Santa Hunk (7 page)

SAVANNAH

Twenty minutes later, we were once again entering the
grove of trees.

The air was perfectly
still and sharply cold.

The snow was deeper this
time than the last time we were there. It muffled the sound of the cars that
passed on Lakeshore Boulevard—just like Clare described it in her journal on
December 10—so that after a few steps we couldn’t hear them at all. It felt
like we’d stepped into another place, a secret place. A place that other people
wouldn’t be able to enter.

I sound like Clare now,
don’t I …

I remember it was hard
work, trudging through the snow. We’d had a lot of snow that month, and it was
up to our knees in places. My boots weren’t really suited for that much snow,
either. Because it was so deep, the tops of my boots weren’t high enough, so bits
of snow were falling down inside them. I could feel it melt into my socks, cold
and wet.

I started getting a bit
cranky. Plus I was worried about tripping on branches or something buried by
the snow. I remember focusing on my footing. I really didn’t want to trip and
fall.

But then I happened to
look up.

And I gasped.

Up ahead, through the
snow-laden trees, I could see light.

Lights, to be more
accurate. As if one of the trees on the far side of the grove had Christmas
lights strung on it.

“Clare,” I whispered,
pulling on her coat sleeve. “What is that?”

“It’s his tree,” she said
in a low voice. “Come on.”

We got a little closer.

I saw that they weren’t
really Christmas lights at all. They were too beautiful. Pure white, and yet
somehow I also got the impression of color, of blue and green and gold. And
they were turning on and off but slowly, each light dimming, then brightening
again.

I stopped walking.

This was too weird.

And then I saw that there
was a man standing near the enormous trunk of the lit-up tree.

“There he is,” Clare
breathed.

She started toward him.

“No!” I said, grabbing at
her coat.

But she was too quick for
me. It was like she wasn’t wading through the snow any more. She was skimming along
on top of it, she was moving so quickly.

And then she fell into
his arms, and I stood there, watching Clare and this man hold each other like
neither of them were ever going to let go.

I took a few cautious
steps closer.

Then they parted slightly
and I could see his face.

And—well—Clare had been
telling the truth, all right.

He was the nicest looking
man I’ve ever seen.

Blue eyes, just like
she’d said—blue eyes alive with good humor, and kindness, and … I don’t know
how to explain it. It was like he knew me, knew everything about me. Yet I
didn’t feel put off by that, at all. I felt completely
accepted
by
him. I felt like: here’s someone who
gets
me and really, genuinely
likes
me.

He was hatless. He had
dark hair. And he had a beard but it was like Clare described—it was trimmed
very close. So no—no big, out-of-control Santa beard. A nice, neat, Santa
hunk
beard …

“Savannah, this is—well,
I can’t really pronounce his name. But one of his nicknames is Santa. Santa,
this is Savannah.”

“I know Savannah,” he
said. He was smiling, and now he winked at me. “I’m very glad, Savannah, that you
stopped being
naughty
.”

I knew instantly what he
meant.

He meant I’d finally
stopped thinking he wasn’t real.

I’d finally stopped
trying to persuade Clare that he wasn’t real.

“I—I’m sorry,” I said. “I
didn’t know—I didn’t realize.”

He was still smiling, and
how kind his eyes were! “No need to apologize,” he said. “This is an unusual
situation for all of us.” He turned his face to look at Clare, who hadn’t taken
her eyes off of him. “Beings like me seldom fall in love with mortals. Once in
a millennium … so when we do, we have to be very careful. Much can go wrong.”

And then he tilted his
head down so that his forehead touched Clare’s.

And I have to say: I have
never seen two people—well, one person and one whatever-he-was—who were more in
love than Clare and her blue-eyed Santa.

And then it hit me.

She’s going to go away
with him.

“Clare,” I said.

Because I still had that
old reflex: I wanted to tell her
no
. I wanted to tell her not to do
it.

Selfish of me, I suppose.
I didn’t want to lose my best friend.

Or maybe I was still scared.
Scared that someone might take that kind of chance—that someone might be
willing to step off into the unknown …

Clare tore her eyes off
of her Santa, and looked at me.

“Savannah,” she said. “When
he asked me to go with him, last time, I was afraid. But I can’t make choices
based on fear.” She turned back to the man. “I have to make choices based on
love.”

And she suddenly rushed
over to me and grabbed me in the tightest hug I’ve ever felt.

“I love you, Savannah,”
she said. “Remember that always, okay?”

“I love you too,” I
whispered.

Tears trickled down my
cheeks.

“Good-bye, Savannah.”

And then she returned to
him.

I saw that he was wearing
an enormous cloak.

And he kind of opened it
up as she approached him again, and when she reached him he closed the cloak
around her.

And then they were gone.

There was nothing there
but me and the tree with the lights.

I stood there a moment,
trying to figure out what had just happened.

I noticed Clare’s tracks
in the snow, in front of me.

They led to a place that
was a bit trampled, the way it would look if two people were standing together.

I walked over and wiped
my eyes and looked down at the trampled spot.

I could make out the
prints of two sets of boots—one from Clare’s boots, one from boots much larger
than Clare’s.

But there were no tracks
leading away from that spot.

I looked up at the tree.

The lights were still
there, but they weren’t as bright.

They were fading away.

“Clare?” I said.

But I knew she wouldn’t
answer.

She was gone.

SAVANNAH

So there was a bit more weirdness to come, after that
night.

Because from the moment
she stepped into that cloak, all evidence that Clare had ever existed suddenly
disappeared.

Well, not
all
evidence.
Many of her things were still in the apartment: her clothes, her CDs, her
make-up. Stuff like that. The notebook where she wrote down her story. The
newspaper articles about her being hit by the bus—which, like I said earlier, I
still have. And of course, all her Christmas decorations.

But as far as the rest of
the world is concerned, Clare was never even born.

I didn’t realize that at
first.

Honestly, at first, I was
probably in shock. I wasn’t sure how to react to any of it.

But then, the next
morning, I called Clare’s manager to tell him she wouldn’t be coming in.

I knew her manager’s name.
She’d talked about him enough times! So I was definitely asking for the right
guy. But when they transferred me and I said “this is Savannah Whitehall, Clare
Jordon’s friend,” he was, like, “I’m sorry, Clare who?”

He’d never heard of
her.

The guy who had hired
her, who signed off on her time cards, who’d been giving her all those extra
hours around the holidays—he told me I must be mistaken. No Clare Jordon had
ever worked there.

I hit Call End on my cell
phone and thought, okay, that is really strange.

Then I thought—is it
possible that I was mistaken about where she worked?

Maybe she worked at a
different Abercrombie, not the Eastview Mall Abercrombie?

So I got her purse to
look through it.

It was definitely her
purse. It was the purse she’d had with her in the car the night before.

But there was nothing in it
that had her name on it. No driver’s license, no credit cards.

I checked her cell phone.
The phone I’d seen her use a zillion times.

It was as blank as if it
were brand new. No texts, no record of calls, no contact list, no apps.

Then I started to go a
little crazy. I go into her room, I start pawing through all of her stuff. And I
can’t find anything—
anything
—with her name on it.

I get even crazier and
dig out my high school yearbook.

There are no pictures
of her.

There used to be, I
know
there used to be! Like on our senior year, I had her autograph the page
with her senior photo! But now—I can show you if you like, you can see for
yourself.

The senior pictures are
in alphabetical order by last name. You’ll see Cindy Jacobs’ picture, and right
next to it: Zach Lindsey.

No Clare Jordon picture between
them.

Tell you what—I almost
lost my mind, when I looked at that page in the yearbook and there was no Clare
Jordon picture.

Then I forced myself to
calm down, and I sat down on the couch and took a deep breath.

And I thought:
Josh
Martin.

So I called him up and he
says, “hey!”

It struck me as kind of
odd—like he sounded surprised to hear from me. Happy, but surprised.

So I say “hey” and then
he says, “it’s funny you called me. I’ve been thinking about you ever since we
ran into each other at the coffee shop. Savannah—would you like to go out with
me sometime?”

I kind of gasped.

“But—what about Clare?” I
said.

“I’m sorry?”

The exact same thing
her manager had said.

My mind spun, hard,
trying to figure out how I was going to deal with this without coming across
like a complete idiot. “Clare Jordon,” I said. “I thought you were dating Clare
Jordon?”

“Uh—no. Who told you
that? I don’t even think I know a Clare Jordon.”

I was standing near the
couch.

Now I flopped down onto
it.

This was too, TOO
strange.

I heard him kind of cough,
like he felt a little nervous. “So, uh, anyway—now that we’ve cleared that
up—what do you say? Saturday night, maybe?”

What could I do? This was
Josh Martin.
The
Josh Martin. And it wasn’t like Clare wanted to date
him, too.

“Okay, sure,” I said, my
voice kind of wobbly with the shock of it all.

“Text me your address and
I’ll pick you up at seven, okay?”

SAVANNAH

One last thing you might be wondering about.

Her parents.

I checked on them, too.

I was very discreet, of
course! I mean, after I realized Josh had no memory of Clare, I wasn’t about to
barge up to her parents and ask them if they’d heard from their daughter, who
was my best friend, who’d disappeared into the woods with a strange man.

But we’d grown up in the
same town.

I was able to ask around.

Here’s what I found out.

As far as anyone was
concerned, the Jordons have only two children. Both are sons. Kyle, two years
older than me, is a decorated Army veteran. Stefan, four years older than me, got
married a couple years ago. His wife has a baby on the way now.

Of course I have Clare’s
notes from her last Christmas with her family. And when I was first thinking
everything through I thought, maybe I should give the journal to her mom.

But would it mean
anything to her?

I decided it wouldn’t.

At the most, it would
seem strange.

And who knows? It might
upset her.

I do like to think that
even if they don’t remember Clare, that last Christmas with her still happened,
somehow. Which, if you think about it, is the nicest way for it to happen,
right?

They had a beautiful Christmas
day, and shared their love with her. And they never had to say good-bye …

Me, on the other hand …

I miss her.

I miss her something
awful …

I eventually gave away
most of her stuff to charity.

But I kept her Christmas
decorations.

And now that Josh and I are
together—we bought a house last summer—I have lots of space to decorate.

Of course I always think
of her as I’m putting the decorations out. Her collection of stuffed reindeers.
Her ceramic candlesticks shaped like Christmas elves. Her hand-blown glass
Christmas tree ornaments.

And Josh rolls his eyes.
“You are soooo into Christmas, babe,” he says to me.
 

And I nod and think yeah,
you’re right. I’m so into Christmas …

And I still think that maybe
I’ll see her again someday.

So I look for her, every
year, especially around Christmas. Because when you think about it: people are
used to thinking that All Saints Eve—Halloween—is the time of year when the
veil between this world and the supernatural world is thinnest.

But it’s Christmastime,
when the nights are long and the trees are asleep—that’s when the magic comes
closest.

Isn’t it?

Seems to me that it is.

Anyway, I know you’re
happy, Clare.

I know that you’re happy,
because you’re with the one you love—the one you were meant to be with.

Merry Christmas, sweet Clare!

Merry Christmas ...