around us.

“Excuse me! Are there any single ladies nearby?”

He stretched out his arms to let everyone know he was, turning in place so they all got a good view. In seconds a bunch of scattered young female voices from all around were calling back.

“Me!”

“Over here!”

“Do you wanna kiss me?”

“My friend’s single!”

Theo pinched his chin hair and looked around as if carefully analyzing to make his choice.

“You.” he eventually confirmed, pointing to a gorgeous, urban model-looking girl who was probably a year or two older than us. She smiled hard enough to raise her cheek piercings and walked over to us, and a unified wave of disappointed moans and sighs from the other girls came in. I realized then that any self-esteem issue I’d ever had likely stemmed from being friends with Theo.

“What’s your name?” Theo asked his new friend.

“Tasha.” she said with a chill smile. “You?”

“Theo,” he answered, motioning his hand out to the rest of us. “And this is the crew. Travis, Rich, CJ and Carrie.”

“Looks like it’s a triple date now.” Tasha replied.

“Triple?” I parroted.

“Yeah,” Theo smugly added. “We all have someone to kiss now.”

I looked away from him defensively, and in doing so, Carrie and I accidentally met eyes. Her face instantly lit up bright red and she quickly turned her head to look away. I did the same, fairly certain my face was turning equally red. I pretended not to hear the rest of the group stifling their laughter.

“The countdown to New Year starts now!” The announcer yelled into his microphone. The next ten seconds were like a dream, everything slowed down and falling right into place as if meant to be by some cosmic power.

“Ten…”

Everyone in the group met eyes, exchanging glances for what would be the final time this year.

“Nine, eight…”

Tasha’s eyes were lost in Theo’s, her body seemed to melt as he raised his arms around it, drawing her closer.

“Six, five...”

Travis stared CJ in the eye with a helpless uncertainty. She nearly rolled her eyes, smiling and shrugging before stepping closer.

“Four…”

I took a deep breath, quickly fastforwarding through every highlight of the past year at once in my head, wondering again what a ‘better version’ of me entailed.

“Three…”

I met eyes with Carrie again. This time it was she who looked at me. I took a step closer to her. She stepped closer to me.

“Two…”

I closed my eyes and all the noise and calamity surrounding us seemed to instantaneously disappear, and the only thing breaking the silence was my heartbeat.

“One…”

When I opened my eyes for a split second, my hands were around Carrie’s face, drawing her closer. When they closed again I could feel her breath on my mouth. And right afterward I felt…

“Happy New Year!”

Fireworks and horns blared over the sound of everyone cheering. Carrie’s nose dug deeper in my cheek, I held her tighter. I don’t know if it lasted three seconds or twenty minutes, time seemed to stop operating by its normal rules. I didn’t care either, the rest of the world drowned out that instant. The moment created a little world of its own, cut out of my life; the eternal memory of entering the new year, kissing Carrie Thompson in Time Square.

Reviews

[fwvalidus]

This is quite a good story you have going.. sorry that it has taken me until the end of Chapter 7 to leave a review, but here we go:

I connect very well with Richie, possibly because I shared some similarities with him in highschool too. All of your characters are built well and with consistency. The only item that felt inconsistent was when Richie told Carrie that he wrote the PSAT and had been studying for the last three weeks non-stop... I figured they would have talked about it given they hang out so much and pretty much just talk.

At the beginning I got a bit confused with Theo and Travis.. this is picky but it'd be easier if you used a different starting letter. Same with CJ and Carrie. Makes me need to think sometimes, harder than I should, about who is being discussed.

Each chapter is short and sweet but I find that there is a definite purpose to each one. A nice lesson, learning point on the characters, or development of the storyline. You are telling the story well which keeps my interest going from one chapter to the next. I was actually thinking about the story and characters last night, hours after the last chapter I had read. This is good stuff!

Maybe I am just impatient, but I find it frustrating how long it took to find out more about the Carrie/Richie thing and then when they start talking again they always get interrupted. I am not suggesting that you tell us sooner about Carrie/Richie, because the suspense/curiousity over a few chapters is good to have. I just think that the reader (and the characters to be honest) deserve a good chat together that can conclude without interruptions. Perhaps it's waiting in the chapters to come!

Mostly your grammar, spelling, etc. is fine but there are a few cases where there is an error that gets in the way of the flow. Do a bit more proof reading when you have time. For example, Glenn Thompson says something last chapter but you have written that it was Carrie saying it (it's about Carrie so it's easy to figure out the mix up as the reader).

That's all for now! Do you have any other writing works that you haven't yet shared on here? I'll be curious to see what else you have once I get through these chapters!

[Sora The Egotistical]

Thanks very much for your time, let alone interest and support. I'm very glad you're enjoying what you've read thus far! I can't say much to discuss your points without spoiling some of the story but I think you'll like what's in store; it's a bit of a slow burn but when it gets there you'll know

I actually have a whole other account full of stuff, if you'd like to check that out shoot me a message when you're finished with this and I'll show you.

Thanks again for reading!

[fwvalidus]

Hey no problem, it has been a good use of time. I am generally more harsh and less rainbows and butterflies on my reviews so you should know I have a somewhat high level of expectations and this is truly one of the best stories that I have come across here. Definitely the best multi-chapter piece.