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Nick couldn’t remember getting in his car. He couldn’t remember driving back to Ontario, or to the outskirts of Toronto. He didn’t remember pulling onto Laney’s street, or parking his Sunfire across the road from her house.

But that’s where he found himself.

He fiddled with the radio, trying to find a channel that wasn’t riddled with static.

“… you a very Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!” a newscaster was saying. “That’s it for me for tonight, folks. Have a beautiful Christmas Eve!”

Christmas Eve, Nick thought…

It was Laney’s seventeenth birthday.