Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances

For Dad and for the lovely mountain town of Brevard, NC . . .
both chock-full of grace

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Chapter One
B
eing  me  sucked.  Being  me  on  this  supposedly  gorgeous  night,  with  the  supposedly  gorgeous  snow
looming  in  five-foot  drifts  outside  my  bedroom  window,  double-sucked.  Add  the  fact  that  today  was
Christmas, and my score was up to triple-suck. And add in the sad, aching, devastating lack of Jeb, and
ding-ding-ding! The bell at the top of the Suckage Meter couldn’t ring any louder.
Instead of jingle bells, I had suckage bells. Lovely.
Well, aren’t you a merry little figgy pudding, I said to myself, wishing Dorrie and Tegan would hurry
up and get here. I didn’t know what figgy pudding was, but it sounded like the sort of dish that sat cold
and alone at the end of the buffet table because no one wanted it. Like me. Cold and alone and probably
lumpish.
Grrrrrr. I hated feeling sorry for myself, which was why I’d called Tegan and Dorrie and begged them
to come over. But they weren’t here yet, and anyway, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for myself.
Because I missed Jeb so much.
Because our breakup, which was only a week old and as raw as an open wound, was my own stupid
fault.
Because I’d written Jeb a (pathetic?) e-mail asking him please, please, please to meet me at Starbucks
yesterday so we could talk. But he never showed up. Didn’t even call.
And  because,  after  waiting  at  Starbucks  for  nearly  two  hours,  I  hated  life  and  myself  so  much  that  I
trudged across the parking lot to Fantastic Sam’s, where I tearfully told the stylist to lop my hair off and
dye what was left of it pink. Which she did, because why did she care if I committed hair suicide?
So of course I felt sorry for myself: I was a brokenhearted, self-loathing, plucked pink chicken.
“Addie,  wow,”  Mom  had  said  yesterday  afternoon  when  I’d  finally  come  home.  “That’s  .  .  .  a  pretty
major haircut. And you got it colored. Your beautiful blonde hair.”
I  gave  her  a  why-don’t-you-shoot-me-now  look,  which  she  answered  with  a  tilted  head  warning  that
said, Watch it, sweetie. I know you’re hurting, but that doesn’t give you permission to take it out on me.
“Sorry,” I said. “I guess I’m just not used to it yet.”
“Well . . . it is a lot to get used to. What inspired you to do it?”
“I don’t know. I needed a change.”
She  put  down  her  whisk.  She  was  making  Cherries  Jubilee,  our  family’s  traditional  Christmas  Eve
dessert, and the tang of the mushed-up cherries made my eyes prickle.
“Did it by any chance have to do with what happened at Charlie’s party last Saturday?” she asked.
Heat rose to my cheeks. “I don’t know what you mean.” I blinked. “Anyway, how do you know what
happened at Charlie’s party?”
“Well, sweetie, you’ve cried yourself to sleep almost every night—”
“No, I haven’t.”
“And of course, you’ve been on the phone with either Dorrie or Tegan pretty much twenty-four/seven.”
“You’ve been listening to my calls?” I cried. “You eavesdropped on your own daughter?!”
“It’s hardly ‘eavesdropping’ if you have no choice.”
I gaped at her. She pretended to be so motherly in her Christmas apron, making Cherries Jubilee from
an old family recipe, when really she was . . . she was . . .
Well, I didn’t know what she was, just that it was wrong and bad and evil to listen in on other people’s
conversations.

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“And don’t say ‘twenty-four/seven,’” I said. “You’re too old to say ‘twenty-four/seven.’”
Mom  laughed,  which  pissed  me  off  more,  especially  since  she  then  suppressed  her  amusement  and
regarded me in that Mom-way of, She’s a teenager, poor thing. She’s bound to go through heartache.
“Oh, Addie,” she said. “Were you punishing yourself, sweetie?”
“Oh my God,” I said. “That is so not the right thing to say to someone about her new haircut!” And then
I’d fled to my room to bawl in private.
Twenty-four hours later, I was still in my room. I’d come out for Cherries Jubilee last night and for the
opening  of  presents  this  morning,  but  I  hadn’t  enjoyed  it.  I  certainly  hadn’t  been  filled  with  the  joy  and
magic of Christmas. In fact, I wasn’t sure I believed in the joy and magic of Christmas anymore.
I rolled over and grabbed my iPod from my bedside table. I selected my “Gray Day” playlist, which
was  made  up  of  every  single  melancholy  song  that  ever  existed,  and  hit  play.  My  iPenguin  gloomily
flapped her wings as “Fools in Love” hummed from her plastic body.
Then I returned to the main menu and scrolled through until I reached “Photos.” I knew I was entering
dangerous territory, but I didn’t care. I highlighted the album I wanted and punched the button to open it.
The first picture to come up was the very first picture I ever took of Jeb, snapped sneakily using my
cell  phone  a  little  over  a  year  ago.  It  had  been  snowing  that  day,  too,  and  in  the  picture,  there  were
snowflakes caught in Jeb’s dark hair. He was wearing a denim jacket even though it was freezing, and I
remember wondering if maybe he and his mom didn’t have much money. I’d heard that the two of them
had moved to Gracetown from the Cherokee Reservation, which was about a hundred miles from here. I
thought that was cool. He seemed so exotic.
Anyway, Jeb and I had sophomore English together, and he was heart-stoppingly hot with his jet-black
ponytail and smoky eyes. He was also wa-a-a-ay serious, which was a new concept for me, since I had a
tendency to be a big ol’ spaz. Every day, he bent over his desk and took notes while I snuck peeks at him,
marveling at how shiny his hair was and how his cheekbones were the most beautiful things I’d ever seen.
But he was reserved to the point of possible aloofness, even when I was my bubbliest self.
When I discussed this extremely problematic issue with Dorrie and Tegan, Dorrie suggested that maybe
Jeb felt uncomfortable in this tiny mountain town where everyone was real Southern, real Christian, and
real white.
“There’s nothing wrong with any of those things,” I said defensively, being all three.
“I know,” Dorrie said. “I’m just saying that possibly the guy feels like an outsider. Possibly.” As one of
two—count  ’em,  two—Jewish  kids  in  the  entire  high  school,  I  suppose  she  knew  what  she  was  talking
about.
Well, that got me wondering if maybe Jeb did feel like an outsider. Could that be why he ate lunch with
Nathan  Krugle,  who  was  definitely  an  outsider  with  his  all–Star  Trek,  all-the-time  T-shirt  collection?
Could that be why, in the mornings before the school was unlocked, Jeb leaned against the wall with his
hands in his pockets instead of joining the rest of us and dishing about American Idol? Could that be why
he didn’t succumb to my charms in English, because he felt too uncomfortable to open up?
The  more  I  thought  about  it,  the  more  I  worried.  Nobody  should  feel  like  an  outsider  in  their  own
school—especially not someone as adorable as Jeb, and especially since we, his fellow classmates, were
all so nice.
Well, at least me and Dorrie and Tegan and our other friends. We were very nice. The stoners weren’t
so  nice.  They  were  rude.  And  not  Nathan  Krugle,  as  Nathan  was  a  bitter  person  who  held  grudges.  I
wasn’t all that psyched about what crazy ideas Nathan might be planting in Jeb’s head, to be honest.
And then, one day as I was obsessing over all of this for the thousandth time, I shifted from worried to
huffy, because really. Why was Jeb choosing to spend time with Nathan Krugle over me?
So  that  day  in  class,  I  jabbed  him  with  my  pen  and  said,  “For  heaven’s  sake,  Jeb.  Would  you  just
smile?”

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He jumped, knocking his book to the floor, and I felt terrible. I thought, Smooth, Addie, why don’t you