Christmas Bells (12 page)

“Oh, everything's fine,” their mother said, giving him a huge, bright, obviously fake smile. “The usual.”

The concern in his eyes told Charlotte that he was in on the secret. “Have you heard from Jason?”

“Oh, sure. We hear from him all the time, don't we, kids?” Their mother looked to Alex and Charlotte for confirmation, nodding, but although blissfully ignorant Alex nodded happily back, Charlotte stared at her boots and shrugged. “But you know how it is. The Internet over there is always breaking down, and it takes forever to get online again, but as soon as it's fixed, we're going to get to chat with him again—”

“I get to talk with him first,” Alex interrupted. “Mom promised. I want to make a rocket for the science fair and I have to ask Dad some stuff.”

Father Ryan nodded, obviously concerned. How could their mother think Charlotte wouldn't notice these things? “That's
wise. I've heard about you and rockets. It's best to consult with an expert first.” Gently, to their mother, he added, “Please let me know if there's anything I can do.”

“Thank you, Ryan. I will.”

“And tell Jason Merry Christmas from me when you speak with him,” Father Ryan said.

“Of course.” Looking close to tears, their mother gave him a small, forced smile, placed her hands on Alex's and Charlotte's backs, and steered them toward the door.

“Wait a minute,” said Alex as they entered the stairwell and started up the steps. “Why can't Father Ryan tell Dad Merry Christmas himself? Isn't Dad coming to church with us?”

“Of course not, honey,” their mom replied. “Your dad is in Afghanistan.”

“I know that, but isn't he coming home for Christmas?”

Charlotte couldn't bear to have it all out in the stairwell, so she threw Alex a warning look. “Dad won't be back until next summer.”

Bewildered, Alex halted abruptly. “But he'll miss the concert.”

His mother held open the door at the top of the stairs. “He's missed a lot of things. Come on, honey. We can't be late.”

Alex obeyed, for once. “But who will make gingerbread pancakes? Dad always makes us gingerbread pancakes on Christmas morning.”

“I know you're disappointed, honey, and I am too.” Her eyes were filling with tears. “Maybe we can get something special from the bakery instead, okay? Would you like that?”

Alex reluctantly agreed that bakery treats would be all right, and they took off their coats and left them on the pew with their mother. “Nice going,” Charlotte scolded him in a murmur as they went to join the choir. Alex's face fell, and with a pang of guilt, Charlotte quickly put as many singers between them as Miss
Sophia's seating arrangement allowed. She wished she hadn't scolded him. He was just a little boy, and he had no idea that their mother had much bigger problems on her mind than gingerbread pancakes for Christmas morning.

Eventually Lucas announced that they were going to begin rehearsal even though Miss Sophia hadn't arrived. Charlotte and her friends exchanged significant glances, acknowledging the strangeness of it. They all agreed that Lucas was handsome for someone so old, and they all knew that he was totally in love with Miss Sophia, and they thought it was funny that he thought no one knew. To be fair, most people didn't, including Miss Sophia.

With Miss Sophia absent, Charlotte had no conductor to watch as they warmed up their voices, so she let her gaze travel over the pews, coming to rest on her mother, sitting pale and motionless in the third row, still in her coat and hat. She was probably concentrating on making up new lies to cover up the old ones.

When Charlotte's voice began to quaver with anger and worry, she tore her gaze from her mother. Sister Winifred was tidying up the pews, smiling to herself; Charlotte always thought the little nun looked as if she were whistling merrily inside her head. Some other kids thought Sister Winifred was crazy and were a little afraid of her, but Charlotte thought she was nice. Once, long ago, she had overheard her parents agreeing that the elderly nun was eccentric, perhaps, but harmless. If she occasionally seemed to be chatting with someone no one else could see or hear, at least they were cheerful conversations punctuated with occasional merry laughter.

One day in late November, as Charlotte and Alex waited for their mother to pick them up after rehearsal, Charlotte had mentioned her Christmas story, which she had turned in earlier that day. “I should like to read it,” Sister Winifred had remarked. “Would you email it to me?” Charlotte, astounded to discover
that nuns used the Internet, had sent it to her that very day. Soon thereafter Sister Winifred had said that she had enjoyed the tale very much and declared that Charlotte was “a natural storyteller.”

Charlotte had glowed from the praise, but it brought her no comfort now. What if the kindly nun asked what grade she had received on the assignment and how she had fared in the contest? Charlotte could imagine the sparkle fading from her eyes, sorrow and disappointment driving away all merriment from her expression. What would she think of Charlotte then? Grown-ups always believed one another before trusting a kid. If anyone found out, Sister Winifred or her mother or—

At that moment Miss Sophia hurried in and quickly shrugged out of her coat and scarf. She had just draped them over the back of a pew when a door closed at the back of the church and in walked the rich lady, the senator's wife. When Charlotte had first joined the choir, the senator and his wife used to show up at rehearsals together and sit near the back, listening and watching, always leaving before the end. For a long time, though—Charlotte couldn't remember exactly how long—the wife had come alone. Whenever Charlotte saw her, she was reminded painfully of the day her father had left for Afghanistan. The senator had been scheduled to speak, but he had been sick so his wife had filled in for him. She had done pretty well too. She had been funny when she could be and serious when she had to be, and she never said “Um” or lost her train of thought.

Maybe the lady could ask her husband the senator to look into the stupid Internet problems at her father's base, Charlotte thought fleetingly, before remembering with a sickening jolt that their Internet was probably working just fine.

Charlotte was so upset that her voice cracked on a high note. The other sopranos were kind enough to pretend not to notice, but she was so mortified that she clamped her mouth shut and
stared stonily at the back of the head of the girl in front of her. She didn't utter another note until Miss Sophia picked up her baton and announced “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” and she only sang then because Miss Sophia would notice if she didn't, even if she mouthed the words. And yet, as much as Charlotte had once loved that simple, beautiful carol, at that moment she would rather sing anything else.

It was that carol—or, rather, the poem that had inspired it—that had gotten her into so much trouble.

For as long as Charlotte could remember, she had loved to write stories. Her mother said that she had begun writing as soon as she could hold a crayon, but since she hadn't known the alphabet, she'd had to read her stories aloud since only she could interpret the colorful marks on the paper. She always received the highest grades on her school compositions, and at the fifth-grade graduation ceremony the previous year, she had won a special award for the best historical essay in the entire class. Her name had been printed in a special place in the program and everything. So, in early October when Mrs. Collins had announced the student Christmas story contest, Charlotte was elated. If she won first place in her school, her story would go on to the district competition. If it won there, it would be sent to the newspaper to be judged by a team of experts. The top three stories would be published in the Christmas Day edition of the
Boston Globe
, and the week before, the winners and their parents would be invited to a special lunch with the editors and judges, where they would read their stories aloud and receive an engraved plaque.

What a wonderful Christmas gift this would be for her mother, Charlotte thought. Mom always said that the best gifts were homemade because they were unique and came from the heart. Charlotte could give her mother her plaque and tell her that she owed her success to her, because her mother had read aloud to Charlotte from the time she was a baby and had never
refused to drive her to the library no matter how busy she was. Her mother would be so proud. She would smile again like she hadn't smiled since her dad left. She might even forget, if only for a moment, how lonely she was without him.

The contest was officially called the Alice Longfellow Christmas Creative Writing Competition, because it was sponsored by a foundation the poet's daughter had created in the early 1900s. Though Alice Longfellow had been only ten years old when her mother died, in time she had become the mistress of the household, taking care of her younger sisters and looking after their father. She had never married, and after Henry Wadsworth Longfellow died, she had become the curator of her father's legacy and a respected philanthropist, supporting many worthy causes that promoted historic preservation and education for women.

When Charlotte made the connection between Alice Longfellow, her father the famous poet, the historic residence she had visited in third grade, and the new carol Miss Sophia had chosen for the choir's Christmas Eve concert, it was as if a cartoon lightbulb had lit up above her head. Charlotte would write a story about a girl whose father had recently died (because to have her mother die would be too much like Alice's real life) and who was searching for her brother, a Union soldier who had been wounded on the battlefield and had gone missing after being taken to a military hospital in Washington, DC. Her only clue would be a scrap of a letter that had been left behind, but she was determined to find him, nurse him back to health, and bring him home in time for Christmas.

Inspired, Charlotte had thrown herself into the work, writing at a furious pace. She was fairly satisfied with her first draft and almost happy with the second, but she knew something was missing. It wasn't until Alex was given the solo in “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” that she realized what her story lacked: a
Christmas poem. A Christmas story inspired by a Christmas carol inspired by a poet's Christmas poem really ought to include some poetry of its own.

Charlotte had already decided that the brother in the story was missing because he had been taken to recover in a makeshift hospital set up in a church rather than a regular one, so of course her story included a choir. She decided it would be smart to use Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's own “Christmas Bells” as a model, so she began her poem with the line, “I heard the choir on Christmas Day/Their new and favorite carols play/Nice and sweet the stanzas beat/Of peace on earth, every day.”

“No,” she had said aloud, disgusted, scribbling out the entire stanza. That was too much like Longfellow's original, except stupider. Choirs didn't play carols; they sang them. Stanzas didn't beat, and “nice and sweet” sounded like a commercial for Christmas cookies.

She had started over, and suddenly, again like a flash of light, a first line came to her, whole and clear: “The choir sang on Christmas night.” Simple and clear, with a perfect rhythm. More ideas flowed, and soon she had an entire stanza:

The choir sang on Christmas night

Of a heavenly star that shone great light

Upon the manger where Jesus slept

While tender watch his mother kept.

Happily, she wrote the rest that evening, and over the next few days, she perfected the poem and nestled it snugly within her story. She typed it all up on her mother's computer, printed out the story on good paper, and put it in a clear plastic binder for safekeeping.

Then she submitted it to Mrs. Collins with fingers crossed, hoping she would receive not only an A-plus for the class
assignment, but also the happy news that her story had qualified for the district competition.

She had read her story to her mother, who had loved it, and to Alex, who had told her it wasn't too bad but should have had more soldiers and fighting, and to Emily, who thought it was wonderful and declared that it would definitely be published in the
Boston Globe
on Christmas morning. Charlotte hoped she was right.

A few days later Mrs. Collins returned the stories to their authors, placing them facedown on the students' desks as she walked through the aisles, making general comments about what the class had done well as a group and where they clearly needed to improve. Eagerly, Charlotte turned over her story—only to discover a large red C at the top of the title page.

Horrified, she quickly turned the story facedown again.

“Did you win?” Emily whispered from the desk behind her.

Charlotte swallowed hard, stole a look at Mrs. Collins, still distributing papers and droning on about margins, and quickly shook her head.

“No?” came Emily's incredulous whisper.

Again Charlotte shook her head.

“That's impossible. What did you get?”

Carefully, so no one else would see, Charlotte shielded the front page with her cupped hand and raised it just above her shoulder so Emily could learn the shocking truth.

Emily gasped. “She must have given you the wrong paper.”

For a moment Charlotte's hopes flickered back to life, but then, holding the story on her lap and paging through it to read the comments, all hope died. Mrs. Collins had made hardly any corrections to her story, but she had circled the poem several times with broad red strokes. In the margin beside it, she had written, “Is this yours?” At the end of the paper, she had added a
lengthier comment: “Please refer to the student handbook for the school policy regarding plagiarism. The entire project must be a student's own original work.”

Charlotte felt as if a giant fist was squeezing all the air out of her lungs. Of course the entire project was hers—the story, the poem, every word. She had written it in her bedroom, at the public library, and at the kitchen table with her favorite gel ink pen. Her name was on it. No one had ever accused her of cheating before, not even at Four Square or Monopoly, and she had no idea what to do.