Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances

deal with a snowy slope. And for all who toil behind the facade of a corporate monolith, for every person who has to say grande latte
three thousand times a day, for every soul who's ever had to deal with a broken credit card reader in the holiday rush . . . this one is
for you.

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Chapter One
I
t was the night before Christmas.
Well, to be more precise, it was the afternoon before Christmas. But before I take you into the beating
heart of the action, let’s get one thing out of the way. I know from experience that if it comes up later, it
will distract you so much that you won’t be able to concentrate on anything else I tell you.
My name is Jubilee Dougal. Take a moment and let it sink in.
See,  when  you  get  it  up  front,  it’s  not  that  bad.  Now  imagine  I  was  halfway  through  some  long  story
(like I’m about to be), and I dropped that one on you. “By the way, my name is Jubilee.” You wouldn’t
know what to do next.
I realize Jubilee is a bit of a stripper name. You probably think I have heard the call of the pole. But no.
If you saw me, you’d get the idea pretty quickly that I’m not a stripper (I think). I have a little black bob. I
wear  glasses  half  the  time,  and  contacts  the  other  half.  I’m  sixteen,  I  sing  in  choir,  I  attend  Mathletes
events. I play field hockey, which lacks the undulating, baby-oiled grace that is the stripper’s stock and
trade. (I have no problem with strippers, in case any strippers are reading this. I’m just not one. My major
concern, stripage-wise, is the latex. I think latex is probably bad for your skin because it doesn’t allow it
to breathe.)
My objection is that Jubilee isn’t a name—it’s some kind of a party. No one knows what  kind.  Have
you  ever  heard  of  someone  throwing  a  jubilee?  And  if  you  did,  would  you  go?  Because  I  wouldn’t.  It
sounds  like  something  where  you  have  to  rent  a  large  inflatable  object,  put  up  bunting,  and  make  a
complicated plan for trash disposal.
Come to think of it, it might be interchangeable with hoedown.
My name has a lot to do with this story, and like I said, it was the afternoon before Christmas. I was
having one of those days when you feel that life . . . likes you. Finals were over and school was done until
New Year’s. I was alone in our house, which was feeling very cozy and snug. I was dressed for the night
in a new outfit I’d saved for—a black skirt, tights, a sparkly red T-shirt, and my new black boots. I was
drinking a little eggnog latte that I’d cooked up for myself. All my presents were wrapped and ready to
go. It was all leading up to the big event: at six, I was supposed to go to Noah’s house—Noah Price, my
boyfriend—for his family’s annual Christmas Eve Smorgasbord.
The Price Family Annual Smorgasbord is a big deal in our personal history. It was how we got together
in the first place. Before the Smorgasbord, Noah Price was just a star in my sky . . . constant, familiar,
bright, and far above me. I’d known Noah since the fourth grade, but it felt like I knew him in the same
way that I know people on television. I knew the name. I watched the show. Sure, Noah was a bit closer
than that . . . but somehow when it’s real, when it’s your life . . . that person can feel even farther off and
more unobtainable than an actual celebrity. Proximity doesn’t breed familiarity.
I had always liked him, but it never really occurred to me to like him, like him. I never thought that was
a reasonable thing to want. He was a year older than me, a foot taller, broad of shoulder, bright of eye,
and  floppy  of  hair.  Noah  was  the  whole  package—athlete,  academic,  school-government  bigwig—the
kind  of  person  you  think  must  only  date  models  or  spies  or  people  who  have  laboratories  named  after
them.
So when Noah invited me to come along to El Smorgasbord on Christmas Eve last year, I more or less
ruptured  an  eye  in  my  excitement  and  confusion.  I  couldn’t  walk  straight  for  three  days  when  I  got  the
invitation. It was so bad that I actually had to consciously practice walking in my room before I went to

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his house. I  had no idea  if he had  asked me because  he liked  me, or if  his mom made  him (our parents
know  each  other),  or  because  he  lost  a  bet.  All  my  friends  were  just  as  excited,  but  they  seemed  to
understand it more than I did. They assured me that he had been eyeing me in Mathletes, laughing at my
attempts at trigonometry jokes, bringing me up in conversation.
It  was  all  so  crazy  .  .  .  as  weird  as  finding  out  that  someone  had  written  a  book  about  my  life  or
something.
When  I  got  there,  I  spent  most  of  the  night  safely  propped  up  in  a  corner  talking  to  his  sister,  who
(though I love her) is not exactly deep. There is only so much you can say about your favorite brands of
hoodies  before  you  feel  the  conversational  walls  closing  in.  But  she  can  go  like  a  champion.  Elise  has
some Thoughts on the Subject.
I finally took a break just as Noah’s mom was setting out another plate and I could make the Oh-excuse-
me-but-doesn’t-that-look-good excuse. I had no idea what was on it, but it turned out to be pickled fish. I
was backing away, but his mom said, “You have to try a piece.”
Being a bit of a lemming, I did. But this time, it worked out, because that’s when I noticed that Noah
was  watching  me.  He  said,  “I’m  so  glad  you  took  some.”  I  asked  him  why,  because  I  really  think  I
suspected it was all a bet. (“Okay, I’ll ask her to come, but you guys have to give me twenty bucks if I can
make her eat pickled fish.”)
And he said, “Because I’ve been eating it.”
I was still standing there with what I assume was a very enchanting expression of total stupidity etched
on my face, so he added, “And I couldn’t kiss you unless you’d had some, too.”
Which is both gross and breathtakingly romantic. He could always have just gone upstairs and brushed
his teeth, but he stayed and lurked by the fish for me. We snuck off to the garage, where we made out under
the shelf of power tools. That was the start of it all.
So, the particular Christmas Eve I’m about to tell you about wasn’t just any Christmas Eve: this was
our one-year anniversary. It was almost impossible to believe it had been a year. It had all gone by so
fast. . . .
See,  Noah  is  always  really  busy.  When  he  emerged  into  the  world,  tiny  and  wriggling  and  pink,  he
probably  had  to  get  footprinted  and  out  of  the  hospital  as  quickly  as  possible  to  get  to  a  meeting.  As  a
senior, a member of the soccer team, and president of the student council, his time had been whittled away
to almost nothing. I think in the year that we had been dating we had had about a dozen proper dates with
just  Noah  and  me  going  somewhere  by  ourselves.  About  once  a  month.  We’d  had  plenty  of  joint
appearances.  Noah  and  Jubilee  at  the  student-council  bake  sale!  Noah  and  Jubilee  at  the  soccer-team
raffle table! Noah and Jubilee at the food drive, in the tutoring room, at the homecoming-organizational
meeting . . .
Noah  was  aware  of  this.  And  though  tonight  was  a  family  event  with  many  people  in  attendance,  he
promised me there would be time just for us. He had made sure of it by helping out in advance. If we put
in  two  hours  at  the  party,  he  promised,  we  could  escape  to  the  back  room  and  exchange  our  gifts  and
watch  The  Grinch  Who  Stole  Christmas  together.  He  would  drive  me  home,  and  we  would  stop  for  a
while. . . .
And then, of course, my parents got arrested, and all of that went to hell.
Do you know the Flobie Santa Village? The Flobie Santa Village is such a big part of my life that I just
assume everyone knows what it is, but I’ve been told recently that I make way too many assumptions, so
I’ll explain.
The Flobie Santa Village is a series of collectable ceramic pieces that you can put together to form a
town. My parents have been collecting them since the time I was born. I’ve been staring down those tiny

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plastic cobblestone streets since I was big enough to stand on my own. We have it all—the candy-cane
bridge,  Lake  Snowbegone,  the  gumdrop  shop,  the  gingerbread  bakery,  Sugarplum  Alley.  It’s  not  small,
either. My parents bought a special table to put it up on, and it takes up the center of our living room from
Thanksgiving until New Year’s. It requires seven power strips to make it all work. In order to diminish
the environmental impact, I got them to turn it off at night, but it was a struggle.
I was named after Flobie Santa Village building #4, Jubilee Hall. Jubilee Hall is the biggest building in
the  collection.  It’s  the  main  place  that  presents  are  made  and  wrapped.  It  has  colored  lights,  a  working
conveyor belt with gifts stuck to it, and little elves that turn as if they’re loading and unloading them. The
elves of Jubilee Hall each have a present glued to their hands—so what it really looks like are a bunch of
tortured beings doomed to pick up and set down the same gift over and over again until the end of time or
until the motor breaks. I remember pointing this out to my mom when I was little; she said I was missing
the  point.  Maybe  so.  We  were  clearly  coming  from  different  directions  on  this  subject,  considering  she
felt those little buildings were important enough to name her only offspring after.
People who collect the Flobie Village tend to get a little obsessed with it. There are conventions, about
a dozen serious Web sites, and four magazines. Some of them try to play it off by saying that Flobie pieces
are an investment. And they are  worth  a  lot  of  money,  it’s  true.  Especially  the  numbered  ones.  You  can
only buy those pieces at the Flobie showroom on Christmas Eve. We live in Richmond, Virginia, which is
only about fifty miles away—so every year on the night of the twenty-third, my parents leave with a car
full of blankets, chairs, and provisions and sit in line all night and wait.
Flobie used to make a hundred numbered pieces, but last year they reduced it to ten. This is when things
got bad.  One  hundred pieces  wasn’t  nearly enough,  so  when  the number  went  down to  just  one-tenth  of
that,  the  claws  came  out  and  the  fur  started  to  fly.  There  was  a  problem  last  year  when  people  tried  to
hold places in line—a problem that quickly turned into people smacking each other with rolled-up Flobie
catalogs,  throwing  cookie  tins,  stomping  on  each  other’s  lawn  chairs,  and  dumping  lukewarm  cocoa  on
each other’s Santa Claus–hatted heads. The fight was big enough and ridiculous enough to make the local
news.  Flobie  said  that  they  were  “taking  measures”  to  make  sure  it  didn’t  happen  again,  but  I  never
believed that. You can’t buy that kind of publicity.
But I wasn’t thinking about that when my parents drove off to get in line for piece #68, the Elf Hotel.
And I still wasn’t thinking about it when I was drinking my eggnog latte and whiling away the time until I
got to go to Noah’s. I did notice that my parents were later arriving home than usual. They usually got back
from  Flobie  around  lunchtime  on  Christmas  Eve,  and  here  it  was,  almost  four  o’clock.  I  started  doing
some  of  the  general  holiday  duties  to  keep  myself  busy.  I  couldn’t  call  Noah  .  .  .  I  knew  he  was  busy
getting ready for the Smorgasbord. So I added some extra ribbon and holly to his presents. I switched on
all the power strips that power the Flobie Santa Village, setting all the enslaved elves to work. I turned on
Christmas carols. I was just stepping outside to turn on the lights on the front of the house when I saw Sam
advancing toward our house with his storm-trooper stride.
Sam  is  our  lawyer—and  when  I  say  “our  lawyer,”  I  mean  “our  neighbor  who  happens  to  be  an
extremely  high-powered  lawyer  in  Washington,  D.C.”  Sam  is  exactly  the  person  you  want  to  take  on  a
huge corporation or to represent you when you’re being sued for a billion dollars. He is not, however, Mr.
Cuddles. I was about to invite him in to try one of my delicious eggnog lattes, but he cut me off.
“I have some bad news,” he said, ushering me into my own house. “There’s been another incident at the
Flobie showroom. Inside. Come on.”
I  thought  he  was  going  to  say  that  my  parents  had  been  killed.  He  had  that  kind  of  tone.  I  envisioned
huge piles of the Elf Hotel flying off the belt, taking down everyone in sight. I had seen pictures of the Elf
Hotel—it had sharp candy-cane spires that could easily impale someone. And if anyone was ever going to
be killed by an Elf Hotel, it would be my parents.
“They’ve been taken into custody,” he said. “They’re in jail.”

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“Who’s in jail?” I asked, because I’m not super-quick on the uptake, and because it was much easier
for me to envision my parents being taken down by a flying Elf Hotel than it was to think of them being
taken off in handcuffs.
Sam just looked at me and waited for me to catch up on my own.
“There  was  another  fight  when  the  pieces  came  out  this  morning,”  he  explained,  after  a  pause.  “An
argument  about  who  was  holding  spots  in  line.  Your  parents  weren’t  part  of  it,  but  they  didn’t  disperse
when the police told them to. They got hauled in with the others. Five people have been booked. It’s all
over the news.”
I felt my legs starting to wobble, so I sat down on the sofa.
“Why didn’t they call?” I asked.
“One phone call,” he said. “They called me, because they thought I could get them out. Which I can’t.”
“What do you mean, you can’t?”
The idea that Sam couldn’t bust my parents out of the county clink was ridiculous. It was like hearing a
pilot come over the intercom and say, “Hey, everyone. I just remembered I’m no good at landing. So I’m
just going to keep flying around until someone has a better idea.”
“I did my best,” Sam went on, “but the judge isn’t budging. He’s sick of these Flobie problems, so he’s
making an example of them all. Your parents instructed me to take you to the train station. I only have one
hour, then I have to be back for hot cookies and a sing-along at five. How quickly can you pack?”
This was delivered in the same gravelly tone of voice that Sam probably used when pounding people
on the stand about why they were seen running from the scene covered in blood. He didn’t look happy that
this task had been foisted on him on Christmas Eve. Still, a little touch of Oprah would have helped.
“Pack? Train station? What?”
“You’re going to Florida to stay with your grandparents,” he said. “Couldn’t get a flight—they’re being
canceled all over the place because of the storm.”
“What storm?”
“Jubilee,”  Sam  said  very  slowly,  having  concluded  that  I  was  the  least-aware  person  on  the  planet,
“we’re about to have the biggest storm in fifty years!”
My brain wasn’t working right—none of this was going in.
“I can’t go,” I said. “I’m supposed to see Noah tonight. And Christmas. What about Christmas?”
Sam  shrugged,  as  if  to  say  that  Christmas  was  beyond  his  control,  and  there  was  nothing  the  legal
system could do about it.
“But . . . why can’t I just stay here? This is crazy!”
“Your parents don’t want you alone for two days over the holiday.”
“I can go to Noah’s! I have to go to Noah’s!”
“Look,” he said, “it’s all arranged. We can’t reach your parents now. They’re being processed. I bought
your ticket, and I don’t have a lot of time. You’re going to have to pack now, Jubilee.”
I turned and looked at the twinkling little cityscape next to me. I could see the shadows of the doomed
elves  as  they  worked  away  in  Jubilee  Hall,  the  warm  glow  of  Mrs.  Muggin’s  Cake  Shop,  the  slow  but
merry process of the Elf Express around the little expanse of track.
The only thing I could think to ask was, “But . . . what about the village?”

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Chapter Two
I
’d never actually been on a train before. It was taller than I imagined, with second-“story” windows that
I guessed were the sleeping cars. Inside, it was dimly lit, and most of the people stuffed in there looked
catatonic. I expected the train to steam and chug and shoot off like a rocket, because I watched a lot of
cartoons in my misspent youth and that’s how cartoon trains work. This train glided off indifferently, as if
it had gotten bored with standing around.
Naturally,  I  called  Noah  the  moment  we  set  off.  This  was  a  slight  violation  of  the  I’m-going-to-be-
slammed-until-six-so-I’ll-just-see-you-at-the-party  no-call  policy,  but  never  have  circumstances  been
more  understandable.  When  he  answered,  there  was  a  cheerful  clamor  in  the  background.  I  could  hear
carols  and  the  clanking  of  dishes,  which  was  a  depressing  contrast  to  the  claustrophobic  muffle  of  the
train.
“Lee!” he said. “Kind of a bad time. See you in an hour?”
He made a little grunt. It sounded like he was lifting something heavy, probably one of the freakishly
large hams his mother always managed to get her hands on for the Smorgasbord. I presume she gets them
from some kind of experimental farm where the pigs are treated with lasers and superdrugs until they are
thirty feet long.
“Um . . . that’s the thing,” I said. “I’m not coming.”
“What do you mean, you’re not coming? What’s wrong?”
I explained the parents-in-jail/me-on-train-in-storm/life-not-really-going-as-planned situation as best I
could. I tried to keep it light, like I found it funny, mostly to keep myself from sobbing on a dark train of
stupefied strangers.
Another grunt. It sounded like he was shifting something around.
“It’ll be fine,” he said after a moment. “Sam’s taking care of it, right?”
“Well, if you mean not getting them out of jail, then yes. He doesn’t even seem worried.”
“It’s probably just some little county jail,” he replied. “It won’t be bad. And if Sam’s not worried, it’ll
be okay. I’m sorry this happened, but I’ll see you in a day or two.”
“Yes, but it’s Christmas,” I said. My voice got thick, and I choked back a tear. He gave me a moment.
“I know this is hard, Lee,” he said after a pause, “but it will be fine. It will. This is just one of those
things.”
I knew he was trying to calm me down and generally console me, but still. One of those things? This
was not one of those things. One of those things is your car breaking down or getting stomach flu or your
faulty  holiday  lights  sending  out  a  spark  and  burning  down  your  hedge.  I  said  as  much,  and  he  sighed,
realizing I was right. Then he grunted again.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, through a sniff.
“I’m  holding  a  huge  ham,”  he  said.  “I’m  going  to  have  to  go  in  a  minute.  Look,  we’ll  do  another
Christmas when you get back. I promise. We’ll find some time. Don’t worry. Call me when you get there,
okay?”
I promised I would, and he hung up and went off with his ham. I stared at the now-silent phone.
Sometimes, because I dated Noah, I empathized with people who are married to politicians. You can
tell they have their own lives, but because they love the person they are with, they end up pulled into the
juggernaut—and pretty soon, they’re waving and smiling blankly for the camera, with balloons falling on
their heads and staff members knocking them out of the way to get to the All-Important Significant Other,

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who is Perfect.
I know no one is perfect, that behind every façade of perfection is a writhing mess of subterfuge and
secret  sorrows  .  .  .  but  even  taking  that  into  account,  Noah  was  pretty  much  perfect.  I’d  never  heard
anyone say a bad word about him. His status was as unquestioned as gravity. By making me his girlfriend,
he  demonstrated  his  belief  in  me,  and  I  had  picked  up  on  his  conviction.  I  stood  straighter.  I  felt  more
confident,  more  consistently  positive,  more  important.  He  liked  being  seen  with  me;  therefore,  I  liked
being seen with me, if that makes any sense.
So, yes, his overcommittedness was a pain sometimes. But I understood. When you have to take a big
ham  to  your  mom,  for  instance,  because  sixty  people  are  about  to  descend  on  your  house  for  a
Smorgasbord. It just has to be done. The rough must be taken with the smooth. I took out my iPod and used
the remaining power to flick through some photos of him. Then the power died.
I felt so alone on that train . . . a weird, unnatural kind of alone that bore into me. It was feeling just
beyond fear and somewhere to the left of sadness. Tired, but not the kind of tired that sleep fixes. It was
dark and gloomy, and yet, it didn’t seem that things would get any better if the lights were turned up. If
anything, I would be able to get a much better look at my unpleasant situation.
I thought about calling my grandparents. They already knew I was coming. Sam told me he had called
them. They would have been happy to talk to me, but I wasn’t feeling up to it. My grandparents are great
people, but they are easily rattled. Like, if the grocery store sells out of some frozen pizza or soup they
advertise in the circular, and they’ve gone to the store just for that, they’ll stand there debating their next
move  for  a  half  an  hour.  If  I  called  them,  every  aspect  of  my  visit  would  have  to  be  discussed  to  the
smallest detail. What blanket would I need? Did I still eat crackers? Should Grandpa get more shampoo?
It was always sweet, but a little too much for my mind at the moment.
I like to think I am a problem solver. I would distract myself out of this funk. I dug into my bag to see
what  I  had  managed  to  collect  as  I  was  rushed  out  of  the  house.  I  discovered  that  I  was  woefully
unprepared  for  the  trip  ahead  of  me.  I  had  grabbed  the  bare  essentials—some  underwear,  jeans,  two
sweaters,  a  few  shirts,  my  glasses.  My  iPod  was  out  of  power.  I  had  just  one  book  with  me.  It  was