“Listen, maybe I can help. I want you to think of your greatest wish, right now, whatever that may be. Something you want with all of your feeling.” Nobody feels more than Hall, so whatever it is, it’s going to be powerful. A sonic boom.
I’m thinking about it, he replies. I can picture his eyes shut tight in concentration, a pinch between his brows. Loose curls on his forehead. This isn’t about me—for once, it’s about him, and only him—but a small white flame still blooms in my rib cage, hoping.
“The magic words?” I prompt, for old times’ sake.
There’s a lull, airwaves hissing and popping. I hear him draw a breath. Time clicks to a standstill, sound and oxygen and all movement, everywhere, thickening into a strange solid matter as, far, far above, a glittering substancebreathes. It feels like comfort and companionship, waiting, watching, listening. Marveling:what would the person whose role is to think only of others want for himself?
I hear the smile in his voice, scattering throughout that mist, breaking apart all over the planet and lighting it up bright and shining for one moment that is happier than any other moment has ever been. Everything that is alive must feel it; every head must turn in wonder.
“Make my wish come true,” he says.
*
Epilogue
IT TOOK Awhile for Hall to come back to me completely. He started off in a mirror.
“You’re one-dimensional!” I cried. “How do I get you out of there?”
It looked like he was standing right beside me, but whenever I turned my head, all I could see was empty space. “If you haven’t already guessed,” he announced (his visual and audio components were not yet attached to each other, so his voice emitted from the animatronic Billy Bass fish mounted to the wall), “I am the spirit of the Holiday Spirit. As in, Iusedto be the Holiday Spirit, but now I am a Real Boy, likeFrosty the Snowmanif it had the correct ending. I’ve been withdrawn from one plane of existence and resubmitted into another, as this plane is more fitting for my entity’s ability to thrive. My greatest wish was to thrive, as a human.” He cocked his head. “With you.”
Then I started to cry, so Hall tried to reach through the mirrorto hold me but he couldn’t, which madehimupset, and it was frustrating to not be able to touch each other. But at least he wasthere.
“You really want to be with me?” I blubbered, wiping my eyes.
“More than I’ve ever wanted anything,” he replied seriously. “I’ve done nothing at all since I returned but plot how to come back to you, trying to bend all the laws, hunting for loopholes. I didn’t care anymore about what I’m ostensibly meant to do, or who the universe thinks I’m supposed to be. What I am is a man in love, and you’re mine, Bettie. Nothing and no one is going to keep me from you. Not time, not legislation, not magic.”
Naturally, I began crying harder. “Get out of that mirror. I love you, too, and I want to kiss you.”
“I have a feeling we’ll have to wait a week or two while I reconstruct myself. Which is very irritating,” he replied, teeth clenched. “I’m used to instant gratification.”
I lifted the mirror off the wall and rested it on the couch. “We’ll pass the time by building suspense.”
And then he noticed the decorations left behind by Hall O’ween, so I had to explain that, along with everything else he missed (he asked me to turn on the Weather Channel and rotate his mirror). He told me what it’s been like to be outside his body, determined to return. We did a lot of staring at each other and calling each other’s faces perfect, sniffling, beaming, and finally laughing, because it was us against the universe and we won. We got to keep each other.
“Also.”
Then he revealed a folded slip of paper from his mirror-pocket. The words in the birth certificate were flipped backward in the glass, but I know him so well that I could have guessed, anyway.
“Hall Monica Bettie.”
“I thought I’d need some documentation. A forged birthcertificate and ID, so that Cracker Barrel will hire me. They’re putting one of those in Springhedge, did you hear? A few well-placed whisperings in the ears of sleeping entrepreneurs has worked out nicely for me.”
“You gave yourself Bettie as a last name.”
“Of course!” That warmth I’d been missing began to radiate again, but this time it was radiating fromme. I felt myself glowing from within, and I knew from the glimmer in his eyes that were almost all the way brown with only the thinnest band of green in his left, that my light had reached him. “It’s the best name I could think of.Bettiehas all my favorite things in it.”
The following day, he left the mirror and appeared as a low-lying mist that hovered in my living room. Which was alarming for me but absolutely terrifying for the FedEx delivery man, who saw it all happen through the window and who now leaves my packages on the farthest step from the house.
Slowly, as the days of the new year passed, Hall absorbed more and more of the physical world and his form began to take shape. It was an arduous process that took all of his concentration, so I sat by quietly for moral support whenever I was at home and, to avoid distracting him, spent a lot of time at work or at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. He built up his matter out of his surroundings: he took the color of the coffee table for his irises, crafting his hands from the smoke of a candle. Piece by piece, Hall was reaccumulated, nearly identical to the old Hall but painstakingly constructed into a specimen that could not be easily wiped away by a magic clock ticking down to goodbye. He is no longer a feeling, a larger purpose. What he likes to say, whenever I ask him “What are you?”, is:
“Well, I am yours, of course.”
By the end of the weeklong transformation, Hall had disentangled himself from the magic, pushing it back out into the atmosphere where it belongs. At the time, I was walking home from work late in the evening and from a block away, I noticed the lights in my house were all on. I ran down the street, threw open the front door, and there he was, standing next to the fireplace waiting for me. I dropped my purse to the floor, tears filling up my eyes as I stared. I heard myself whisper, “Hey, there.”
He was Hall, but different. I didn’t realize until he’d become human all the ways in which he was once supernatural: How his clothes never wrinkled before, and his shoelaces never came untied. How, when he doesn’t have his grooming choices set on autocorrect, he develops a five o’clock shadow.
He bit his lip, lopsided smile stunning as always, holding a bough of faux mistletoe over his head in invitation.
