Almost.
But not quite.
There’s an ever-present clock ticking in my head, reminding me that we only have five days to fix our families before we’re supposed to get married.
“LoreleiandEsme emailed me to make sure you and I would do a snow globe together!” she’s saying as she looks at her phone. I’m driving to give myself something to do that’s not staring at her and wondering if she rubbed one out in the shower before me. Though if she did, she probably wasn’t thinking about me.
“Apparently our generation hasn’t pissed each other off yet,” I say, which feels like the wrong thing to say, but I don’t know what the right thing could be.
“I don’t think we will either,” she says. “I heard somewhere that tradition is just peer pressure from dead people. I feel like that’s what this feud is. Peer pressure from dead people to keep hating each other. But screw that. Esme says there’s a prize for the best snow globe, and she also says she knows where the best leftover holiday decorations are stashed for us to use.”
Don’t be fooled by the wordsnow globe.
It’s not what you think.
It’s much, much larger.
The town of Tinsel picks a theme for holiday decorations every year. This year’s issnow globes.
Which means we’re having life-size snow globes put all over town, much like some cities do temporary installations of themed statues like cows or ducks or giant gnomes.
A few years back, an artist donated two dozen fiberglass elves for Tinsel businesses to paint with themes. I heard all about thatgingerdead elfthat Amanda’s family painted that looked like a gingerbread elf. And about how using fruitcake colors on my family’s elf made people think we were repping Wisconsin or Ohio football instead of Michigan football, which—again—was a rumor blamed onthe gingerdead family.
We put blue on our elf too,Uncle Rob kept saying.Nobody cared that we added blue.
A year after that, there was a nutcracker theme for the Jingle Bell Fest. Another year, there were reindeer. Snowmen. Snowflakes. Gingerbread men were floated as an option once, but my family shot it down.
I still hear about it anytime Jingle Bell Fest is mentioned.That gingerdead family better not try to cheat and get more marketing for themselves with the Tinsel Jingle Bell Holiday Businesses on Kringle Lane Statue Contest this year.
I slide a look at Amanda. “Do they know where the elves went?”
Her mouth goes round, and her eyes light up. “I’ll check.”
An hour later, we arrive at Reindeer Square with some bonus decorations for our snow globe in tow. At least two dozen massive globes are already littering the grass.
They look like eight-foot-tall clear beach balls.
Have to wonder how they’ll hold when covered in two feet of snow. Not that anyone’s thinking about snow when it’s still pushing ninety today.
Lorelei and Esme meet us at the edge of the parking lot.
“You made it,” Lorelei says, throwing her arms around Amanda and hugging her first.
“I told her not to go see you last night,” Esme adds with a smirk as she punches me lightly on the arm.
It’s too hot to hug, so I appreciate the gesture.
“Oh, did you stop by?” Amanda says.
And then blushes.
Amanda.
Amanda Anderson.
Thespian of the century at our high school.
Blushesat the implication that we didn’t hear my sister stop by.
