Page 44 of The Holiday Whoopie
Backwards.
Right into our award-winning gingerbread mansion.
The destruction is spectacular. Glorious. Cinematic, even.
And while normally no one falling into rubble could note the details, I’m blessed—cursed?—with an out-of-body experience enabling me to home in on every second of destruction: the foam board platform giving way under my elbow, an earthquake-like crack in the zigzagging beneath the mansion, the front wall collapsing, the gumdrops sinking into the fissure.
Jack hits the table next, the jolt collapsing the roof, frosting shattering like snow in slow motion. His lovingly constructed gingerbread boat catapults into the air, arching beneath the fluorescent lights like Icarus’ doomed wings flying too close to the sun.
Powdered sugar, blue Pop Rocks, and candy cane shards explode upward like fireworks, coating us—and everyone within five feet—in sweet broken debris.
Jack and I land with a thud, the platform cleaving in two, remnants of our masterpiece sliding in on us like a candy avalanche.
The entire room goes silent.
Blinking past the sugar mist, my eyes land on the Bangor photographer, camera frozen midair, mouth wide open.
A kid in the audience pauses mid-bite, cheeks bulging with contraband gumdrops.
Portia and Eileen stand frozen, clipboards dangling uselessly at their sides.
Jack’s arms are still around me, cushioning my fall. He stares down at me, eyes wide, sugar dusting his stubble—horror etched deeper than the day he accidentally became Blitzen’s side-piece.
No one moves. No one breathes. As if they’re all waiting for my cue.
Waiting for the pressure bubbling up inside me to erupt onto the stunned silence.
And yet even with the full impact of what happened sinking in, what overflows isn’t tears or anger.
It’s laughter.
It breaks free, sharp and loud, until my head is tipped back against the boathouse rubble, my braid tangled in licorice ropes.
Jack’s horrified expression cracks into a grin, and his laugh joins mine—low at first, then rich and unrestrained.
That’s all it takes.
The crowd erupts. Giggles from kids, chuckles from parents, a full belly laugh from Portia that rings over the loudspeaker.
Our masterpiece is rubble, but the joy is intact. Maybe more than intact—it’s doubled.
And for the first time in my life, losing doesn’t feel like losing at all.
INDECENT EXPOSURE
Jack
She should’ve been devastated.
Her perfect gingerbread house and my amateur boat house collapsed like a New England roof in an ice storm, gumdrops rolling across the floor, icing sliding down like sticky snow.
Instead, Audrey laughed.
Reallylaughed—head tipped back, cheeks flushed, shoulders loose. Like it didn’t matter that she’d closed the store on a busy holiday weekend all for a chance at the free advertising and prestige that winning the Gingerbread Showcase would bring her—only to have the whole town watch her bakery pride nosedive into rubble before the newspaper photographer could snap their picture.
I felt that laugh in my chest. Suspiciously close to my heart.
Even now, after we packed up the gingerbread crumbs and loaded it and the rest of the paraphernalia onto her cart and rolled through the back entrance of Making Whoopie, that same happiness still radiates off her, illuminating the dimly lit bakery.
