Hannah
On the morning of Christmas Eve, I texted Lennox before I even went downstairs. Before I even sat up. I wanted to wish her a Merry Christmas, even if it wasn't quite the right day. I couldn’t believe that in the span of ten days I had met someone who understood me better than anyone had, made them become my friend, and then scared them away. She will get over it. It’s not your fault those dicks showed up at the zoo.
I scrolled through my phone to see who had reached out to me so far. The answer turned out to be no one. My dad hadn’t even called once for the standard, stiff ‘how’s your break?’ phone call.
After over a decade of his flighty, in and out parenting method, I knew I should just let it go; he wasn’t ever going to change and suddenly morph into father of the year. Even as I knew that, though, there was some part of me stuck in the hope that optics would compel him: surely he wouldn’t skip a phone call to his own daughter on Christmas. Surely he’d know what an ass he’d look like if he did that. The thing is, though, you can’t really think about how it will look if you ignore someone when you can’t even bring yourself to remember that person exists. With an inhale that was more of a whistling gasp than the steady, meditative breath it was meant to be, I gripped the edge of my kitchen counter.
Cookies.
I would bake Christmas cookies for my friends, Lennox included, and would then have a built in excuse to stop by and see her without looking stalkerish. Well, realistically I would probably look a bit like a stalker, I told myself, but at least it would be an excuse other than just wanting to nose around and see why she wasn’t returning my texts.
I just couldn’t figure out why she was so angry. It felt like she was blaming me more for her own feelings than anything, like it was my fault that she was gay and mad about it.
I walked over to the fridge and pulled out the eggs, thinking I’d go with classic chocolate chip for my first batch and see where it went. I liked baking, liked the precision of the ingredients and the way everything always turned out as long as you followed every step the way you were supposed to. More things should be like that: they should go well if you do everything right. Instead, most things were more like my fight with Lennox; you could do what you thought was right for you, what you believed made the most sense, and still end up with a huge mess.
With narrowed eyes, I inventoried all the ingredients I had lined up across the counter to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. Everything accounted for, I began mixing dry ingredients and wet ones, combining, and stirring. The only part I hated was measuring the flour; ever since I was a little kid, I’d hated the way flour felt on my hands. Dry, but also somehow chalklike, it left this grit on my skin that made me forcibly cringe. Then it would settle into your nails and fly around in the air, causing your nose to itch. Hated it.
Ten minutes after lining the trays, I pulled my first batch. They were perfect: fluffy and golden brown with little drops of melted chocolate dancing across their surfaces. I couldn’t wait to bite into one while I filled my Christmas tins with my homemade goodies.
Despite the 32-degree weather and the wind that was whipping my skin, my hands were sweating as I grabbed the red glitter box filled with her Christmas cookies. Am I really doing this? Am I really just going to show up at her door the day before Christmas? I couldn’t believe that I had been able to talk myself into leaving the house when Lennox probably wasn’t even going to talk to me, but I couldn’t handle the silence I was still receiving from her. I sat by the phone all night the evening before and I kept having those weird phantom phone vibrations only to be disappointed that no one was calling. Yes, I answered myself, I was doing this.
Sliding out of my car, I walked slowly up to her front door, negotiating the passage across the ice as carefully as possible. When I made it to her front door a full three minutes of slipping, duck walking later, I stood stark still as I tried to work up the nerve to accomplish my next task: knocking on the door. Eyes pinched shut, I breathed, trying to steady my nerves.
You’ve got this, I said to myself, willing myself to move. Just knock on the door. Right there underneath the wreath, just knock.
Before I could win the battle of wills, the door swung open and a Winter Wonderland was exposed: I had no clue how much effort Lennox’s parents put into this whole Christmas thing. Every surface was lined with tinsel, those tiny Christmas village figures were on every available surface, and the house smelled so strongly of cinnamon that it was like red hots had been boiled on the stive for the previous week.
Lennox led me to her room and we barely got through the door before I started my desperate appeal to fix our argument.
"Why are you so mad at me?" I asked. "I know things went really wrong, but I don't don't know those boys. It's not like I told them to be there."
“Is that what you think? You think I’m mad at you because I blame you for those guys showing up? I don’t blame you,” she said. I could see the anger across her face in the way she didn’t blow the hair from her eyes even though it was hanging directly across her vision.
“So, what then?” I asked and I shoved my hands into my pockets in frustration. “What did I do wrong?”
What happened next made me jump. Not a figurative jump; my feet actually left the floor. Lennox whirled around and yelled at me.
“Do you not understand that wasn’t a game? That was actual danger,” she choked out and a sob escaped her lips. She was crying, big, fat tears rolling down her ivory cheeks. “Those were the boys from my school. The ones who . . .”
She choked again, a gurgling noise rising in the back of her throat. She literally couldn’t bring herself to form the words. The realization hit me like a gut punch. That first day when I’d come to this spot, when we’d sat on her bed and she’d told me about the boys back home who had grabbed her, who’d tried to pull her away with them. Those were the same boys that we’d seen at the zoo.
I took a step towards her and placed my hand on her wrist. “Oh my God,” I said. “I didn’t know.” I shook my head, my thoughts coming in jumbles. I was having trouble making sense of my own racing brain and the words poured out before I could stop them: “Isn’t that a good thing, in a way? If it was those same old boys, at least it wasn’t like someone else harassing you. If it’s just two boys, who cares?”
She shook her head and walked over to her bedroom door. As suddenly as the tears had started, they stopped leaving a drying trail glistening on her face. As quickly as she’d let me get a glimpse of who she was and what she’d felt, she’d slammed the door back shut, turned the lock, and thrown away the key. With a hand on the knob, she answered: “If you don't understand this, I don’t think I can explain it to you.”
We looked at each other for a long moment and I wished once again that I could read the emotions in her stoic eyes. She gave so little away, but I wanted so much to understand her. I looked down at the bed where I had flung the box of Christmas cookies, and for just half a second, a spiteful part of me thought about snatching them back from her. Why should she benefit from my delicious labor?
“Lennox,” I tried one more time, “Let me in. I’m your friend. We can get past this.” Don’t beg, I scolded myself, hating how much I was exposing to her as I stood there in my stupid coat, gripping myself like her house wasn’t an oven. If she wants to throw you away, just let her, I told myself. And then I did. With a final shake of my head, I stormed from her room and jerked the door out of her grip as I slammed it behind me. I didn’t even care about her parents hearing and thinking I was a jerk. All I could think about was getting away from her.