Ex-mas (4 page)

She was supposed to be greeting her friends and classmates, being toasted and complimented, being lauded as the pretty, perfect, popular girl she'd

worked so hard to be.

Instead,
Yoon
was throwing the party of the year, while Lila was forced to spend the weekend with her baby brother, fielding angry phone cal s from her parents every five minutes.

Merry Christmas to me.

Cooper, natural y, did not come running outside when Lila honked the horn, as she had specifical y ordered him to do when she'd dropped him off.

Of course not.
Why should he do anything to make Lila's life easier?

Lila muttered angrily to herself as she parked her mother's car in the street and climbed out into the chil y afternoon air. The sun was already starting to head for the horizon, even though it was barely three thirty, and it was cold. Wel , California cold. Lila's father had grown up in Michigan, and he liked to talk about
real cold
whenever someone complained about the mild L.A. winters.

Lila was a native Californian, meaning anything below seventy degrees was shiver-worthy. She tightened her bright pink scarf around her neck as she

walked up Beau's driveway. Even the hot anger at Cooper pulsing through her veins didn't warm her up.

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She reached the Hodgeses' front door and took a deep breath before knocking. No one answered. She knocked again, with more force.

"Why am I not surprised?" she asked the late-afternoon sun. It wasn't shocking that the doorbel 's chime was being neglected. The truth was that the Hodges family had kind of been in disarray ever since Mr. and Mrs. Hodges had divorced a few years back. Lila could remember how withdrawn and

moody Beau had become as things got worse between his parents. And how he'd become even colder and weirder after the divorce.

Lila reached out and tried the door. It fel open. For a moment, she wondered if Cooper and Tyler might be setting her up with some elaborate revenge

scenario. Cooper might be a naive little brat who stil believed in Santa Claus, but he was also pretty clever. Just last summer he'd rigged up a pul ey system outside her bedroom door that had hurled a mesh bag fil ed with little rubber insects at her face when she'd staggered out one Sunday morning.

Lila eased inside the house and closed the door behind her. No rubber bugs. No sign of anything or anybody else, either. She cocked her head to the

side to listen. She expected to hear the usual sounds of Cooper and Tyler playing--high-pitched whoops and cries as they played Wii in the den or smal explosions as they concocted bizarre potions in Tyler's science lab of a bedroom. But al was silent.

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"Cooper?" She cal ed out, and then waited. "Cooper!" Silence.

Lila stood for a moment at the base of the stairs, but she couldn't hear anything from the rooms above, and she knew it was highly unlikely that two

eight-year-old boys were quietly reading. They were like wild animals, always moving around and getting into things, like, for instance, Lila's closet. The den was empty of everything save for the flashing screen saver on the family computer. It was a picture of Beau and Tyler, happy and carefree on a beach somewhere. She averted her eyes from Beau's shirtless, surprisingly buff form, like it was something she wasn't supposed to see.

Lila had just wandered into the kitchen when she heard the sounds of muffled music. It seemed to waft up from the floorboards below her feet.

She crossed the kitchen in a few quick steps and wrenched open the door to the basement. She catapulted down the rickety steps, the sound of electric guitar humming directly into her nerves. Into her
last
nerve, to be precise. She made it to the bottom of the steps and turned the corner.

Beau was standing with his back to her in the sparsely furnished basement, headphones clamped to his ears, the electric guitar wailing. Everything

about him made her stomach twist with rage and regret. Rage that he dressed like a homeless person, deliberately. Regret that when she'd been with

him, she had

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too, and she hadn't known any better. She hated his black jeans. His torn T-shirt. The smooth muscles of his biceps that he by no means deserved. A

hot body was wasted on Beau Hodges, since he chose to dress like someone who ought to be pasty and soft and gross. He cradled that guitar of his like

it was a newborn.

"Turn that down!" she yel ed repeatedly. Final y he turned and saw her standing there. His blue eyes looked resigned and mocking. They always did when he looked at her.

"What do you want, Lila?" he asked as he pul ed the headphones off and let them hang around his neck. His voice was gruff, and he made no attempt to hide the fact that her presence was about as welcome as a swarm of hornets. He put his guitar down in its stand and then ran his hands through his

shaggy, black hair. Lila's own hands itched with the need to cut his raggedy mane. He looked like a recalcitrant sheep.

"What do you think I want?" Lila snapped at him. She jabbed a finger up toward the rest of the house. "I can't find my brother."

"What do you mean, you can't find him?" Beau sounded half amused and half bored. "Are they playing hide-and-seek? Tyler always hides in the attic."

"I mean," she said, overenunciating each word, "that he isn't here. And neither is Tyler, for that matter."

"They were playing video games fifteen minutes ago," Beau said with a
not my problem
shrug. The classic Beau Hodges response to anything and everything.

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"Wel , they aren't playing video games now," Lila replied. She eyed his surroundings: a makeshift practice room complete with a bass, a keyboard, and a few amps strewn about. A vintage poster of the Dead Kennedys was taped to the basement wal . She focused her attention back on Beau and crossed

her arms. "Are you sure it was only fifteen minutes since you saw them? You don't real y keep track of time when you're
playing guitar,
do you?" Her voice oozed with sarcasm, to drive home how little she thought of his
playing guitar.

Beau looked at her like he wanted to kil her. With his hands. His eyes narrowed and his mouth flattened. "Fine," he said, in a remarkably calm tone.

"Let's go find them."

He brushed past her and headed up the rickety basement stairs, taking them two at a time.

They searched every room in the house, including the attic, cal ing out each boy's name and looking everywhere--under beds and in closets and even in

Beau's bedroom, where Lila hadn't been in years and was sure she didn't want to be now. It looked exactly the same. It even smel ed the same--like Dial soap and sweat, which should have been grosser than it real y was. Lila could swear she saw a ghost of her old self in the corner, dancing like the freak she'd been to one of Beau's sil y tunes. She shook it off. There was nothing of her here. Not anymore.

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"They're gone," Beau final y muttered, after they searched the pantry and in the crawl space behind the washing machine in the laundry room.

Lila closed her eyes. It was as if al the events of the day were whirling around in a bal inside of her, tangled and jagged, and now Cooper was
missing,
and she wanted to hurl the whole messy thing at Beau's head. "This is al your fault!" she cried.

"My fault?" His blue eyes met hers. "How exactly is this my fault? Please, do tel ," he asked quizzical y.

"You left them al alone! They're
eight years old
and now they're
gone!"

Lila words sounded familiar as they ricocheted around Beau's front hal way. They were exactly what she imagined her mother would say if she was

standing there--except her mother would direct the words at Lila, not Beau. So now she was channeling her mother, too. Fantastic.

"You need to calm down." There was an angry light in his eyes, and she could see that he was fighting to maintain his cool.

"Oh, sure," she bit out, amped up for a fight. She could use one right about now. "I'l just chil out while my little brother is
God knows where
when I'm supposed to be taking care of him for the weekend. I'l be sure to explain that you suggested that to my parents--"

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"Stop" Beau held up a hand. "I'm sure it makes you feel better to yel at me, but it's not helping anything. My mom's out of town too, so I'm in the same boat, here. We need to think clearly, not freak out."

Lila blinked, taken aback. "Since when did you become Mr. Maturity?" she asked. The Beau she knew was an obnoxious holier-than-thou jerk who could argue until he was blue in the face, just because he couldn't bear to be wrong about anything.
That
Beau had never once, in al the time she'd known him, backed down from even the slightest, most inconsequential chal enge.

"Since I had no other freaking choice," he muttered, and then turned and headed toward the den. Confused, Lila trailed after him.

She stood in the doorway as Beau glanced around the room, like he was trying to piece together their brothers' last moments in the house. He crossed

the den in a few quick strides and stood over the computer desk. He tapped the space bar, and the hulking desktop computer came to life. On the screen, Google Maps loomed large.

Lila drifted over, and stared over Beau's shoulder. A Google Maps journey was plotted out, with the blue line stretching al the way from Los Angeles up the edge of the United States, into Canada, and then even higher.

"What the hel ?" Beau sounded baffled.

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Lila's eyes flicked to the end of the long blue line. Destination: the North Pole.

She stared. The earth science article she'd handed Cooper flashed before her eyes.
Who Will Save Santa?

Oh, crap.

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Chapter 5

***

LOS ANGELES

DECEMBER 22

3:42 P.M.

***

"They're what?" Beau asked, shifting away from her. They'd been standing close together to look at the computer, their hips nearly touching. Lining the desk were framed snapshots of Beau and Tyler over the last couple of years. One, from when they were younger, had clearly been cropped to cut their

dad out of the picture.

Lila took a step back from Shaggy Doo, and told him al about Cooper ratting her out and her subtle retaliation.

When she was finished, Beau just stood there, looking at her.

"What?" she demanded, bristling.

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"Real y?" He shook his head. "You decided that the appropriate response to an eight-year-old tattling on you was to threaten to kil Santa Claus?"

"It's not my fault he's a moron. Did you believe in Santa Claus when you were eight?" Lila scoffed.

"I didn't, no," Beau said quietly. Something about the look in his eyes made a spiral of shame curl through her gut. "But I wanted to. Didn't you?"

"Spare me the lecture, please," Lila snapped, shoving away the sudden pang of guilt. "I don't expect you to understand. I'm sure you think al parties should be canceled because you hate people. And fun."

"This isn't about your party," Beau retorted, his voice taking on that familiar critical edge that Lila remembered. "Although I'm sure having the entire lacrosse team puke their guts out in your mother's rosebushes would be like nirvana for you." He rol ed his eyes. "This is about the fact that you think it's okay to treat your brother like that. He's just a kid."

"He's a pain in the ass," Lila said dismissively. She raised her eyebrows at him, in chal enge. "And right now he's missing, so--"

"Yeah, as a direct result of what you did," Beau interrupted with a short laugh. "Nice job, Lila. Maybe next time he does something you don't like you can cut al the crap and just tel him you took Santa out yourself with an AK-47. Or maybe you

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can just kick a few puppies. Better yet: Tel him what real y happens to stray dogs at the pound."

"How is this my fault when
you're
the one who lost them?" Lila asked, her voice razor sharp. She reached into the pocket of her faded Lucky jeans for her cel phone. "As delightful as it is debating with you, I think maybe we should just find our brothers, don't you?"

But her cel phone wasn't in her pocket. She frowned, trying to remember the last time she'd seen it. She hadn't used it earlier--she'd made cal s on the house phone. In fact, the last time she remembered seeing her cel , she'd been dropping Cooper off. The phone had buzzed to indicate she'd had a text, and she'd ignored it, because she just wanted to get Cooper out of her face for a while.

She knew it wasn't in the car. She could visualize the little black plastic bucket between the front seats, and it was empty. A new thought hit her then.

"I think Cooper took my phone," she said, letting her empty hands drop against her thighs. She groaned.
"God!
What is the
matter
with him?"

"For one thing, he thinks he has to save Santa Claus," Beau said dryly.

"I have an idea," Lila snapped. "How about you do something useful and cal my cel phone to see if he answers?"

"I'm not the one who traumatized the poor kid, and my

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brother, too, no doubt, with a scary article on global warming," Beau said, but he pul ed out his iPhone. It wasn't until he punched in her name and made the cal that it occurred to her to wonder why he stil had her number saved.

On the very rare occasions Lila had to cal Beau to schedule some Cooper-related activity, she had to look the number up in her mother's paper address book. She'd removed Beau's name and number from her own cel years ago. Deliberately. Like she needed Mr. Doom and Gloom on speed dial

when she had a new life fil ed with fun, happy people who threw parties and enjoyed themselves.

"It's ringing," Beau said. He eyed her. "Thank God you don't have one of those phones that plays a song selection instead of a ring. I don't think I could handle Jessica Simpson right now."