* * *
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They woke up late on Christmas morning. For once in his life, the draw of staying in bed was greater than the promise of presents, but Lauren was adorably excited by the stocking full of candy John gave her. Asa knew it was the dollar store stocking with Lauren’s name written on it in Sharpie, identical to the ones John had propped on the couch for the rest of the housemates, and not so much the candy, which he’d probably end up eating most of.
They FaceTimed with Elliot, who grudgingly agreed that Kiki could open their waffle maker if she promised to clean it immediately afterward. “Don’t forget the whisk we had to throw away after the alfredo sauce,” they said. “Don’t just soak it and think that’s the same as scrubbing.”
It took a few batches for Kiki to get the settings right, but then they had golden brown waffles and more presents to open, mainly useful things for the house or low-cost novelty gifts like a Betty & Veronica for Kiki or a set of guitar picks with lewd sayings on them that Asa had custom-ordered for John from an Etsy shop. John was almost as easily embarrassed by that kind of thing as Lauren was, so between the two of them there were a lot of pink cheeks as they passed the guitar picks around.
All told, it was the best Christmas that Asa had ever had. Later that night, when they were alone in his room planning to watch a movie, he tried again to get Lauren to tell him her favorite.
“No guilty pleasures here,” he said, “only pleasures. I’ll watch whatever. You a Muppet Christmas fan? More of a Hallmark kind of girl? Has there ever been a Muppet Hallmark crossover event?”
He was already pulling up a few streaming sites, starting to search, but Lauren reached over to close the laptop. “What happens after the presentations?” she asked.
There was something about the way the question was framed—the presumption that something would happen after—that clenched around his heart like an icy fist. “What do you mean?”
Lauren tucked her hair behind her ear. “If Dolores likes our ideas, then we’ll be working together to implement them. But if she doesn’t . . . or worse, if she goes with something Daniel comes up with . . .”
“Then everything goes back to the way it was,” Asa said. “Only now we have each other. Right?”
Lauren nodded, but she still seemed troubled. He couldn’t tell if she was scared that everything would change, or that nothing would.
“Look,” he said, sliding the computer off his lap so he could face her on the bed more fully. “Our presentation is in great shape. We have concept art, you’ve written up really clear descriptions and plans for the educational exhibit and activities, the cost of materials and labor to put it in action won’t be prohibitive . . . Honestly, I don’t see how Dolores doesn’t go for it. But even if she doesn’t, it won’t be the end of the world. Or the end of Cold World.”
He’d said that last bit as a joke, to lighten the mood, but the very idea of Cold World ending made him anxious. Their plan had to work. And even if it didn’t—even if, by some miracle, Daniel came up with something even better—Asa was determined that they’d figure something out. Cold World was an institution. It wasn’t going anywhere.
Especially now that it had brought him Lauren.
They were silent for a few moments, until Lauren nudged his foot with hers. “There was this animated movie I saw as a kid . . . maybe from the eighties? Or even older, possibly. The shelter where my mom and I were staying had taped it straight off the TV, and it still had the commercials in it and everything. My favorite was this old Rice Krispies one, remember when Snap, Crackle, and Pop were like actual characters?”
Asa smiled, even though he had no idea. He couldn’t remember having ever seen a commercial for that cereal before. But he liked the way her face lit up as she talked about it.
“Anyway.” She shook her head, giving a little laugh. “The movie was about this clockmaker and his family, and then a family of mice who lived in the house, too. It’s silly, but as a kid I liked the way the humans and the mice coexisted like that, so casual. Like when they have a problem they need to solve together, the dad mouse just pops up on the clockmaker’s book at bedtime, dressed in a full coat and scarf while he tells the clockmaker about how his son wrecked his apology clock to Santa.”
Asa frowned. “Wait, you lost me. Apology clock?”
“The mouse son is a real skeptic. Apparently he wrote a letter to the local newspaper, saying that Santa was a myth, and signing it ‘from all of us.’ So Santa boycotts the town, and all the kids are pretty down about it, until the clockmaker has the idea to build this giant clock that will play a special song for Santa at the stroke of midnight. But then the skeptic mouse son breaks it trying to figure out how it works, and . . .” She wrinkled her nose self-consciously. “It sounds so ridiculous when I describe it out loud.”