Page 7 of Of Magic and Reindeer
Spoiler alert: I very much did not.
My browser history now looked like a conspiracy theorist having a Christmas-themed breakdown. I scrolled through local social media groups and even checked a Palm Springs forum, hoping to find anyone else who’d seen Rudolph’s oversized cousin wandering around. Nothing. Not a single “OMG I saw a reindeer in Rosewood Park!” post to validate my rapidly deteriorating mental state.
Pushing my laptop away, I rubbed my temples where a headache pulsed with vindictive regularity. Maybe the tequila from last night had been laced with something. Or I was having some kind of psychotic break triggered by excessive workplace Christmas decorations. Neither explanation accounted for the weird shit happening with my body temperature or the voice in my head, but it beat accepting that I was telepathically communicating with North Pole wildlife.
My phone vibrated against the coffee table, Mom’s smilingface lighting up the screen for a video call. I swiped to accept, arranging my face into what I hoped wasn’t the wide-eyed panic of someone who’d conversed with a magical forest creature.
“Neve!” Dad’s face filled the screen, much closer to the camera than necessary. His usual exuberant smile seemed dimmed, the corners of his mouth fighting to maintain their upward curve. His silver beard, usually trimmed to perfection, looked unkempt and dull. Dark circles carved half-moons beneath his eyes.
I frowned. “Dad, you look...”
“Fantastic!” He pulled back, revealing Mom beside him. Both wore matching thermal shirts with the Joint International Nordic Glacial Logistics and Ecology snowflake logo. “Just a bit under the weather. Nothing serious!”
Mom adjusted the camera. “How are you, sweetie? Work going well?”
My fingers tightened around my phone. “I had a bit of an incident at work today. I kind of told off some clients and got sent home.”
“Oh! That doesn’t sound like you.” Mom’s eyebrows lifted, but her expression remained oddly indifferent.
“It wasn’t like me. There was this weird moment where I felt so cold, and my voice sounded different. I told them that people like them used to get coal.” I stopped, noting the quick glance my parents exchanged. “What? Why are you looking at each other like that?”
Dad’s laugh boomed through the speaker. “Well, it’s not like this is the first time you’ve had a little flare-up.”
Mom’s elbow shot into his side. “Christopher.”
He winced. “What? I meant a tantrum. You know, when she was a kid.”
My skin prickled, and I swallowed hard. “What kind of flare-up are we talking about? Did anything unusual happen when I was little? Medical conditions or, I don’t know, weird abilities?”
Mom’s smile suddenly stretched across her face, completelyfake. “You were just like every other child! Always building snow people and?—”
This time, Dad’s elbow shot out.
“We never lived anywhere with snow. I grew up in California, and we decided boarding school was the best option for me since the research facility couldn’t have kids there.” It came out automatically, almost as if I were reading a script to people who weren’t my parents.
Dad coughed violently, the camera shaking. “Signal’s breaking up! Arctic storms interfering with?—”
“Dad, I can see and hear you perfectly fine.”
“…call you next week… love you!” The screen froze conveniently on his panicked expression before cutting to black.
I stared at my dark phone screen, my reflection looking back with suspicious eyes. They were hiding something. Parents were supposed to lie about birthday presents and Easter bunnies, not have cryptic reactions to their adult daughter possibly developing ice powers.
The walls of my house closed in again, with the same suffocating pressure from earlier returning. I needed air and food that wasn’t questionable takeout leftovers. Grabbing my purse, I headed for the door. Grocery shopping might be mundane, but right now, mundane was exactly what I needed.
Twenty minutes later, I stalked the aisles of Ralph’s with the determination of someone barely holding it together, one grocery item at a time. My cart contained the building blocks of responsible adulthood: kale I’d probably throw out in a week, protein bars with ridiculously long shelf lives, and oat milk that tasted nothing like actual milk.
See? Totally not having a crisis.
A woman with a screaming toddler passed, and I reflexively gripped the handle of my cart tighter. The metal frosted over beneath my fingers.
I jerked away, and the frost disappeared almost instantly in the warm store air. It was condensation. Heat meeting cold metal. Science.
I turned down the main aisle, and my feet moved in thedirection of the overwhelming scents of vanilla and cinnamon. My carefully curated grocery route never included the bakery section because I hated baked goods as much as I hated going to the dentist or getting a Pap smear.
Maybe even more.
Before I knew it, I was standing in front of a display of holiday cookies with gingerbread men and their stupid smiling faces, snowflake-shaped sugar cookies drowning in blue sprinkles, and an entire army of those weird butter cookies that typically came in the blue tin that everyone’s grandmother repurposed for sewing supplies.
