The Tori Trilogy (13 page)

Jaine looks surprised, and Dad and Ben both burst out laughing.

It might seem silly to them, but a niece is what I want the most this Christmas. My oldest brother Andrew and his wife Stephanie are expecting their first baby any time now (the due date is actually December twenty-first), and I will just die if they have a boy. After all, I've grown up with nothing but brothers--four of them! The least I deserve is a niece.

“What if you get a nephew instead?” asks Ben. He sips his hot chocolate and looks at me questioningly.

“That cannot happen. That will not happen.” My voice rises to a low wail. “It wouldn't be fair.”

Dad puts his arm around my shoulders. “Oh, Tori. Even if the baby is a boy, it won't matter to you for long. After you get to know him, I'll bet you wouldn't trade him for all the nieces in the world.”

Maybe not. But even so....

“They have to have a girl,” I say. “They just have to.”

Chapter Two

Most of Illinois is flat land and farms. This is something that I forget until I venture away from the Chicago suburbs. It's like a different world out here, calm and peaceful, removed from the rush of the city.

I sit in the back of the Barrow's Corners hay wagon pulled by two strong chestnut horses. Ben and Jaine are curled up in the corner opposite me, talking and laughing. Dad rides up front with Mr. Barrow, who's driving, and the sounds of their conversation are snatched up on the sharp breeze.

I love Barrow's Corners. However, I could live without Mr. Barrow himself. For one thing, the moment he and Dad get together, all they can talk about are their college days, and then they start buddy-hugging and whacking each other on the back and hooting with laughter about all the dumb things they did in the past. (In other words, they act just like my brothers.) For another, Mr. Barrow can't let a Christmas season pass without making a huge fuss over us Salinas kids.

Today, for instance, it was “Don't tell me this grown-up young lady is little Victoria?” and “Benny Boy, you're as handsome as your father, and I can see you've got the same charm with the pretty ladies.” (Of course, that made Jaine giggle and blush.) Then Mr. Barrow went on and on about how Dad was the dashing Latino on campus whom all the popular girls liked (only he was too humble to realize it), and how Mr. Barrow himself was dumpy and fat and spent weekends at the library. Honestly.

I turn in the hay wagon and dangle my arms over the back, staring at the well-worn wagon tracks in the rough brown grass. Then I lift my face to the sky, hoping to be rewarded by a sure sign of snow. But all that's up there is gray, stretching on forever. I can't tell whether the grayness is just grayness or whether it will turn into snow at some point. It's as if the sky is keeping secrets.

There are
lots
of secrets this time of year. I close my eyes a moment and wish. Not for snow, but for a little Christmas miracle: a new niece. I open them again and sigh.

“Tori.” Ben nudges my foot. “You're way too quiet. What gives?”

I flop back onto the bed of hay that lines the wagon and fold my arms beneath my head. “Just thinking.”

“Let me guess. About the baby?”

“Yes,” I admit. “I don't know what I'll do if Andrew and Stephanie have a boy.”

Ben laughs. “I'm sorry that having four big bros has turned you against the entire male species,” he says.

“Not the
entire
one,” I protest.

“Oh, no?” Ben's breath hits the cold air, creating a puff of steam. He digs his free hand (the one that isn't holding Jaine's) into the pocket of his jacket and waits.

“Not Dad or Abuelito or Reid,” I continue.

“What about
me?”
Ben cries, pretending to be hurt.

I reach out and whack his arm.

Jaine brushes my hand away and hugs Ben protectively. “You have no idea what an amazing brother you have, Tori,” she says. (Oh...brother. No pun intended.)

Jaine continues to drive me nuts throughout the rest of the Barrow's Corners trip. When we reach the evergreen forest, she
ooohs
and
aaahs
with delight over the beautiful scenery and the fresh pine fragrance of the trees. She gives lots of unwanted suggestions as to which one would make the perfect Christmas tree for the bay window of our living room. When we finally choose one, and Dad and Ben are taking turns chopping it down, she huddles by the side of the hay wagon as though she's afraid that the ten-foot-tall Christmas tree will fall on her and kill her.

On the ride back to the Barrow's Corners office, when we're crammed into the back of the wagon with the tree in the middle of us, she touches its soft green branches and then complains about getting sap on her hands. (Why she isn't wearing gloves beats me.)

At the office, Dad pays for the tree, and Mr. Barrow helps him put it in the bed of Nate's pick-up truck.

Then Mrs. Barrow bustles out of the farmhouse with a surprise for us: hot chocolate in Styrofoam mugs with plastic lids. It isn't nearly as delicious as the hot chocolate from Shelly's Place, but it is good, and I'm so cold, I'd welcome the chance to drink anything warm.

We thank the Barrows, wish them a Merry Christmas, and hop into the truck for the drive back home. We listen to Christmas music on the radio all the way.

By the time we reach Forest Grove, it's nearly three o'clock. The skies are still heavy and gray without a hint of snow, making everything around us look kind of dull: the bare black trees, the dry brown lawns, the houses that haven't turned their Christmas lights on yet because it's too early in the day.

But even so, with our Christmas tree in the back of the truck, and the radio filling up the cab with the sounds of “Holly Jolly Christmas,” I find it impossible not to feel a shiver of holiday spirit.

That evening is a fun one in the Salinas household. The first Saturday night in December always is, because after Dad has trimmed the very tip-top of our brand-new Christmas tree and taken a couple of inches off the thick trunk, we all bring it into the house and set it up in the big bay window of the living room.

It smells like pine, strong and woodsy and Christmassy. I clutch Mom's hand, and we smile at each other. Neither of us has to say what we're thinking. We both know. The holiday-spirit bug has bitten us!

“Dante, it's perfect,” Mom breathes, stepping back to admire our new green family member.

Dad grins. “You like it? The kids picked it out.”

I roll my eyes. “It was pretty hard to find one that Jaine actually approved of. I don't know why her opinion mattered so much. She doesn't even live here.”

Ben shoots me a look.

“What?” I ask. “She went home, remember?”

“That's not the point,” Mom tells me firmly. “It still isn't nice to talk about Jaine that way.”

Joey, my almost-fourteen-year-old brother (in fact, his birthday is on Monday) snorts from the couch where he's sprawled, his gelled brown hair mussed into short spikes all over his head. Disliking Jaine is the
only
thing that he and I agree on.

“No comments from the peanut gallery, Joey,” Mom says quickly, anticipating the fact that my brother is about to say something.

“Who,
me?”
Joey asks, faking innocence. “What time is everybody coming over, anyway?”

Part of the reason that the first Saturday in December is so special is that the entire Salinas extended family--except for Uncle Javi's family, who live in California, and Auntie Crista's family, who live in Ohio--are invited to our house to help decorate the Christmas tree, eat dinner, and enjoy a delicious Peruvian Christmas dessert of
panettone
and hot chocolate. It is Abuelita's job to bring the
panettone
(a fluffy sweet bread made with raisins) and all the necessary ingredients for Latin-American-style hot chocolate, thick and rich and spicy with cinnamon.

Mom glances at the slim silver watch on her wrist. “They should be here in less than an hour. Which reminds me! We ought to put the outdoor Christmas lights on. It's dark enough now.”

“I'll do it!” I cry. I rush into the front entryway, narrowly avoiding a head-on collision with Nate, who's coming from upstairs.

“Whoa!” he cries, holding up his hands.

“Sorry,” I say. I flick one of the switches next to the front door, plunging our enormous yard into light and color. The trees and bushes sparkle with alternating strands of clear and multicolored miniature lights, and the big wreath on the front door casts a rosy-warm glow down the steps of the porch.

“It's so pretty,” I sigh. Even though we put the same Christmas lights in the same places, year after year, they never fail to amaze me. They make our whole yard, our whole house, glitter like a fairy land.

“All we need is snow,” I add.

Joey snorts again. “You wouldn't be saying that if it was
your
job to help snow-blow.”

“But it's not!” I boast happily.

Before the rest of our family arrives, Dad builds a fire in our huge living room fireplace. It's a perfect blaze, yellow-orange and crackly, filling the room with the scent of the pine logs from our woodpile.

I turn on the strand of miniature lights that mingle with Mom's silk holly boughs to decorate the mantelpiece, and my brothers scurry around the house, securing electric candlesticks in all the front windows.

Mom's in the kitchen, putting the finishing touches on the huge pot of black-bean chili she prepared for tonight. The spices drift through the house in an invisible cloud of deliciousness.

I help Dad carry up boxes and boxes of Christmas-tree decorations from the storage area of our basement. We pile them beside our empty, waiting Christmas tree, and I pull open all the flaps of the old cardboard boxes in happy anticipation.

They smell musty and piney, the fragrance of Christmases past. I shiver. There are jumbled cords of colored lights, sparkling store-bought ornaments, shabby but well-loved homemade ornaments from when my brothers and I were little, shimmering strands of beaded garland, boxes of tinsel and ornament hooks, and our poinsettia-red Christmas tree skirt, neatly folded into a wedge.

I can hardly wait to start decorating the tree! The house is so cozy and full of Christmas spirit. It really
would
be perfect if it would just snow.

“You
are
going to change before they get here, aren't you?” asks a voice from behind me.

I whip around to see Joey watching me, a smirk on his face, his hands shoved into the pockets of his hoodie jacket.

“You look like a charity case in that outfit,” he adds, his shoulders shaking with laughter. “How many years have you had those jeans, anyway?”

I hop to my feet, planting my hands on my hips. “Just who do you think you are, Joey Salinas, to give
me
fashion advice?”

Joey glances at his own jeans, T-shirt, and unzipped sweatshirt. “What's wrong with the way I dress?”

Of course, there's nothing wrong with it, but I'm not about to give him the satisfaction of saying so. I'm also not about to give him the satisfaction of admitting that he's right about
my
outfit.

In the hustle and bustle of setting up the tree and getting ready to decorate it, I completely forgot to change out of the worn old clothes I put on for the Barrows Corners trip. Without another glance at my brother, I march straight past him and up the stairs to my bedroom.

His obnoxious laughter follows me.

I slam my bedroom door, click on my desk lamp, and strip quickly out of my shabby outfit. Rolling the clothes into a ball, I stuff them into my wicker hamper and tug open my closet door in search of something else to wear.

Ebony jumps out from the shadows in the far back of the closet, where she likes to curl up in my messy pile of shoes and sleep.

I jump, startled, then sigh with relief. “Ebs!” I cry. “You're such a pain!”

She licks a front paw, drags it across her face, and casually saunters to the other side of the room.

“Brat!” I call after her.

I quickly decide on a nicer pair of jeans and my striped sweater from Gap Kids. I even change my socks, choosing a navy-blue pair to match the sweater, and sweep my hair back at the sides with a pair of silver barrettes. I leave my Christmas tree earrings in, even though they don't match this outfit any more than they matched the other.

Clicking my lamp off, I clatter through the hall and back down the stairs. “Criticize
this!”
I challenge, striking a pose in front of Joey.

He ignores me.

Less than ten minutes after I change, our family starts arriving.

First come Auntie Luz, Uncle Gabe, and my cousins Gina and Sofie. Auntie Luz is Dad's youngest sibling, and also my favorite aunt. She's small and pretty, with coal-black curly hair to her shoulders and shining dark eyes. Her husband, Uncle Gabe, is Puerto-Rican, making Gina and Sofie fully Latin-American. Both of my cousins have curly dark hair, dark eyes, and skin the color of caramel.

Gina is ten-and-a-half (well, nearly eleven now) and my best friend in the world. She and I are in the same fifth-grade class at Forest Grove Elementary, and we try to do as much as possible together. Sofie's two-and-a-half and absolutely adorable.

I yank open the front door, letting them inside along with a sharp rush of bitter-cold air. “Hi!” I exclaim.

Auntie Luz beams. “Hello,
corazón
,” she greets me, her voice lilting in the pretty way it always does. “It's freezing out there, isn't it?”

“Sure is!” I agree.

Gina runs toward me, and we hug. “This day dragged on forever!” she tells me. “I couldn't wait till it was finally time to come over to your house and decorate the tree!”

“It was all she could talk about,” adds Uncle Gabe in his light Puerto-Rican accent.

I giggle excitedly. “The day went fast for me,” I say. “It's been a busy one, going to Barrow's Corners and everything.”