Page 40 of Intermission

My shoulders tense, and I share another wince with my sister.

“Sorry,” she whispers. “But even if I wanted to go, there’s not enough time to get ready now.”

Too bad she didn’t think about that before she went out and got hammered last night.

“You’re right,” Dad says, finally. “Families should be together on Christmas Eve. If you and Gretchen are staying home, we all stay home.”

And that nixes my backup plan of asking if I can go to the service at Fellowship Community, too.

“Aww,” Mom coos in a tone that sounds so much like Gretchen it turns my stomach. “That is so sweet. Thanks, honey.” I don’t need to hear the little smack to know she kissed him, but I do.

Gross.

Not the kiss, the manipulation. Okay, the my-parents-are-kissing part, too. But the manipulation more.

Not that I’ve ever wondered where Gretchen learned to manipulate people, but seriously? Mom may be more subtle about it, but her motives are as transparent as a freshly cleaned window.

Dad’s wingtip shoes move across the kitchen, toward the hall and his study. Obviously, Dad’s definition of “together” meansunder the same roof, no interaction necessary.

Gretchen heads upstairs. Mom soon follows.

Silent night, indeed.

Faith:

My sister is “sick.” We’re staying home.

Noah:

Come here! You can still make it in time.

Faith:

I wish. Parental veto.

His next text is a pic of him, sad-faced, with a finger under one eye as if wiping a tear. I laugh but quickly snap a matching pic and send it to him.

With a sigh, I unzip my boots. Once back in my room, I change out of my dressy clothes and into comfy sweats. As I’m hanging my wool skirt up in my closet, my phone chimes, alerting me to a new text.

Noah:

SERVICE STARTING. C U SOON. LUKE 2.

I do a double-take, wondering if I’ve accidentally received a text from someone named Luke. But no. It’s Noah, sending a Bible reference, which is far from unusual. He often ends our nightly texting marathons with a Bible reference, but he must have been in a hurry with this text, because he generally reserves the caps lock for emphasis—and he almost always texts complete words, if not complete sentences—which puts him in the “keeper” column in my book. I know he’s really busy tonight and texting me between things, which is sweet, so I don’t mind. Also, he’sNoah, and the fact that he texts me at all still kind of blows me away if I stop and think about it.

I reach for the little pink Bible I was given by my third-grade Sunday School teacher. Though it was sadly neglected in the intervening years, the past few weeks have often found it open on my desk instead of shelved in my bookcase.

I think back to my childhood, to the summer weeks spent at Vacation Bible School. Along with the other kids, I learned a song to help me memorize the books of the Bible.Matthew,Mark...Luke!I turn to chapter two and begin to read.

The Christmas Story. But a different telling than what Pastor Jack read at the nursing home. I smile. It’s pretty cool Noah found a way to ensure that my Christmas Eve wouldn’t be totally ruined by my sister’s—and my mother’s—selfishness.

But once he actually meets my family, will he even want to stick around?

Rehearsals forThe Sound of Musicare put on a two-week hold for the holidays. With Noah working a lot of extra hours covering shifts for his coworkers, and my family making our annual trek to visit my mom’s side of the family in Omaha, I don’t see him at all. Thanks to modern technology, however, not a day goes by that we don’t talk, if only with our thumbs.

Still, I miss him. It’s the oddest sort of loneliness, kind of like that mid-July feeling you get when you’re not ready to go back to school yet, but you really miss seeing your friends all day. Except it’s weirder because I also feel like I’m missing part of me. It doesn’t make sense, but I don’t know how else to explain it other than... I’m more “me”—or at least a more complete version—when I’m with him. But I’m not with him, so...

Noah: