“TWENTY BUCKS SAYS THE KID actually speaks the words,” said Marty.
“No way,” said Grant.
“Why don’t you put your money where your mouth is, big shot?”
Grant pulled out his wallet. “You’re on. But it has to be the exact words.”
“Or the modern equivalent of the exact words,” Marty clarified. “I mean, of course he’s not going to say ‘God bless us, every one.’ This is the twenty-first century.”
I’m surrounded by morons, I thought. They were like twins, those two, even though Grant was black and Marty was Korean—they were both completely dorky and determined to mess up my day. Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber. God.
“Cheater,” Grant said. “You didn’t say anything about the ‘modern equivalent’ before.”
Marty crossed his arms over his beanpole chest. “I win if he says the word ‘God’ or the word ‘bless’—how about that?”
“Fine.” Grant grinned. “But I’ll bet you twenty dollars that she buys the family a big turkey.”
“She’s a vegetarian,” Marty pointed out.
“Are you going to take the bet or what?” Grant tapped the face of his watch. “Time’s running out.”
“She won’t buy a turkey. She thinks that’s murder.”
I turned my attention back to the set of monitors that covered the wall at the front of the Go Room. The current Scrooge, number 172, had just woken up to find herself back in her own bedroom, alive and well.
Everybody leaned forward to see what she would do next.
For a few seconds the old lady just stood there in her silk nightgown (people that age should not wear silk, I thought) and looked around.
Then: “It’s not too late,” she whispered, tears in her eyes and everything. “It’s not too late. I can still make things right.”
“Bingo!” some idiot near the front of the room shouted. “We have reformation, people.”
The Go Room exploded in applause. The receiver buzzed in my ear, reverb from all of the commotion going on, and I pulled it out and let it dangle on my shoulder. The mood was instantly lifted—if this Scrooge was truly changing her ways (which remained to be seen, I guess, but hey—this was the critical first step), then the operation could be counted as a success. People were already passing around champagne.
“No, thanks,” I said as a newbie from accounting tried to offer me a glass. I didn’t even bother trying to sneak any booze this year—according to Boz I was still technically a teenager, and therefore not old enough to partake in that part of the celebrations. “It’s true that some of aging is about life experience,” he always said whenever I tried to argue. “But a great deal of it is physiology, and in that way, you are still very much seventeen years old.”
I was apparently going to be seventeen forever.
“Great job tonight, by the way,” said the noob from accounting.
“Thanks,” I answered, but the girl had already moved on to somebody else.
I always felt self-conscious at this stage. Everyone in the room knew me as the Ghost of Christmas Past—the Lamp, they called me—but I didn’t know how many people here also knew that, not so long ago, it’d been me up on the monitors.
A failed Scrooge.
The current Scrooge was now dancing around her room like a schoolgirl, gleeful in the knowledge that she wasn’t dead. The excitement transformed her into someone that I, even after spending months inside this woman’s head, wouldn’t have recognized if I’d met her on the street. Already she looked like a completely different person.
Nonsense. People don’t change, the Inner Yvonne said matter-of-factly from the back of my brain. They are who they are. What changes is only the way they allow us to see them.
My feet hurt. I wished I could escape to my dressing room, get my makeup off and pack up my costume for the dry cleaner’s, but Boz always insisted that everybody, from the lowliest analyst at the company to the tech guys (like Grant and Marty) to the major players (me and the rest of the Ghosts), stay for the big ending. I found this wildly hypocritical, because he was, in essence, forcing his staff to work on Christmas. But nobody argued with Boz.
Speaking of the illustrious Mr. Sikes, Boz had finally caught on that there was gambling taking place on the floor. Which was against another one of his rules.
“We don’t wager on them,” he was saying to Marty firmly. “This is not a game, young man.”
Marty looked put out. “I wasn’t betting on the big stuff—just the details. You know, to keep it lively.”
“No wagers,” Boz repeated.
Buzzkill.
On the monitors, Scrooge 172 (whose real name was Elizabeth Charles, CEO of one of the largest and most corrupt health insurance companies in the country) was making a few phone calls. “Merry Christmas!” she kept exclaiming. “Merrrrrrrrrrry Christmas!”
Then she called and ordered the Brown family (this year’s equivalent of the Cratchits) a giant Christmas turkey.
Marty covertly passed Grant a twenty.
We kept watching throughout the morning, until Scrooge 172 ended up visiting the Brown home personally to tell Mrs. Brown that her son Todd’s medical expenses were going to be covered after all. Everybody started sniffling at that point. Everyone, that is, except me. I never did the crying thing. It would have ruined my makeup.
“Thank you, ma’am,” whispered the little boy on the monitors. “God bless you, Mrs. Charles.”
Grant passed the twenty back to Marty.
The screens went black.
“Good work, everyone.” Boz came up to the front of the room. “We were a well-oiled machine tonight. Which means that the world is a better place, thanks to us. And, of course, merry Christmas!”
The room filled with a chorus of Merry Christmases. Even I found myself mouthing the words.
“Go home. Rest up. Enjoy your holidays,” he continued, “and I will see you all back here next year, ready to start on Scrooge 173.”
The team began to disperse. I hurried toward the door.
“Oh, Havisham,” Boz called. “Before you go, I’d like to see you in my office, please.”
Sigh. “Now?”
“You can get cleaned up first,” Boz said charitably. “Just see me before you leave.”
Double sigh. “Okay.” I turned and trudged off toward my dressing room.
I ran into Dave—the Ghost of Christmas Present—in the hall. He’d taken off his robe and his wreath, but he still reminded me of the Jolly Green Giant. Dave was, like, six foot four and bearded and had probably died in his late thirties, and all I could really think when I looked at him was how I probably should have been nicer to him the night I was the Scrooge. He knew exactly who I was, but in five years he’d never acted like I was anything but a vital part of this company. Dave was the very definition of a nice guy. Which made me wonder how he’d ended up working here. What was he being punished for?
“It’s a good thing,” he said.
At first I wasn’t sure he was even talking to me. “What?”
He stopped outside of his dressing room door—the one marked Copperfield—and gave me a goofy smile. “Working here. It’s a good thing.”
FYI: Dave could read minds. It was part of his job description. Most of the time he kept that ability turned off, to be polite, I guess, but on Christmas it always kind of overrode his system.
“We help people,” he said. “We change the world.”
“Yeah. I know.” Cue the company motto.
“For the record, I like working with you, Holly.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m going to miss it.”
Okay, so that was a strange thing to say. But before I could ask what he meant, he went into his dressing room and closed the door.
I changed into my regular clothes and reported back to Boz. When I got to his office, I found him standing at the window looking out at the city while big, fluffy flakes of snow danced past the glass. Boz just loved New York. He loved the lights of Times Square and the bustle of Broadway. He loved the subways and the hot dog stands, the honking cars and the brush of shoulders on the street. He even loved the cold. He was always going on about it.
I tapped on the door nervously.
“Oh, Havisham, come in,” he said. “There’s someone here I’d like you to meet.”
I wasn’t even two steps inside his office when a girl jumped out at me. For a second I thought she was going to attack me or hug me. Either way, I stepped back fast.
“Oh, wow,” the girl breathed. “You’re the Ghost of Christmas Past.”
“Yeah, that’s me,” I admitted.
“Havisham, meet Dorrit,” Boz said. “She’s a sophomore at NYU—isn’t that fantastic?”
The girl didn’t look a day over fifteen, in my opinion. I mean, she was wearing a green sweater with a polar bear on it, her platinum-colored hair was in one of those messy half-falling-out ponytails, and her purple glasses were much too big for her face, but not in the cool hipster sort of way.
“Wow,” she chirped. “You’re the biggest celebrity I’ve ever met. Well, I did see Taylor Swift in Central Park once, but I didn’t actually meet her.”
Boz cleared his throat. Project Scrooge wasn’t a place for fangirls—Boz never let people from the outside see what went on inside the Project, never ever. “Well, Dorrit,” he said awkwardly, avoiding my questioning stare, “it’s Havisham’s job—not Havisham herself—who’s famous. Holly’s only been with us for a short while.”
Oh, thanks, Boz, I thought. Thank you so much.
“What’s it been now, Holly? Four years?” he asked.
“Five.”
“Yes, that’s right. Five.”
“Wow,” the girl said again. “Five years as the Ghost of Christmas Past. That’s so—wow.”
I didn’t know how many more wows I could take.
“I’ve wanted to meet the Ghost of Christmas Past ever since I found out about this project,” the girl said. “So cool, by the way, so totally noble, what you’re doing here. You’re changing the world.”
“How did you find out about the Project?” I asked carefully.
“Oh, Dorrit is our new intern,” Boz answered for her.
I frowned. We didn’t use interns. PS wasn’t the kind of company that did its headhunting through the normal channels. For obvious reasons. Not all of the people who worked there were dead—that was just me and the other Ghosts, I thought, and possibly Boz, but he never talked about it—but there was enough top-secret stuff going on that Boz was super careful about who we hired. People around the office joked that it was harder to get a position at Project Scrooge than it was to get recruited for the FBI. The process apparently involved Blackpool’s power to see the future and rigorous tests and interviews and layers and layers of confidentiality agreements.
“I’ve decided that she’s going to be your assistant,” Boz continued.
The girl gave a suppressed squeal of excitement.
My mouth dropped open.
“But . . . I’ve never had an assistant.”
“You’ve never had an assistant until now,” Boz corrected cheerfully.
Dorrit’s smile was almost a supernova.
“But I don’t need an assistant,” I protested.
“I know you don’t need an assistant,” Boz said. “But I thought it might be nice to have someone else around. A fresh pair of eyes. Someone to help you, someone to bounce ideas off of, someone to look after you and give you more personalized attention.”
This set off a bunch of alarm bells, obviously, but Boz had that freakishly stubborn glint in his eye. I’d seen that look on his face a few times before, and it had never turned out well for me.
I decided to go with it.
“Um . . . awesome.” I extended my hand for the girl to shake. “I guess this means welcome aboard, Dorrit,” I said in my very best Boz impression.
The girl simply exploded into a puddle of goo. “Thank you, Miss Havisham,” she said, pumping my hand up and down. “I won’t let you down, Miss Havisham. I promise. Thank you. Thanks.”
Suddenly I got a flash from when she was a kid, which happened sometimes when I touched people—the way Dave could hear the present and Blackpool could see the future, I felt the past. In that moment I could feel what this girl had been like as a toddler, snuggled up in her bed in a dark room, awake and waiting.
A light went on. A man’s voice said softly, Come on, sweetie. It’s morning.
Is it Christmas yet? she asked.
Freaking Christmas. I gritted my teeth and firmly pushed this girl’s past out of my mind. I walked her to the door. “All righty,” I said. “I guess I’ll see you later?” Then I pried my hand away from hers and closed the door right on her cute little button nose. I turned to Boz. “Are you trying to kill me?”
“You forgot to wish her a merry Christmas,” he said from where he was sitting at his desk. He straightened a stack of papers and gazed longingly at the record player.
“Or maybe you’re trying to kill her,” I concluded. “You think after a week with Little Mary Sunshine I’ll go crazy and rip her tiny blond head off. Because I will do it. I swear, Boz, I don’t deal well with her type.”
“I think she may surprise you,” he said, smiling in an annoyingly mysterious way. “All I ask is that you give her a chance.”
“Fine. Can I go now?”
“Just one more thing.” He opened his desk drawer and took out a small wrapped gift, about the size and shape of a ring box. “Merry Christmas, Havisham.”
I stared at him. We’d never exchanged gifts before, not once in five years. “I didn’t . . . I don’t have anything for . . .”
He shook his head and pushed the box into my hand. “It’s all right. Take it. Open it when you get home.”
“Uh, thank you?” I didn’t know what else to say.
“You’re welcome,” he said. “And I’ll expect you at eleven sharp on your start date—what is it this year?”
“April first,” I answered. Boz always gave the entire company the month of January as vacation. Then Blackpool spent February and March deciding on who would be the new Scrooge. And then we were all back in business. The Scrooge business.
“Of course, April first,” Boz agreed. “Don’t be late.”
I never was. Even though I didn’t know why it would make a difference if I showed up on time.
The subway was almost empty on the way back to my place, apart from the few disgusting Christmas-morning types: lovers who couldn’t help their PDAs, smiling families on their way to their grandmother’s house, the odd guy in a Santa suit. I picked a seat at the end of the car and slumped there in my Hoodie the whole ride.
The Hoodie was one of the big perks that came with the Ghost of Christmas Past job. To the outside observer, it appeared to be a normal black hoodie, but when you zipped it up and pulled the hood over your head, you became completely invisible. It had saved my butt lots of times while I was sneaking around a Scrooge’s house. I wasn’t supposed to use the Hoodie for anything but company business, of course, but I wore it all the time. It was comfortable.
It was four stops between 195 Broadway, where Project Scrooge’s headquarters was located, and my stop downtown. Then down three blocks to my apartment. Then up four flights of stairs, because, of course, it was a walk-up. Then home.
I was legally deceased, which made regular things like credit checks impossible, so the company paid the rent for this place, plus the utilities and the furnishings: a twin bed and a lamp and an ugly-but-comfortable plaid sofa, a tiny kitchen table that could seat two (but never did, because I never had anyone over), the basic refrigerator and stove and all the necessary pots, pans, and dishes (but no dishwasher), a chipped pedestal sink in the bathroom, and an old claw-foot tub with a shower attachment. I also received a hundred dollars a month for food and miscellaneous expenses. That was it. One hundred dollars. No money for decent clothes. No internet. No smartphone. No frills of any kind. I had to get by with less money each month than what the Old Holly had spent on manicures.
I’d worked at PS for almost a year before I got over the sense of total outrage that flooded me every single time I opened the door to my closet-sized apartment—like I was stepping into a horror flick, complete with the occasional cockroach. I’d even tried to run away once, but I hadn’t gotten very far before my arms and legs went numb and I passed out in the middle of the airport. I’d woken up right back on the green sofa in the PS building, where Boz had gently explained to me (again) that I didn’t have a life outside of the company. I was there because they wanted me to be there, until they’d decided I’d been there long enough. In other words, I was stuck.
When I got home I flung myself down on the couch and sighed. I hated this part. There was nothing to do now for three whole months. It was supposed to be a nice thing for the employees of Project Scrooge—time to spend with your family and friends after months of hard, unrelenting work—but I didn’t have family. I didn’t have friends. I didn’t have money to shop or do anything cool. I couldn’t go anywhere.
Ten minutes into vacation, and I was already bored.
Next door, through the paper-thin wall, I could hear the neighbor lady watching It’s a Wonderful Life. My dad and I always used to watch that movie together, before Mom died and Yvonne came along to take her place. Dad loved it, for some reason. I always told him I thought it was the cheesiest cheese.
“What is it you want, Mary?” Jimmy Stewart was asking Donna Reed through the wall. “You want the moon? Just say the word, and I’ll throw a lasso around it and pull it down.”
Dad was such an incurable romantic.
I’d told Dad that the movie was lame, but I’d secretly loved it, especially the romantic parts, the parts where it’s like George and Mary can’t help but fall in love with each other. That’s how it felt like love should be—inevitable. Irresistible. Written in the stars.
Not that I would know.
I sneaked into the hall with my Hoodie to “borrow” the neighbor lady’s newspaper. To check the movies section. To see if one of Dad’s movies was playing.
He didn’t make a film for two years after I died. Then he did a couple of big blockbusters, one about robots and one about aliens. That wasn’t his style at all, but it paid the bills, I suppose.
I saw those movies, like, fifteen times each. They were both pretty good if you like that kind of thing, grand adventures, full of bright colors and sweeping music and all the feels in the key moments. Of course they both had happy endings, too. The hero wins. The villain loses. The end.
Anyway, so I checked to see if there was a new movie from Gideon Chase. There wasn’t. I returned the paper to the spot outside my neighbor’s door and went inside. I was about to hang up my Hoodie when I felt something stashed in the pocket.
The present. From Boz.
I opened it. Inside was a pocket watch—silver and a little tarnished. It was pretty, in an antique sort of way. Vintage. It was still going, but the time it showed was three hours behind.
An old watch. Weird, I thought. Why would Boz give me a watch?
Why, for that matter, would Boz give me an assistant?
What was he up to?
It probably wasn’t anything good. But maybe I didn’t care. After five long years, five Scrooges, five Christmas Eves performing the same old show, I was just so tired of it all—the same people, the same tasks, the same script, the same paperwork afterward—and what did it get me, I thought, what did this crap job ever do for me?
Nothing.
It was just a job. A job that—if I was lucky, right?—I was probably going to be doing for decades, if not centuries. Over and over and over again. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I’d figured out a long time ago that Project Scrooge was my own personal version of hell.