Page 17 of A Not-So Holiday Paradise

“No,” she says, shaking her head. She sits up slowly, brushing the sand off of her hands and back. Then she turns her whole body toward me and points at my face. “That’s a frown,” she says. “That thing you’re doing with your mouth. It’s a frown. When you smile, your lips goup.”

I glare at her. Where did all this sass come from?

“Nope,” she says, and she shakes her head again, gesturing at me. “That’s even worse. That’s a glower.”

“I can’t just smile on command,” I say.

“Sure you can,” she says. “Everyone can smile on command. Look, see?”

And then she pulls out a smile, blinding and bright and genuine. She points to the corners of her mouth.

“They turn up, see?” she says around that smile. “And it’s nice if some teeth show too”—she points to the row of white teeth visible between her lips—“but I won’t strictly insist upon it. I’ve seen some very nice closed-lip smiles.”

I will not be doling out any smiles on command, closed-lip or otherwise, and I make this very clear using the expression on my face. We enter into a weird stare down, her smiling maniacally, me glowering, our eyes locked. With every second that passes she forces her smile wider and wider, and with every second that passes I frown more severely. I don’t let myself get caught up in details like the color of her eyes or the tendrils of red that have escaped her top knot. I just stay laser-focused on winning, taking note as her crazy smile becomes more and more genuine, until finally a real, loud laugh bursts out of her.

She tilts her head back, laughing to the sky, and I can’t stop my reluctant smile either. I’m not sure when I last had an honest-to-goodness staring contest, but it feels good to let my guard down a bit as my lips twitch.

“Fine,” Molly says as she wipes her eyes. Then her smile transforms into a little pout. Her bottom lip juts out, and if her dad were here, he’d warn her that a bird might land there. “I guess I can’t force you to smile.” She looks around and sighs. “You’re worse than Leonard.”

I stare blankly at her, taken aback by this sudden change in topic. “Who’s Leonard?”

“He’s from the aquarium I work at,” she says. “Everyone loves him, but he’s completely antisocial.”

I frown. “Why do they love him if he’s antisocial?”

She shrugs. “I personally just like him because he’s cute, but most people like to touch him. Kids especially. He’s bigger than average for sure, so they think that’s cool.”

My eyes widen at the picture forming in my head: a morbidly obese man being poked and prodded by children all day, just because he’s large. It’s horrible. I’m not one to judge people on their parenting—I can only imagine how hard it is to raise kids—but letting your child invade the space of someone just because of his size? It’s dehumanizing—

And then a sudden thought hits me. “Wait a minute. Are we talking about a person or an animal here?”

“Who, Leonard?” Molly says.

I nod.

“He’s a cownose ray,” she says. “Rhinoptera bonasus.Completely adorable.” She pauses, glancing at me. “Oh! You thought I was talking about a person?”

I nod again, and she laughs again, tilting her head back. The air around us eats the sound up, but it still lingers in her smile as she looks at me.

“Sorry, I should have specified. Leonard is a ray,” she says. “We do not let children pet our employees, no matter their size.”

I huff a little laugh. “Good. That was concerning.”

“It would be, yes,” she says with a nod. “But no worries.” Then she tilts her head, casting her gaze like a fishing line to the tide lapping in. “We should do something Christmasy.”

For the love. I can’t keep up with all the subject changes. How fast must her brain be moving for her to have jumped from a ray named Leonard to Christmas?

“Yeah, let’s do that,” she says before I have a chance to respond. I’m not sure what I would say, anyway.

“Pass” is what I come up with. Original, I know. Eloquent. Expressive.

“Fine,” she says. “I’ll be holly jolly on my own. You can sit there and sulk at the sky or whatever it is you like to do in your free time.” Then she moves forward a few feet, so that she’s sitting in the wet sand. She seems to have given up on keeping her clothing clean, and it’s probably for the best anyway; you can’t come to the beach without getting sand on everything you own.

I watch as she digs her hands into the sand, like a child with greedy hands plowing into a birthday cake. At first I think she’s going to attempt a sandcastle, but as she begins scooping and patting and building, something different takes shape, vaguely conical.

A Christmas tree. I think she’s building a Christmas tree. And—I strain my ears to listen—she’s singing “Deck the Halls” under her breath. Slightly off-key, dreamy in its faintness.

I can’t help my smile, but I do rub my hand over my mouth so she doesn’t see. Although she’s so absorbed in her work—now using her finger to create a garland pattern—that she’s not paying me a lick of attention.

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