Page 27 of A DIY Christmas Miracle
“Remind us to share our list of forbidden words with you,” Josh said and reached for the carton of eggnog. Instead of refilling his glass, he opened the carton and drank straight from it. “There are certain words you have to avoid at all costs, otherwise these two” — he pointed at Eli and Cassy, who’d just come back to the living room with a laptop and HDMI cable in hand — “go crazy. You’ll remember after watching the third Barbie movie.”
“Hey!” Cassy gave her boyfriend a hard look. “Watch your tongue or you can have the second bunk bed in Marc’s room.Barbie in The Nutcrackeris a classic!”
“More like a classic instrument of torture,” Jack grumbled quietly enough that neither Eli nor Cassy could hear him.
As the opening credits rolled a mere thirty seconds later, I couldn’t help but wonder why the hell we were watching a… kids’ movie, and why no one had bothered putting up more of a fight.
“Sooo… you like ballet?” Eli asked after leaving our en suite bathroom.
He didn’t seem to have any trouble walking a straight line, surprisingly. Strange. For some reason, I’d expected him to be drunk or at least a bit tipsy. But he appeared to be completely sober — yet he’d suggested watching a… Barbie movie.
I still didn’t understand the reasoning behind that one.
“Will?”
“Huh?”
“Do you like ballet?” Eli dropped down on the comforter next to me, then started the tedious act of pulling said comforter out from under him without having to get up again.
“Not really,” I confessed while watching him bemusedly. Maybe he wasn’t that sober after all. Maybe he was just not drunk enough for the alcohol to affect his sense of balance. Or his ability to speak.
“If you don’t really like ballet, why did you suggest watching a ballet performance?”
“Why did you suggest watching a…a Barbie interpretation of that very ballet instead?” I answered, not willing to talk about my father and his antics yet again. I’d already told Eli far too much on our first evening here. But when he looked at me with his big eyes, I just couldn’t help but give him exactly what he wanted.
“First me, then you, okay?” Eli said, pulling the last corner of the comforter out from under him with a jerk, the sudden movement making him topple over and fall into the pillows face first.
“Are you okay?” I asked. A chuckle was trying to escape my throat, but I stifled it, just in case he’d hurt himself again.
“Mhmm,” Eli said, turning his head to the side and staring up at me. “I’ll do it the traditional way next time by pulling the comforter backbeforeclimbing into bed.”
“Good idea.” The laughter bubbled out of me after all, and I couldn’t stop it for the life of me.
Eli pouted at me, pushing out his plush lower lip in mock offense. “Are you going to listen to my answer, or do you want to keep laughing at me?”
“Option one.”
“Okay.” He nodded, then shrugged with the one shoulder he wasn’t lying on. “It’s not really an interesting story. Actually, it’s not really a story at all. Just a tradition.”
“A tradition?”
“Yeah.” Ely nodded again. “Just like you’re reading Charles Dickens every year, Cassy and I watchBarbie in The Nutcrackerevery Christmas.”
“But why?”
“Why not? The movie is cute. And I like the movie. Cassy and I were… seven or eight the first time we watched it. We’ve been best friends since first grade, you know? We’re more like siblings than friends. We were living on the same street and got on at the same bus stop, and on the second day of school she plopped down next to me and told me I was going to be her best friend. And… I’ve been ever since. We did everything together and had sleepovers at each other’s houses, like, all the time. And one time there was this Barbie movie on TV.” Eli grinned at me. “It was… so magical. We both thought so and started fighting over which one of us was more like Barbie.”
As I listened to Eli’s story, I could see him in front of my inner eye, a small child with silvery-blond hair, hands on his hips, insisting he was the better Barbie. It was completely ridiculous because one: I’d never even seen a childhood photo of him, and two: this silvery-blond definitely wasn’t his natural hair color, and I highly doubted he’d been allowed to bleach his hair as a first grader.
“Anyway. We loved the movie… and the next one after that. And the one after that.” Eli’s smile turned devious. “Jack hated it. You know, back then, Jack and Cassy had to share a TV and Jack absolutely despised the Barbie movies because he was too old and cool for them… and probably still is. By the time we realized just how much watching those movies annoyed him, Cassy and I were thirteen and… well… we only watched Barbie movies every chance we got just to fuck with him.”
“You were devious little monsters.” I shook my head but couldn’t help a smile. I could only imagine Eli and Cassy at thirteen, giggling and taking great pleasure in annoying Jack. Actually, not much had changed.
“I’d rather say we fulfilled our sibling duties.” Eli winked at me… probably. It was hard to say, since only one of his eyes was visible while the other one was covered by his pillow. “Okay, now you know our boring story. But why did you want to watch a ballet performance ofThe Nutcrackerif you don’t even like ballet?”
“It was just a suggestion.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Eli waved it off. “But if you suggest something, that usually means you want to do it. Soo…”
