Page 28 of Grinchland
I was losing my edge.
“What?” I asked as I rolled my shoulders, hoping to appear cool and aloof.
She shook her head. “Nothing.” She started unpacking a porcelain nativity set. “I get it.”
I frowned. “Get what?” When she didn’t answer, I took a step closer to her. “Get what?” I dipped down, trying to meet her gaze. Sure, I thought that her attachment to these items was a bit much, but I understood it.
She glanced up at me and shrugged. “You just have the same look on your face that everyone gets when I talk about the history behind all”—she waved her hand around the room—“of this stuff.” She turned her attention back to the bubble-wrapped item she was holding, grabbed the edge of the wrapping, and pulled it up. Baby Jesus in a manager came tumbling out onto her hand. She glanced up at me. “You’re judging me,” she whispered.
I knit my eyebrows together. “I’m not judging you.” Sure, the sheer amount of holiday items she had was ridiculous, but that didn’t mean I judged her for it.
Some people gambled to deal with loss. Some people drank. Even though Christmas decorations were the last thing on earth I would ever surround myself with, I understood why she did it. She was coping. I wasn’t sure with what, but I had a suspicion.
She sighed as she set baby Jesus next to the shepherd and the wise man she’d already unwrapped. “That’s okay. I’m used to it. Most people think I’m out of my mind, I’m too much, I’m crazy.” She stuck out her tongue and wiggled her head to emphasize her statement,
“Most people are idiots.” I shrugged. “I stopped living to please people a long time ago.” I shook my head. “Besides, you’re not crazy or out of your mind. You’re sentimental. There’s a difference.” I reached into the bin and grabbed one of the bubble-wrapped nativity figurines to help her.
Clara may have quirks that I didn’t understand and didn’t necessarily like, but that didn’t make her wrong. In my experience, it was the people passing moral judgment who were wrong.
I’d unrolled Joseph and was working on Mary when I realized that Clara hadn’t spoken. When I glanced up, she was staring at me with her eyebrows drawn together.
“What?” I asked as Mary fell into my hand. I laid the bubble wrap on top of the sheet I’d just taken off of Joseph. “Why are you staring at me like that?” I set Mary next to Joseph and got another figure out.
Clara blinked a few times before she shook her head. “It’s just…no one’s ever said that to me before. I’ve always just been the overly zealous Christmas friend.” She tucked her hair behind her ear, her cheeks flushing as she met my gaze.
I wasn’t sure what to say to her confession. I was already learning too much about the woman who was trying to bring back Christmas. She’d made it clear since the moment she stepped into Grinchland that she had no respect for the town or its rules. So while I could sympathize with her and the plight of having everyone misunderstand her intentions, it didn’t mean I wanted to get close to her.
It didn’t mean that I wanted to be friends.
I had a job to do. To keep the structure of Grinchland safe, I needed to keep our relationship revolving around one thing: fulfilling this agreement so that in seven days normal life could resume in Grinchland. A life that was Christmas-less.
Neither of us spoke again as we finished unwrapping the nativity set and perched it precariously on the edge of Linda’s piano. There were a few more items to take out, and I attempted to find spots for them while Clara stacked the bins inside of each other and hauled them off to the spare bedroom.
When she returned, I expected her to say that day one was over and I could go back to my house. Instead, she told me to follow her into the kitchen, where she instructed me to bring the huge bowl of popcorn into the living room while she went to find needles and thread.
I wanted to tell her that I’d had just about enough holly jolly for one day, but then I remembered the goal. Seven days and then this woman would let Christmas go. I just had to stick it out for one week, and then my life could return to normal.
Twenty minutes into stringing popcorn, I almost called it quits right then and there. My fingers felt like pin cushions, that’s how many times I pricked them. The movie Elf was playing in the background, and while Clara loved it—she kept swatting my arm right before she would break out into laughter—I was…tolerating it.
And I was playing fast and loose with the word tolerate.
I was halfway done filling my string with popcorn when I glanced up to see Clara’s eyes were glued to the screen and she was picking up pieces of popcorn and putting them in her mouth. My gaze drifted down to her popcorn garland to see she’d only completed a fourth of what I’d accomplished.
I waited until she was bringing more popcorn to her lips before I grabbed a piece and chucked it at her. “We’re stringing, not eating.”
Her hand was suspended in front of her mouth when she brought her gaze over to me. Then slowly, ever so slowly, she slipped the popcorn into her mouth.
I sighed. This was going to take forever if she kept eating the supplies.
I pricked my thumb, again, so I draped the string over my lap and leaned back while I pressed hard on my skin to stop the bleeding. “Why are we doing this?” I nodded toward the tree in the corner of the room. “You already have a decorated tree.”
Clara looked at me like I was an alien with two heads. “I have one tree.”
She said the word one like I should know exactly why my question was a stupid one.
“Isn’t it normal to have just one tree?”
Clara laughed. It was loud and genuine, and my stomach flip-flopped at the sound. First, there had been her smile earlier today at the school. Now her laugh. I didn’t like how I was reacting to her. I didn’t want to see her as anything other than the annoying woman next door who was trying to bring Christmas back to a town that had already cancelled it.
