My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories(33)

After the song is over, Papa wishes everyone a good night and goes back to his office. I want to follow him and fall asleep by the fireplace watching him go over his Naughty or Nice lists. But I don’t go, I stay in the Great Hall and sway to music and watch everyone else dance. Sondrine glides up beside me and says she likes my dress, which I know she doesn’t, but I say thank you anyway because she’s only trying to be kind. At least I’m not standing alone. Sondrine tells me about a dancing-elf video game they cooked up in the gaming department, complete with nonslip dance pad. At first it was a joke, but then they all got really into it, and now it looks like it might end up under a few kids’ Christmas trees.

But then Roan, a puppeteer elf, asks Sondrine to dance, and she skips off with him, smiling from pointy ear to pointy ear. When I was little, I used to tape my ears to try to get them to point. I was unsuccessful.

Elinor and Flynn are dancing again.

*

At lunch in the workshop last week, Elinor asked me, “Who are you going to the Snow Ball with, Natty?”

There was a long silence. And then I said, “No one.”

“Oh,” she said, and there was so much pity in that one little word I couldn’t stand it.

I swallowed a bite of mooseloaf and then I said, “I thought about flying in this boy I know who lives in Sweden, but—”

“Who do you know that lives in Sweden?” she asked.

When I told her the story of yellow-haired Lars and the Swedish candy, her eyes got that squinched look they get when she doesn’t believe you. “Hmm,” she kept saying.

“So why is this the first we’re hearing about him?” Elinor ran her fingers through her silvery hair. “It sounds like you two had a strong connection.”

I bit my lip. “We did have a strong connection. But we—we lost touch. I don’t even have his address anymore.” I never had his address. We were never in touch.

“I think you should find this boy, Natty. See if it’s meant to be.” Then she called out, “Flynn? Would you please look up the address of a Swedish boy named Lars? Aged fifteen to seventeen.” He didn’t answer, so she called out his name again. “Flynn?”

“What?” he said at last.

Sweet as spun sugar, she said, “We need you to look up a boy named Lars from Sweden. Natty, did you say what he asked for? We can cross-reference his Christmas wish with Swedish boys with blond hair named Lars.”

Flynn took off his headphones and pointed at the countdown clock on the wall. Twenty-five days till Christmas Eve. “You guys should get back to work if you want to hit your numbers today.”

“Don’t be such a Scrooge,” she said, and she went over to the computers, and nudged Flynn over, bending over the keyboard. Her silken hair grazed his cheek. “Okay, so I have the year, a first name, hair color, toy, country of origin. Natty, you said he lived by the sea?”

I nodded.

She typed some more. “Hmm. I don’t see anything.”

“Maybe it wasn’t Sweden. Maybe it was Norway. Or Finland. It could have been Finland!” I could hear the note of desperation in my voice, and they heard it too, and it was unseemly.

Elinor straightened up. “I should get back to the BB gun station. Ever since they started showing A Christmas Story on TV all day, it’s all kids are asking for.”

When she was gone, Flynn said to me with a grin. “You made that story up, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t make it up,” I said. “I was telling the truth! And you’re supposed to be my friend, which means you’re supposed to believe me.”

“I am your friend, Natty. And as your friend, I’m telling you, you shouldn’t make up stories anyone can easily disprove.”

“I’m not! There really is a boy named Lars! I don’t know why he’s not in the database, but there has to be an explanation.” I let out a big sigh. “And I wish everyone would stop calling me Natty. My name is Natalie.”

“Sorry. You’re not a Natalie to me. It sounds so … grown up.”

“Well, I’m not a little girl anymore,” I said, putting my head down on the table.

“Whatever you say,” Flynn said.

I sat there with my head on the desk, watching him work. He gets a very intense look about him when he works. Silver head bent over a toy, eyes narrowed in concentration. When he’s working, he doesn’t like to be disturbed. No elves do.

To his back, I asked, “Who … who are you taking to the Snow Ball, Flynn?” I held my breath. Don’t say Elinor. Anyone but Elinor.

He hesitated. And then, without turning around, he said, “Elinor,” and I could feel something in me wither.

“Why?”

“Because I always go with Elinor.”

“Oh. Right. Of course you do.”

If I had outright asked and not only hinted, would he have said yes? Would he have changed course? Or would it have been the same as it is every year?

Flynn, the handsomest of all the boy elves. And me, at the Snow Ball. I’ve got a good imagination, but even I have trouble picturing it.

We were both quiet. Too quiet. I had to speak, because if I didn’t, I would cry, and that wouldn’t do.

I got up and stood behind Flynn, and I tried to stand up tall, as tall as an elf. Shoulders back, chin up. Up, up so tears don’t fall. Up so high that I was looking at the ceiling and not straight ahead. I cleared my throat, and my voice came out thick like molasses. “I think you should go really dramatic in the bathroom. Gold faucets and black tiles. Also I think that the staircase you designed is sort of dated.”