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Candy canes danced over snowcapped mountains.
A draft of frigid air washed down the mountainsides. Kandi inhaled the spearmint breeze and dug into the ground with her bare hands. It was spongy and moist and tasted like cake. An avalanche of sweetness buried her in stacks of chocolate chip cookies and gumdrop mounds.
“Wake up! Wake up, wake up!”
She opened her eyes. A ceiling fan twirled in an ice blue sky, and a pair of blond heads was smiling down. They were jumping on her bed, timing their leaps to throw her higher. Above them, the illusion of the sky was filled with bouncing sugar plums.
“Here.” One of the boys threw a shirt. “Put it on.”
The twins leaped off in tandem and ran out of the master suite. One of them was slightly smaller than the other. That was Sonny. The other one was known as Son. They couldn’t call him Sonny Jr. or Sonny 2.0. And they wouldn’t change their names.
Sonny and Son raced down the hall.
Kandi lay in her bed and listened to Christmas music. The twins were only allowed to play it throughout the resort in December. They could do whatever they wanted in their room, but no one wanted to hear “Jingle Bells” in the middle of July.
Except for them.
Cold air blew down. Air-conditioning vents had been installed mid-summer. The miser had always kept everything hot. She was the heat miser.
Not Kandi.
She kept her room at a respectable sixty-five degrees on most days. It was now fifty-five degrees. It was Christmas.
It should be cold.
The air should nip her nose and pinch her cheeks, turn her breath into a column of steam. Tropical Christmas was going to take some getting used to.
The twins’ shirt was a loud, festive pattern of green and red stripes. A giant reindeer had been stitched to the front with a glowing nose. The antlers reached around the back. Little blocks of candy were hot glued to the antlers. When the twins weren’t decorating their room, they were making gifts. Everyone got a shirt.
She had a drawer of them.
A tall glass of ice tea was waiting on the table. She sipped it bleary-eyed on the way out the door. The twins were long gone. A glider was waiting. The hallway was empty.
No Sandy.
Some mornings she would imagine him rubbing his eyes and pretending to drink coffee. She gave up hope mid-summer. All the technology and they couldn’t reboot the cantankerous sandman. He had transferred all of his data into the tower. When that collapsed, he was gone.
There just wasn’t anything left.
There were other priorities on the island. They just couldn’t spare the resources to recreate a sarcastic ghost. She missed the grumpy illusion, even if he wasn’t real. He would’ve loved the shirt.
Kandi climbed on the glider and swiftly moved across the resort. The waterball fight was replaced with icy landscapes. She was cold by the time she reached the foyer, her arms dimpled with gooseflesh and her nose slightly numb.
The illusion of the Arctic was still on the walls and even across the door. It looked like a hole in space when she opened it—the other side lush and green and humid. Cris was waiting.
“You got to sleep in,” he said.
“They like me more.”
“I’m their brother.”
“I’m their best friend.”
His hair was past his shoulders. He had a habit of pushing it back, but it never stayed. He was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt with a giant gold bow on the front and candy canes dangling from the bottom. She ripped one off and bit into it.
“Your shirt tastes better. They do like you more.”
Hand in hand, they walked the path. Nothing had grown back since the tower collapsed. It was easy to cross the island. No more leaping between trees or toothy vines. A circular pond was still located where the tower used to stand. The sides were glassy.
On a clear day, her reflection looked back from the bottom. It was warped and imperfect, an approximation of whom she really was. Fish swam in its depths. It was different than the hole at Avocado, Inc. The miser had fallen inside that one.
Heather climbed out of this one.
The warehouse was still cleaved in half. A palm tree was the only thing growing on the scorched path. It had sprouted where the mountain used to be. Now it was decorated with lights and ornaments and shiny tinsel.
Gifts were stacked around it.
The warehouse equipment was rusted and dormant. Sheets were hung in the hollows where the helpers built forts. Weeds sprouted from cracks. Helpers glided across the hard ground with special padding on their soles—antigrav slip-ons courtesy of her dad. As Kandi and Cris approached the Christmas palm, the helpers came out singing. They had slimmed down and many had shaved.
They were hard to tell apart without their beards.
“The carrots are gone!” the twins shouted.
With the assistance of the helpers, they examined the hoofprints where they had spread an offering of carrots the night before. A big cushioned chair was next to a table of half-eaten cookies and an empty glass. It was still reclined.
The note was gone.
The twins had wished him a Merry Christmas and hoped he was hungry. Another new note was left on the recliner. The handwriting was shaky.
“The cookies are delicious!” it said. “And the chair exactly what I needed. Thank you and Merry Christmas!”
There was a photo attached. Santa Claus had taken a selfie high above the island. Wish you were here, Santa.
Heather was the last one to arrive. She wore a green dress with frilly trim. With her merry red skin, it was very Christmassy. Her hair was a big red dandelion. The dogs trotted behind her.
She smelled like suntanning lotion.
A weak smile crossed her lips as she muttered Merry Christmas to Naren. He stood up and hugged her. They embraced for several moments; then he returned to organizing the gifts. The holidays were a wonderful time of year for most people.
Not everyone.
The heat miser was no longer, but Heather still had a lot of healing to do. She’d worked hard to mend her wounds since crawling out of the hole with her dad, but it would take some time. Despite everything that had happened, Kandi was happy to see her.
So was her dad.
Kandi had never known her mom, but she knew the stories. She also had rarely seen her dad happy. He’d smiled more in the last year than she’d seen in her entire life.
A cheer rose up when the helpers saw her.
There was dancing and singing and falling and laughing. Many hugged Heather around the knees before joining the party. They lined up, each in groups of likeness. The gifts were organized so that each group got the same thing. The opening had begun. There were capes for some, hats for others, headlamps and wraparound sunglasses. No matter what it was, they cheered with excitement.
Wrapping paper fluttered like confetti.
The twins gave out extra-wide shirts. They’d been working on them all year. One was brighter and more Christmassy than the next. Some of the helpers cried joyfully. When the shirts were handed out and stretched over their bellies, they presented a present to the twins.
The boys carefully pried open the corners without ripping the paper while the helpers danced with anticipation. It was obvious they were unwrapping a board game, but the boys were overcome with shocked surprise.
Dungeons and Dragons.
The helpers oohed as they tried to steal a glimpse. The twins dumped out the pieces and began reading the directions. There was a chance they wouldn’t leave their room until next Christmas.
Kandi opened a miniature fan she could use to keep cool. Her dad got a handkerchief he promptly tied around his neck. Cris got a hair band and pulled his hair back. He opened a second present, this one from the twins. He opened it slowly, careful not to tear the corners. The helpers were hopping with excitement by the time he pulled out a board game.
It was chess.
The pieces had been hand-carved. The pawns were helpers. The rooks were replicas of the now-fallen tower. Mr. Goody and Ms. Doody were the knights, and the bishops were Sonny and Son. The king was barefoot with long hair and a bare chest.
Kandi was the queen.
“I love it so much,” he said, gasping. The helpers giggled, but Cris looked around. “No, seriously. I love it.”
He high-fived the twins then ran circles with the helpers. A year ago, Kandi was playing checkers with a boy on the other side of a glass wall. The island was haunted by a cloak-wearing fire woman and her dad was missing. All Kandi wanted was to go home and have everything go back to the way it was.
Even though she hated it.
Change was hard, but they’d found a calm stretch of existence. Home took some digging to find, but it was always right in front of them.
This is home.
The miser stood back with a satisfied smile. Her poopies were clad in brand-new Christmas bows. She wanted nothing. This was already everything she could possibly want. A year ago she was looking for home, too.
And found it.
“One more!” Cris shouted.
The helpers were scattered around the warehouse, playing games and singing. Organized chaos quickly assembled at the Christmas palm. They were as clueless as Kandi. A mystery gift was rolling in from the rear. Cris ran to help her dad wheel a refrigerator-size package in front of the palm. It was wrapped with green paper and a wide red ribbon.
Kandi waited for the helpers to usher the miser. Instead, they parted. A path was cleared directly to her. The miser was next to her dad.
“Kan,” he said, “your turn.”
“I... I already have something.” She pulled the fan’s trigger.
The helpers collectively laughed but didn’t let her escape. They pushed her forward and she resisted. Everyone was supposed to get small stuff like ugly sweaters and homemade board games. Cris gestured extravagantly for her to step up.
“You know about this?” she said.
“Everyone knows.”
“You too?”
The twins were clapping. The helpers joined them. There weren’t supposed to be secrets on the island anymore. That was the deal. Everyone honored it. Her dad hadn’t touched his temple in the past year. But this was Christmas.
A new set of rules.
“Merry! Christmas!” Cris started a chant and the helpers joined him. Even her dad clapped along. She was embarrassed. She didn’t want an extra present, but there was no escape. Little by little, the helpers pushed her forward. Cris took her hand and guided her to the tail end of the ribbon. Hand in hand, they tugged.
Then stepped back.
A door swung open. The helpers gasped. It was dark inside, but a form was visible. Kandi frowned. The island was full of illusions. She wasn’t ready to immediately believe this one. A hush fell over the crowd.
“Merry Christmas, Kan,” her dad said.
Her legs were unsteady. She didn’t know why. Maybe because it looked so real. Cris pulled the door open and nodded. The helpers pressed forward. Kandi took a hesitant step. Nothing moved inside the box. She reached out, fingers quivering, and put her hand in the dark. They scraped a rough surface.
Two sand dollars popped open.