My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories(50)
Author: Stephanie Perkins

“I don’t think so.” Roth turned toward me, his words slurring a little. “Are you the one who’s been texting lies to my girlfriend?”

“Lies?” I snorted. Penny appeared to be frozen in place, like she already knew how this would go, like she already knew she wasn’t going to be able to pretend anymore. She stumbled back, sitting down hard on one of the arms of Grandma’s sagging couch. She didn’t even seem angry with us, although she must have guessed one of us had sent the texts.

Conversations had stopped around the small room. Outside, a siren howled. Music still thrummed through the speakers of Grandma’s stereo, not loud enough.

“Are you the one he was sleeping with?” Silke asked, and I noticed her eyes were bright and red-rimmed, like she’d been crying. Then she looked past me to Penny. The moment she saw her, I think she knew. “Or was it—”

“What if I was?” I asked, interrupting, because it wasn’t fair for Penny to have to confront Silke seconds after Roth broke her heart. “You know he cheated, even if he says he didn’t. What you don’t know is that you’re the one he cheated with. You’re the other woman.”

Silke turned to Roth, shaking her head. “She was your girlfriend?”

“No! Are you crazy? I told you. I brought you here to see how pathetic they were. To understand that they’re lying. Maybe they want money. I don’t know. They’re trailer trash in a real, actual, literal trailer park. Nailing one of these girls would be worse than slumming. It would be like swimming through a sewer. I’d never get the smell out.”

His friends guffawed at that. A dude-bro Greek chorus.

No one else so much as cracked a smile. Oscar cracked his knuckles instead.

Silke looked uncomfortable.

I took my phone out of my pocket. I wasn’t as good at this as Wren would have been, but with the liquor singing through my veins, I knew I had to do something. “I have a picture of Roth here—”

“No you don’t.” Roth grabbed for the phone. “Give me that.”

I didn’t actually have a picture of him and Penny together, but Roth didn’t know that. He lunged. I turned away from him, tossing my phone toward the couch as Roth twisted my wrist hard enough to make me yell.

And then everything happened at once. Wren burst out of the back in her underwear. Marc tried to get between me and Roth. One of Roth’s friends tried to get in Marc’s way. Oscar hit somebody. I was on the floor and guys were punching one another and Wren was smashing a lamp over someone’s head and everyone was screaming.

That’s when Roth kicked the table with the punch bowl on it. The leg cracked, and the punch bowl went over, spilling a fizzing frozen strawberry and booze tide onto all the food, soaking the cheese and crackers, splashing into the hummus and onion dip, ruining the quiches. Ruining everything.

I full-on screamed. Way louder than when he bent my arm. I screamed so loud that Marc let Roth go. Bloody-nosed, Roth turned and saw my horrified face. I don’t think it was until that moment that he realized how much destroying the party would hurt me. His smile was smug and hideous.

I wanted to claw his eyes out. I wanted to hide in the back room. I wanted to go outside and sit in the cold until I was frozen all the way through. I wanted to do all those contradictory things so intensely that I did absolutely nothing at all. I just stood there, my eyes filling with tears as Roth’s smile grew into a laugh.

Then the door opened again, letting in a cold breeze that guttered the candles.

It was the beautiful Krampus boy with the goat legs and the gold paint. He must have misunderstood about dressing up for the party, because he was in a variation on his costume at the Krampuslauf. He’d paired his goat legs with a green brocade jacket stitched with silver thread and matching knee breeches with tiny silver buttons along the cuffs. Two friends were with him, both in costume. One, a girl in a white dress with a single sleeve stitched with glittering crystals. The other, a boy with waist-length blond hair. He wore pointed-eared prosthetics and a black wool Edwardian suit.

Roth and his friends looked thrown by their arrival, but they weren’t standing there with tears in their eyes and a wrecked table of food.

“We brought gifts,” the boy with the hooves said, and the blond reached into his coat and brought out a bottle of clear liquor. He removed the cork with his teeth. “Mine is holiday cheer.”

“Are you guys for real?” one of the Mossley kids said.

Roth snorted, still spoiling for a fight. Silke stepped back, into the kitchen of the trailer. A few of our friends were rearranging themselves in case Roth and the Mossley boys wanted to throw a few more punches. I was trying to edge my way to where I’d left my grandmother’s broom. If Roth tried anything else, I’d crack it over his skull.

“I brought a gift, too,” said the girl, and drew a curved knife out of her bodice. She took two steps. Before the rest of us even reacted, she had it pressed against Roth’s throat. His eyes went wide. I was pretty sure no one had ever had a knife on him before, especially not a girl. “I understand this boy was causing some trouble.”

“Are you robbing us?” the dark-haired Mossley girl asked. “Seriously? In those outfits?”

The boy with the goat legs laughed.

The blond boy with the elf ears looked from me to Penelope to Silke and then to Roth. “What ought his fate be?”

I let go of the broom and took a step toward Roth and the girl in white. “Don’t hurt him. I get the impulse, but he’ll sue.”

“Who are you?” Penny asked, awed.

“Joachim,” the Krampus boy said. “And my companions, Griselda and Isidore.”

Wren’s eyebrows went so high it was like they were trying to climb off her face. “I thought he was…”

Penny looked at me. “That’s Joachim?”

But of course, he wasn’t. He couldn’t be. Joachim wasn’t anyone. He didn’t exist.

“So what would you have me do with him?” Griselda asked. “I’d like my gift to be well received.”

Silke stepped out of the kitchen, moving as though drawn against her better judgment. “I want him punished.” At that, Silke turned to Penny. “Don’t you?”

Penelope walked up to Roth. His eyes widened the closer she got. And in that moment, I could see her dilemma. She could save him and indebt him to her. She could prove that she was better than his other girlfriend—better than him. But he might leave her anyway—and then she’d feel like an even bigger fool.