Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances

Northanger Abbey, part of my winter break reading list for English. It was good, but not exactly what you
want when you’re feeling the creeping hand of doom.
So, for about two hours, I just looked out the window as the sun set, the candy-color pink sky turned to
silver, and the first snow began to fall. I knew it was beautiful, but knowing something is beautiful and
caring  about  it  are  two  very  different  things,  and  I  didn’t  care.  The  snow  got  harder  and  faster,  until  it
filled the view and there was nothing left but white. It came from all directions at once, even blowing up
from underneath. Watching it made me dizzy and a little ill.
People were coming down the aisle with boxes of food—chips and sodas and prewrapped sandwiches.
Clearly, there was a food source somewhere on this train. Sam had shoved fifty bucks in my hand back at
the station, all fifty of which would be extracted from my parents once they were breathing free air again.
There was nothing else to do, so I got up and made my way down to the snack car, where I was promptly
informed that they were out of everything except some floppy microwaved pizza discs, two muffins, a few
candy  bars,  a  bag  of  nuts,  and  some  sad-looking  fruit.  I  wanted  to  compliment  them  on  being  so  well
prepared for  the  holiday rush,  but  the guy  working  the  counter looked  really  beaten. He  didn’t  need  my
sarcasm. I bought a pizza disc, two candy bars, the muffins, the nuts, and a hot chocolate. It seemed smart
to stock up a bit for the rest of the trip if things were going that fast. I stuffed a five-dollar bill into his
cup, and he nodded his thanks.
I took one of the empty seats at the tables braced to the wall. The train was shaking a lot now, even as
we slowed. The wind was smacking us from either side. I left the pizza untouched and burned my lips on
the chocolate. It was the most action they were going to get, after all.
“Mind if I sit here?” a voice asked.

---

I looked up to find an exceptionally beautiful guy standing over me. Again, I noticed, and again, I didn’t
really care. But he did make more of an impact than the snow. His hair was as dark as mine, meaning it
was black. It was longer than mine, though. Mine only goes just past my chin. His was pulled back in a
ponytail.  He  looked  Native  American,  with  high  cheekbones.  The  thin  denim  jacket  he  was  wearing
wasn’t nearly enough protection against the weather. There was something in his eyes, though, that really
struck a chord—he looked troubled, like he was having a hard time keeping them open. He had just gotten
himself a cup of coffee, which he was clutching kind of intently.
“Sure,” I said.
He  kept  his  head  down  when  he  sat,  but  I  noticed  him  glancing  at  all  the  food  I  had  in  the  box.
Something told me that he was a lot hungrier than me.
“Have some,” I said. “I was just getting stuff before they sold out. I’m not even that hungry. I haven’t
touched this pizza at all.”
There was a moment of resistance, but I pushed it forward.
“I realize it looks like a pizza coaster,” I added. “It was all they had. Really. Take it.”
He smiled a little. “I’m Jeb,” he said.
“I’m Julie,” I answered. I wasn’t in the mood to go through the “Jubilee? Your name is Jubilee?  Tell
me, what do you use for your routine—baby oil or some kind of nut oil? And does someone wipe down
the pole after each use?” conversation. Everything I explained to you in the beginning. Most people call
me Julie. Noah called me Lee.
“Where are you headed?” he asked.
I had no cover story for my parents or why I was here. The full truth was a little too much to throw at a
stranger.
“Going to see my grandparents,” I said. “Kind of last-minute change of plan.”
“Where  do  they  live?”  he  asked,  looking  at  the  swirling  snow  that  was  beating  at  the  window  of  the
train.  It  was  impossible  to  tell  where  the  sky  ended  and  the  ground  began.  The  snow  cloud  had  crash-
landed on top of us.
“Florida,” I said.
“Long way. I’m just going to Gracetown, next stop.”
I nodded. I’d heard of Gracetown but had no idea where it was. Somewhere on this long, snowy path
between me and nowhere. I offered the box of food to him again, but he shook his head.
“That’s okay,” he said. “But thanks for the pizza. I was kind of starving. We picked a bad day to travel.
Guess there’s not a lot of choice, though. Sometimes you just have to do stuff you aren’t sure about. . . . ”
“Who are you going to see?” I asked.
He turned his gaze back down and folded up the plate the pizza disc had come on.
“I’m going to see my girlfriend. Well, kind of girlfriend. I’ve been trying to call her, but I can’t get a
signal.”
“I  have  one,”  I  said,  pulling  out  my  phone.  “Use  mine.  I’m  not  even  close  to  using  my  minutes  this
month.”
Jeb took the phone with a wide smile. As he got up, I noticed just how tall and broad-shouldered he
was. If I wasn’t so completely devoted to Noah, I would have been deeply smitten. He crossed the few
feet, just to a spot by the other side. I watched him try the number, but he clicked the phone shut without
ever speaking.
“I couldn’t get her,” he said, sitting back down and returning my phone.
“So,” I said, smiling. “This is, kind of your girlfriend? You still aren’t sure if you’re dating yet?”
I  remembered  those  times  well,  when  Noah  and  I  first  got  together,  and  I  wasn’t  sure  if  I  was  his
girlfriend. I was so deliciously nervous all the time.
“She cheated on me,” he said plainly.

---

Oh, I’d misread that. Badly. I felt the pang for him, right in the middle of my chest. I really did.
“It’s not her fault,” he said after a moment. “Not all of it. I . . . ”
I never got to hear what had happened, because the door of the car flew open, and there was a screech,
kind  of  like  the  sound  that  Beaker—the  horrible,  oily  cockatoo  we  had  as  a  fourth-grade  pet—used  to
make.  Beaker  was  the  bird  Jeremy  Rich  taught  to  scream  the  word  ass.  Beaker  loved  to  screech  and
scream the word ass, and he did it really well. You could hear him all the way down the hall in the girls’
room. Beaker eventually got moved to the teachers’ lounge, where I guess you’re allowed to spread your
greasy feathers and scream “ass” all you like.
It  wasn’t  ass-screaming  Beaker,  though.  It  was  fourteen  girls  in  matching,  form-fitting  sweats,  all  of
which read
RIDGE CHEERLEADING
on the butt. (A form of ass-screaming, I suppose.) Each had her name on
the  back  of  her  sleek  warm-up  fleece.  They  clustered  around  the  snack  bar,  yelling  at  the  top  of  their
lungs. I really hoped and prayed that they wouldn’t all say “Oh my God!” at once, but my prayers were not
heard, maybe because God was busy listening to all of them.
“There is no lean protein,” I heard one of them say.
“I told you, Madison. You should have had that lettuce wrap when you had the chance.”
“I thought they’d at least have chicken breast!”
To my enduring dismay, I noticed that both girls having this conversation were named Madison. Worse:
three  of  the  others  were  named  Amber.  I  felt  like  I  was  trapped  in  a  social  experiment  gone  wrong—
maybe something involving replicants.
A few of the group turned on us. I mean, to us. They turned to me and Jeb. Well, actually they just turned
to Jeb.
“Oh my God!” said one of the Ambers. “Is this not the worst trip ever? Did you see the snow?”
She  was  a  sharp  one,  this  Amber.  What  would  she  notice  next?  The  train?  The  moon?  The  hilarious
vagaries of human existence? Her own head?
I didn’t say any of that, because death by cheerleader is not really the way I want to go. Amber wasn’t
addressing  this  to  me,  anyway.  Amber  had  no  idea  I  was  even  there.  Her  eyes  were  on  Jeb.  You  could
almost  see  the  robotic  core  in  her  corneas  making  all  the  focusing  adjustments  and  lining  him  in  the
crosshairs.
“It’s pretty bad,” he said politely.
“We’re going down to Florida?”
She said it like that, like a question.
“Should be nicer there,” he said.
“Yeah. If we make it. We’re all at cheerleading regionals? Which is rough, because it’s the holidays?
But we all had Christmas early? We did ours yesterday?”
This  is  when  I  noticed  that  they  all  seemed  to  be  carrying  really  new-looking  stuff.  Shiny  phones,
conspicuous  bracelets  and  necklaces  that  they  played  with,  fresh  manicures,  iPods  I’d  never  even  seen
before.
Amber One sat down with us—a careful sit, with her knees angled together and her heels turned out. A
perky sitting pose of someone used to being the most adorable in the general vicinity.
“This is Julie,” Jeb said, kindly introducing me to our new friend. Amber told me her name was Amber,
and  then  rattled  off  all  the  Ambers  and  Madisons.  There  were  other  names,  but  to  me,  they  were  all
Ambers and Madisons. Seemed safe to think of it that way. I had at least a chance of being right.
Amber began chatting away, telling us all about the competition. She did this amazing thing where she
included  me  in  the  conversation  and  ignored  me  at  the  same  time.  Plus,  she  was  sending  me  a  mental
message—deeply subliminal—that she wanted me to get up and give my seat over to her tribe. They filled
every available bit of space in the car as it was. Half of them on the phone, the other half depleting the
water, coffee, and Diet Coke supply.

---

I decided that this was not what I needed to make my life complete.
“I’m going to go back to my seat,” I said.
Just as I stood, though, the train slowed dramatically, throwing us all forward in one big splash of hot
and cold liquids. The wheels cried out in protest as they dragged down the track for about a minute, and
then we stopped, hard. I heard luggage all up and down the train thundering down from racks, and then
people falling where they stood. People like me. I landed on a Madison and slammed my chin and cheek
on something. I’m not sure what it was, because the lights went out at the same moment, causing a massive
yelp of dismay. I felt hands helping me up, and I didn’t need to be able to see to know it was Jeb.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Fine. I think.”
There was a flicker, and then the lights came back up one by one. Several Ambers were clinging to the
snack  bar  for  dear  life.  There  was  food  all  over  the  floor.  Jeb  reached  down  and  picked  up  what  was
once  his  phone,  now  a  neatly  snapped  two-piece  affair.  He  cradled  it  in  his  hand  like  an  injured  baby
bird.
The  loudspeaker  crackled,  and  the  voice  that  spoke  over  it  sounded  genuinely  rattled—not  the  cool,
bossy tone they were using to announce stops along the way.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” it said, “please remain calm. A conductor will be checking your cabin to see
if anyone has been injured.”
I pressed my face against the cold window to see what was going on. We had come to rest next to what
looked like a wide road with lots of lanes, something like an interstate. Across the way was a glowing
yellow sign, suspended high over the road. It was hard to see through the snow, but I recognized the color
and  shape.  It  was  for  a  Waffle  House.  Just  outside  of  the  train,  a  crew  member  was  stumbling  along
through the snow, looking under the carriage with a flashlight.
A female conductor threw open the door to our car and started surveying everyone. She was missing
her hat.
“What’s happening?” I asked when she reached us. “We look really stuck.”
She leaned down and had a good look out the window, then gave a low whistle.
“We’re not going anywhere, honey,” she said in a low voice. “We’re just outside of Gracetown. The
track  dips  down  below  this  point,  and  it’s  completely  covered.  Maybe  they  can  send  some  emergency
vehicles to get us by morning. I don’t know, though. I wouldn’t bet on it. Anyway, you hurt?”
“I’m okay,” I assured her.
Amber One was holding her wrist.
“Amber!” another Amber said. “What happened?”
“I twisted it,” Amber One moaned. “Bad.”
“That’s your support wrist on basket toss!”
Six cheerleaders indicated (not subliminally) that they wanted me to move out of the way so that they
could get to their wounded member and sit her down. Jeb was trapped in the throng. The lights went dim,
the heater audibly cranked down, and the loudspeaker came back on.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the voice said, “we’re going to cut a bit of power to conserve energy. If you
have blankets or sweaters, you may want to use them now. If any of you require extra warmth, we’ll try to
provide whatever we can. If you have extra layering, we ask that you share it.”
I  looked  at  the  yellow  sign  again,  and  then  back  at  the  cluster  of  cheerleaders.  I  had  two  choices—I
could stay here in the cold, dark, stranded train or I could actually do something. I could take charge of
this day that had run away from me too many times. It wouldn’t be hard to get across the road and over to
the Waffle House. They probably had heat and lots of food. It was worth a shot, and it was a plan I felt
Noah would have approved of. Proactive. I gently pushed my way through the Ambers to get to Jeb.
“There’s a Waffle House across the street,” I told him. “I’m going to go over and see if it’s open.”

---

“A Waffle House?” Jeb replied. “We must be just outside of town, along I-40.”
“Don’t be crazy,” Amber One said. “What if the train leaves?”
“It’s  not,”  I  said.  “The  conductor  just  told  me.  We’re  stuck  here  all  night.  Over  there,  they  probably
have heat and food and a place for people to move around. What else are we going to do?”
“We could practice our enthusiasm rounds,” one of the Madisons ventured in a tiny voice.
“You’re going by yourself?” Jeb asked. I could tell he wanted to come, but Amber was leaning on him
now like her life depended on him.
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “It’s just across the street. Give me your phone number and . . . ”
He held up the broken phone as a grim reminder. I nodded and picked up my backpack.
“I won’t be long,” I said. “I have to come back, right? Where else am I going to go?”

---

Chapter Three
P
eeking  out  of  the  cold  vestibule,  which  was  slicked  with  snow  from  the  open  train  door,  I  could  just
about  see  the  crew  members  stalking  alongside  the  train  with  their  flashlights.  They  were  a  few  cars
away, so I made my move.
The metal steps were steep, high, and completely covered in frozen snow. Plus, the gap from the train
to  the  ground  was  about  four  feet.  I  sat  on  the  wet  bottom  step,  snow  pouring  on  my  head,  and  pushed
myself off as carefully as I could. I fell on all fours into more than a foot of snow, soaking my tights, but it
wasn’t too painful. I didn’t have far to go. We were right next to the road, only twenty feet or so. All I had
to do was get down to that, cross, walk under the overpass, and I would be there. It would only take a
minute or two.
I’ve  never  crossed  a  six-lane  interstate  before.  The  opportunity  had  never  come  up,  and  if  it  had,  it
would have seemed like a bad idea. But there were no cars at all. It felt like the end of the world, a whole
new  start  to  life,  the  old  order  gone.  It  took  about  five  minutes  to  walk  across,  since  the  wind  was
blowing so hard and flakes kept landing in my eyes. Once I got over, I had to cross some other stretch of
something. It could have been grass or cement or more road—now it was just white and deep. Whatever it
was, there was a curb buried in it, which I tripped over. I was drenched in snow by the time I made it to
the door.
It  was  warm  inside  the  Waffle  House.  In  fact,  it  was  so  overheated  that  the  windows  had  steamed,
causing  the  large  plastic  holiday  decals  stuck  to  them  to  droop  and  peel  away.  Soft  jazz  Christmas
standards blew out through the speakers, joyful as an allergy attack. The predominant smells were floor
cleaner  and  overused  cooking  oil,  but  there  was  a  hint  of  promise.  Potatoes  and  onions  had  been  fried
here not long ago—and they had been good.
People-wise,  the  situation  wasn’t  much  better.  From  deep  in  the  kitchen,  I  heard  two  male  voices,
interspersed  with  slapping  sounds  and  laughing.  There  was  a  woman  lingering  in  a  cloud  of  her  own
misery in the farthest corner, an empty plate dotted with cigarette butts in front of her. The only employee
in  sight  was  a  guy,  probably  about  my  age,  standing  guard  at  the  cash  register.  His  regulation  Waffle
House shirt was long and untucked, and his spiky hair stuck out of the low-hanging visor on his head. His
name tag read
DON-KEUN
. He was reading a graphic novel when I came in. My entrance brought a little
light into his eyes.
“Hey,” he said. “You look cold.”
It was well observed. I nodded in reply.
Boredom had eaten at Don-Keun. You could hear it in his voice, see it in the way he slouched over the
register in defeat. “Everything’s free tonight,” he said. “You can have whatever you want. Orders from the
cook and the acting assistant manager. Both of those are me.”
“Thanks,” I said.
I think he was about to say something else, but then just flinched in embarrassment as the slap fight in
the back grew louder. There was a newspaper and several coffee cups in front of one of the counter seats.
I  went  over  to  take  a  seat  a  few  spaces  down,  in  an  effort  to  be  somewhat  social.  As  I  sat,  Don-Keun
made a sudden lurch in my direction.
“Um, you might not want to—”
He cut himself off and retreated a step as someone emerged from the direction of the restrooms. It was
a  man,  maybe  sixty  years  old,  with  sandy  hair,  a  little  bit  of  a  beer  gut,  and  glasses.  Oh,  and  he  was

---

dressed in tinfoil. Head to toe. Even had a little tinfoil hat. Like you do.
Tinfoil Guy took the seat with the newspaper and the cups and gave me a nod of greeting before I could
move.
“How are you on this night?” he asked.
“I  could  be  better,”  I  replied  honestly.  I  didn’t  know  where  to  look—at  his  face  or  his  shiny,  shiny
silver body.
“Bad night to be out.”
“Yeah,” I said, choosing his shiny, shiny abdomen as my point of focus. “Bad.”
“You don’t happen to need a tow?”
“Not unless you tow trains.”
He thought that over for a moment. It’s always awkward when someone doesn’t realize you’re joking
and devotes thought time to what you’ve said. Double that when the person is wearing tinfoil.
“Too big,” he finally replied, shaking his head. “Won’t work.”
Don-Keun shook his head as well and gave me a back-away-while-you-can—it-is-too-late-to-save-me
look.
I smiled and tried to develop a sudden and all-consuming interest in the menu. It only seemed right to
order something. I scanned it over and over, as if I just couldn’t decide between the waffle sandwich or
the hash browns covered in cheese.
“Have some coffee,” Don-Keun said, coming over and handing me a cup. The coffee was completely
burned and had a rank smell, but this was not the time to be picky. I think he was just offering me backup,
anyway.
“You said you were on a train?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, pointing out the window. Both Don-Keun and Tinfoil Guy turned to look, but the storm
had picked up. The train was invisible.
“No,” Tinfoil Guy said again. “Trains won’t work.”
He adjusted his tin cuffs to punctuate this remark.
“Does that help?” I asked, finally feeling the need to mention the obvious.
“Does what help?”
“That stuff. Is it like that stuff runners have to wear when they finish marathons?”
“Which stuff?”
“The tinfoil.”
“What tinfoil?” he asked.
On that, I abandoned both politeness and Don-Keun and went and sat by the window, watching the pane
shudder as the snow and wind hit it.
Far away, the Smorgasbord was at full tilt. All the food would be out by this point: the freakish hams,
multiple  turkeys,  meatballs,  potatoes  baked  in  cream,  rice  pudding,  cookies,  the  four  kinds  of  pickled
fish . . .
In other words, this would be a bad time to call Noah. Except he had told me to call when I got there.
This was as far as I was getting.
So I called, and was immediately shuffled off to voice mail. I hadn’t planned out what I was going to
say or what kind of attitude I was going to adopt. I defaulted into “funny-ha-ha,” and left a quick, probably
incomprehensible message about being stranded in a strange town, along an interstate, at a Waffle House,
with a man dressed in foil. It wasn’t until I hung up that I realized he would think I was joking—weirdly
joking—and calling him when he was busy to boot. The message would probably annoy him.
I was about to call back and use a more sincere and sad voice to clarify that all of the above was not a
joke  .  .  .  when  there  was  a  rush  of  wind,  a  bit  of  suction  as  the  outside  doors  were  opened,  and  then
another person in our midst. He was tall, and thin, and apparently male. But it was hard to tell much else

---

because  he  had  wet  plastic  shopping  bags  on  his  head,  his  hands,  and  his  feet.  That  made  two  people
using non-clothing items for clothes.
I was starting to dislike Gracetown.
“I lost control of my car on Sunrise,” the guy said to the room in general. “Had to ditch it.”
Don-Keun nodded in understanding.
“Need a tow?” Tinfoil Guy said.
“No, that’s okay. It’s snowing so hard, I don’t even know if I could find it again.”
As he peeled off the bags, the guy turned out to be very normal-looking, with damp and dark curly hair,
kind of skinny, jeans a little too big for him. He looked at the counter, then headed over to me.
“Is it okay if I sit here?” he asked in a low voice. He nodded slightly in the direction of Tinfoil Guy.
Obviously, he didn’t want to sit over there, either.
“Sure,” I said.
“He’s harmless,” the guy said, still very quietly. “But he can talk a lot. I got stuck with him for about a
half an hour once. He really likes cups. He can talk about cups for a long time.”
“Does he always wear tinfoil?”
“I don’t think I’d recognize him without it. I’m Stuart, by the way.”
“I’m . . . Julie.”
“How did you get here?” he asked.
“My train,” I said, pointing to the vista of snow and darkness. “We got stuck.”
“Where were you going?” he asked.
“To Florida. To see my grandparents. My parents are in jail.”
I  decided  it  was  worth  a  try,  just  slipping  it  into  the  conversation  like  that.  It  got  the  reaction  I  half
expected. Stuart laughed.
“Are you with anyone?” he asked.
“I have a boyfriend,” I said.
I’m usually not this stupid, I promise you. My brain was on a Noah track. I was still thinking about my
idiotic message.
The corners of Stuart’s mouth wrinkled, like he was trying not to laugh. He beat a little rhythm on the
table  and  smiled  as  if  trying  to  blow  my  awkward  moment  away.  I  should  have  taken  the  out  he  was
giving me, but I couldn’t just leave it. I had to try to cover.
“The only reason I said that,” I began, seeing the doomed conversational path open wide in front of me
and  getting  myself  into  sprinting  position,  “is  that  I’m  supposed  to  be  calling  him.  But  I  don’t  have  a
signal.”
Yes. I had stolen Jeb’s story. Sadly, though, when I spoke, I didn’t take into account that my phone was
sitting  in  front  of  me,  proudly  displaying  a  full  range  of  bars.  Stuart  looked  at  it,  then  at  me,  but  said
nothing.
Now I really had something to prove. I would never be able to let it go until I showed him just how
normal I was.
“I didn’t,” I said. “Until just now.”
“Probably the weather,” he said charitably.
“Probably. I’ll just try now, really quick.”
“Take as long as you like,” he said.
Which was fair enough. He’d only sat with me to escape a long conversation about cups with Tinfoil
Guy. It wasn’t like we were accountable to each other’s schedules. Stuart was probably glad that I was
breaking  off  this  conversation.  He  got  up  and  took  off  his  coat  as  I  called.  He  was  wearing  a  Target
uniform  underneath,  and  even  more  plastic  bags.  They  came  tumbling  out  of  the  inner  folds  of  his  coat,
about a dozen of them. He gathered them up, completely unfazed.

---

When I got Noah’s voice mail, I tried to hide my frustration by craning my head to look out the window.
I didn’t want to leave my pathetic follow-up message in front of Stuart, so I just hung up.
Stuart gave me a little “nothing?” shrug as he sat down.
“They must be busy with the Smorgasbord,” I said.
“Smorgasbord?”
“Noah’s family is tangentially Swedish, so they put out an amazing Smorgasbord on Christmas Eve.”
I saw his eyebrow go up when I said “tangentially.” I use that word a lot. It’s one of Noah’s favorites. I
picked it up from him. I wish I’d remembered not to use it around other people, because it was kind of