Katie darted from window to window, breathing hard. She misted up her own view and had to rub the glass panes clear with her hand. She welcomed the plows, watched the families come and go. Snow added skirts and capes to every bush. The street was so different from what it had been a few hours before.
Like me, thought Katie. I’ll be different.
Other people were going to church on Christmas Eve. Katie had never done this. Mrs. Halsey went to church. She said there was a pageant.
Katie fell in love with that word. Pageant. If she had a girl doll, if her family gave her a really nice doll, Katie would call her doll Pageant.
Mrs. Halsey said it meant a long line—an indoor parade—everybody who was part of Christmas, and they would wear beautiful robes and sing beautiful songs, and there would be candles.
“Matt,” whispered Katie.
He said nothing.
He had said nothing for days. It scared Katie. What if the Rowens kicked him out after all? He didn’t have a family coming in the morning. What would happen to Matt?
Katie prayed for Matt, and she was amazed to find that she knew how. She had never met God, but when she said, “God, Matt doesn’t have a family coming in the morning! You have to take care of him!” she felt a lot better, as if someplace where Katie couldn’t hear him doing it, God had said, “Sure, thanks for reminding me.”
The church that Mrs. Halsey went to was so pretty: high up, with tall granite steps. It had a sky-piercing steeple full of swinging bells that chimed the hour. Katie liked the bells any time of day: she liked to wake up to the bells, she liked to fall asleep by them. The River Wind family—Tack and his parents—also went there. So the church was full of people Katie liked; it would be a safe place. And it would have that pageant thing, that thing she was going to name her doll for.
“Matt,” said Katie, “let’s go to that Christmas pageant they do at the church.”
Matt and Katie had walked by the church many times. It was not a short walk, but it wasn’t impossible, and in the snow, with her rubber boots on, and two pairs of socks inside, and Matt to hang on to, and at night, with all the Christmas lights sparkling—Katie wanted to walk there on this special night called Eve, and get ready for the special next day called Morn.
“Pageant’s over,” said Mrs. Rowen. “They do that at the eight o’clock service. It’s nine now.”
They had had the pageant without her?
“I missed it?” said Katie, stricken. It’s my fault, she thought, I should have asked earlier. I didn’t know I had to ask earlier.
She pushed the sadness away from herself, thinking, When I have a family, they’ll know these things; they’ll know you have to plan earlier.
Mr. Rowen said, “They have an eleven o’clock service, though.”
Katie knew they would not let her go to that. She never got to stay up that late. In the dark of her room, she stayed up, staring down the hillside at the ruby red taillights of traffic, but real staying up, with your clothes on—no.
Anyway, Mr. and Mrs. Rowen were giving each other those tired looks, those looks that said, I can’t manage that. That’s too much to ask.
So Katie didn’t ask.
She laced her hands together, and stared at her fingertips, and wondered what her family was doing now, and if they had gone to the pageant and wished they could have brought her.