MY DOOR BUZZED. IT WAS Monday afternoon—I’d spent the last four days in bed, basically, feeling sorry for myself. I’d even called in sick to work, which I’d never done before, but I figured I had some sick days saved up after almost six years of slogging away at Project Scrooge. I deserved some time off.
The door buzzed again. I pulled the covers over my head and tried to ignore it, but it kept buzzing, like an angry persistent bee swirling around my head. It wouldn’t go away.
“All right,” I muttered, and rolled out of bed. I stalked across my apartment and pressed the intercom. “WHAT?”
“Oh, hi, Holly,” came a squeaky voice. “It’s Stephanie.”
“What do you want?”
“I brought you turkey soup. I had so much leftover turkey.”
That actually sounded pretty good. So I let her in.
“Oh, you look awful,” she commented when I opened the door. She was wearing a yellow plaid shirt and capris, like a sunbeam determined to pierce the dimness of my world. She bustled into my kitchen and spooned some of the soup—which smelled delicious, by the way—into a bowl. I sat down at my little table and ate it slowly, while she perched on the chair across from me and watched the soup go from the bowl to my mouth like my life depended on it.
“I’m so sorry you’re sick,” she said. “I didn’t know you could get sick when you’re dead.”
“Well, I’m not actually dead, am I?” I said. Slurp.
“The office wasn’t the same without you today. Boz is all freaked out, because we only have a few weeks left until Christmas. He says we’re going to have to work overtime if we’re going to be ready.”
I couldn’t imagine how Boz was taking me not coming in to work, even if it was just one day. Or maybe the problem was that I could imagine it. And yet I couldn’t bring myself to care.
“We always have to work overtime. That’s the company norm,” I said. Slurp, slurp. Already I was almost finished with my soup. I wondered if she’d brought dessert.
“So how are you?” she asked. “Do you think you’ll come in tomorrow?”
She looked genuinely worried.
“Probably,” I muttered. My pity party about Ro couldn’t last forever. “Anything exciting happen while I was gone?”
She brightened. “The fire alarm went off in the middle of the day, which has apparently never happened before at the company, and there was this mad scramble for everyone to cover up all the . . . otherworldly stuff before the firemen came in and were like, What the—? And then we all had to stand out on the street for a half hour waiting for permission to go back in, and Boz was pacing back and forth like a crazy person, worried that they’d see something they shouldn’t, and then he was saying something about a ‘forget serum’ that we haven’t had to use in years, and anyway, it was all very stressful. And then, when the firemen said everything was okay, it turned out the fire alarm had been caused by Marty making toast with the equipment in the Transport Room.”
“Whoa.”
She looked at me like, I know, right?
“And what did Boz do?” I asked, aghast. The last thing I needed at this late stage in the game was having to find myself a new tech guy. Plus, even though he annoyed the crap out of me, I was kind of fond of Marty.
“Boz said, ‘I’m very disappointed in you, young man.’ And that Marty owed the whole company a big apology. So at the next meeting in the Go Room, Marty stood up in front of everybody and said he was sorry.”
“Oh. Is that all?” That was a bit anticlimactic, but at least I hadn’t lost Marty.
“And the vending machines started carrying dried apricots, because someone in records complained about there not being enough healthy choices.”
Ladies and gentlemen, my super-exciting work life. Fire drills and apricots.
“Oh, and I almost forgot,” added Steph. “We’ve had a breakthrough. We figured out who Ethan’s Belle is. Dave figured it out, actually. Her name is Victoria.”
I choked on my turkey soup. Stephanie patted me on the back while I coughed and coughed.
“How does Dave know her name is Victoria?” I wheezed when I could speak again.
“It was on the audio feed. Ethan said it on the phone with his mom. He told her he had a girlfriend, and her name was Victoria Scott. Dave’s been going crazy trying to figure out who she is. There’s no official record of a Victoria Scott living in New York City who’s, like, younger than seventy. Dave’s been spending all his time scouring social media profiles and stuff, but he hasn’t turned up anything that works. Ethan told his mom that he met this girl in the club, by the pool, he said, so Dave’s petitioning to start monitoring the gym areas now.”
I reacted to this news in three ways. First: Oh crap. I was possibly about to be found out. Second: Aw, he told his mom about me. That must mean something. And third: Oh CRAP! Because now of course the company would send me off to sift through Ethan’s brain looking for Tori.
Stephanie was staring at me like she’d been expecting an even bigger reaction. “So, it’s good news, right?” she said. “There’s a Belle after all. We just had to have faith it was all going to work out. So when you come back to work, we’ll sift around looking for this Victoria Scott.”
I was officially screwed.
I felt sick. “Thanks so much for the soup,” I croaked. “That was so thoughtful of you. You’re always so thoughtful.”
“Whatever I can do to help,” she said.
I nodded and tried to walk her back to the door. “Well. I’m sure you can’t stay long—I mean, you probably have plans tonight, so thanks again—”
“I don’t have plans,” she said. “I don’t have any homework that’s pressing, and I already finished my psychology paper that’s due next week, and Grant and his buddies are all on World of Warcraft tonight, so I thought maybe you could use some company.”
She pulled a DVD out of her bag. A movie. “This one’s my favorite. It’s about robots.”
You’ll never guess who the director was.
“I don’t have a TV,” I said, although now I was kind of bummed about it. I needed to be alone—to think, to try to work my way out of this current nightmare at Project Scrooge—but I also kind of wanted to hang out. Pretend my biggest problem was a head cold. Besides, I hadn’t seen that particular movie of my dad’s in forever.
“We can watch it on my laptop,” she said, pulling that out of her bag, too.
And so it happened that Stephanie and I spent the afternoon curled up on my ratty plaid sofa watching movies—not just one but two, although only the first one was my dad’s. In between movies we talked a little. I told her about growing up in California (although I didn’t mention that my dad was Gideon Chase because I wouldn’t have been able to stand that many wows), and she told me about growing up in Connecticut with her dad.
“We never had much money,” she explained. “My dad tried his best, but he could never seem to get on top of things. Still, we had a lot of love to go around. It was a good childhood.”
She was like the opposite of me in so many ways.
“How’s it going with Grant?” I asked later, because this seemed like a safe topic of conversation.
She grinned. “Great. So great.”
My phone buzzed—a text. From Ethan. It read, Hey, you up? Want to meet at the lion?
My scalp prickled thinking that Dave might read these texts. That he was hunting for Victoria Scott, and Victoria Scott was me, and if he found out, I’d be in a world of trouble so deep even the Marleys would probably feel sorry for me.
I can’t tonight, I replied. There was no way I could see Ethan now. Not if they knew about Victoria.
And just like that, it felt like it was over. No more Ethan. Deep down I’d always known it was going to happen. My time with Ethan was running out.
“Hey, are you okay?” Stephanie asked, sitting up.
“I’m fine,” I muttered, wiping at my eyes. “It’s just a lot of pressure this year.”
“You’re Victoria Scott, aren’t you?” she said softly.
Silence. I didn’t know what to say. I just stared at her.
“I thought it was too big a coincidence,” she went on after a few long seconds. “You tell me that you want to hang out with Ethan in real life, and now he suddenly has a girlfriend. It’s you, right? I know it’s you.”
I sighed. “Have you told Boz?”
She looked offended. “No! Of course not! I promised that I’d keep your secret.” She took a deep breath. “I just didn’t think it was going to be this big of a secret. This is kind of a big secret, Holly.”
“Yeah. I know.” I slumped into the couch.
“I know you were trying to help him, but . . .” She bit her lip. “His girlfriend, Holly? Are you crazy?”
“It just happened,” I said quickly. I was going to have to come up with an explanation, and it was going to have to be good. “I know it’s . . . unorthodox, but this relationship I’ve been developing with Ethan, I really do think it’s helping him. Since we’ve been together, he’s been . . . nicer. Better. He’s amazing, actually, he’s so . . . not like a Scrooge at all. You know, he told me that he’s actually become friends with Daniel Denton. He likes the kid now. He likes the Cratchit already. That’s good. That’s progress, right?”
“Right,” she agreed hesitantly. “But what about the Belle? How can you be the Belle, Holly?”
“I’m not the Belle. I can’t be.”
“Well, the Belle always breaks up with the Scrooge, doesn’t she? You could break up with him. But . . .”
I was shaking my head wildly. “No, I can’t . . .”
“ . . . what would you do on Christmas Eve? You can’t bring him back to revisit memories of you, Holly. He’d recognize you, and everyone would know.”
Everyone would know.
“I’m not the Belle,” I said faintly. “I can’t be the Belle.” Was I? For a moment I was utterly confused. I couldn’t be the Belle. I couldn’t go to Ethan now and play that part the way it always went for every Scrooge, where the Belle accuses the Scrooge of changing and being obsessed with money and says she can’t be with him anymore. Because that wasn’t the way it was between Ethan and me.
“So what are we going to do?” Stephanie asked.
“We need another Belle,” I whispered. “Someone else.”
Stephanie frowned, which made the little bumps pop out on her forehead. “There’s no time for Ethan to fall in love with anybody now. Although I still think Ethan’s too young for someone—anyone—to be the love of his life.”
A brilliant idea was starting to take shape in my brain. “We don’t need the love of his life. We need a breakup scene.”
I jumped up from the couch. “Come on,” I said, grabbing my Hoodie off the back of the door. “Get your coat.”
“Where are we going?”
“To the office. There’s something I need to look into. Right now.”
“Okay, people! Let’s go over this one more time.”
One week until Christmas. Boz, as was his usual style for the last official Project Scrooge meeting of the year, was acting like he’d had ten cups of break-room coffee. He was practically bouncing off the walls of Conference Room A.
“Here’s the lineup,” he said. “Marley—or, in this case, Ethan Winters the first—is our opener, of course. He warns Ethan that he’s about to receive a visit from three spirits when the bell tolls . . . when?”
“One,” everybody around the table said at the same time.
“Only there’s no real bell, you understand. It’s a metaphorical bell. But we do need Mr. Winters Senior in costume, in the Transport Room, no later than eleven thirty. Are we clear?”
Yes, yes, we were clear. It wasn’t like we’d never done this before.
“The Marley wears a costume?” whispered Stephanie from her place next to me.
Well, one of us had never done this before.
“Sort of. You’ll see.” I was saying you’ll see to Stephanie a lot these days.
“Then we move into Act One,” Boz continued. “Havisham. She goes in on her own, introduces herself to our Scrooge, and then moves him through the Portal and into the Time Tunnel.”
“Wait, the Time Tunnel?” Steph’s eyes were huge behind her glasses. “We have a Time Tunnel? How come nobody told me about this?”
“How else did you think we were going to move through time?” I asked.
“I thought we were going to re-create it somehow.”
“Well, that wouldn’t be any fun. No, we actually go back in time, although we stay in another dimension—one that lies right on top of our own—so the Scrooge can’t, like, intervene and change the course of history. Look, but don’t touch, that’s the rule.”
“How does that even work?”
I shrugged. “Something about wormholes and interdimensional planes. I don’t do the science. I just play the part. If you want to know how it works, you’ll have to ask Grant. And then have a degree in quantum mechanics.”
“Ahem.” Boz cleared his throat loudly. “Havisham.”
“Yes?”
“Are you quite done with your own personal conversation, and ready to tell us about what you have planned for Ethan’s journey into the past? Tell me you have something—anything—that you can use with this Victoria Scott.”
The moment had arrived. I lifted my chin. “No,” I said primly. “There’s nothing on Victoria Scott.”
Boz actually scowled. “How can that possibly be true? We have to have a Belle.”
“It’s not Victoria Scott. She’s not important to this story.”
“How can you say that?” Dave asked incredulously. “Ethan falling in love at this critical juncture is incredibly important. It could change everything we think we know about him.”
“For once, I agree with Havisham,” Blackpool boomed out. “Ethan can’t fall in love. He can’t feel love. Not anything true. He’s not capable of loving another person. To love, you have to think about more than just yourself. You have to consider the well-being of someone else. From what I understand, Ethan hasn’t considered anyone but himself in a very long time.”
I tried not to scowl, but I was suddenly furious. I was getting so sick of Blackpool casting his doom and gloom around the office like so much tragic confetti. Of course Ethan could feel love. Ethan was much better than all the hardened old geezers we’d worked on in the years I’d been at PS. Way better. At least he had some time left to live his life. If he lived; that is, if we succeeded in our mission. At least he was still young and had something to live for.
“If he’s so bad, then why are we even bothering to try and save him?” I snapped.
The room fell silent.
“I suppose we all deserve a chance to be saved,” Blackpool replied coolly. “Even if we don’t take it.”
God, he was passive-aggressive. It made total sense that he used to be a Scrooge, too. “Did you take it?” I asked. “I guess not, right, because you’re here.”
Mic drop.
Dave scratched his beard. “But we’ve noticed distinct changes in Ethan since this Victoria person came on the scene. Surely that’s important.”
I cleared my throat. “I think we’re missing the point. Whatever this thing with Victoria is, she can’t be his Belle. The Belle is part of the Scrooge’s past—a reminder of an opportunity he missed out on. She’s the ‘Ms. Right’ that he blew his chance with. Victoria, on the other hand, is Ethan’s ‘Ms. Right Now,’ if you get what I’m saying. She’s his present, not his past. So she’s not his Belle.”
“Okay. Let’s say that you’re right,” said Dave. “Are you suggesting that Ethan has no Belle? Have we ever had a Scrooge without a Belle?”
“Never,” Boz said softly.
“Oh, he has a Belle,” I argued. “It’s just not Victoria.”
“You think it’s that girl he saw at the benefit?” Dave asked. “The one in the white dress?”
“No, because she’s not his past, either. But I do have a theory.”
I nodded at Grant, who turned on the television monitor at the front of the room and then messed around on his laptop until a scene began to play. It was a recorded memory that I’d sifted from Ethan last week.
“Our mistake was getting focused on Victoria Scott. We know that the Belle doesn’t have to be a romantic connection, but when we found out about Ethan dating somebody, that was the conclusion everybody jumped to,” I said. “But we were wrong. Watch.”
In the memory, Ethan was sitting in the dining room of the penthouse, completely alone at this giant gleaming table. A maid set a plate down in front of him and stood back, waiting for him to dismiss her. He took a knife and cut himself a bite of steak. He put it in his mouth, chewed, and then he scowled.
“I said medium rare.” He took a napkin and spat the meat discreetly back into it. “This is medium. It’s pink in the center, not red. It’s overcooked.”
The maid went pale. “I’m sorry, sir. I’ll tell the cook.”
“Tell her she has twenty minutes to make me something edible.” Ethan pushed his plate away from him with a disgusted expression. “Make that fifteen.”
“Yes, sir.” She hurried off.
Dave clucked his tongue sympathetically. “Poor woman. It’s not her fault.”
“The meat was overcooked,” said Blackpool.
“Shh,” I admonished them. “This is where it gets good.”
“Well, that was a move straight out of Grandfather’s playbook,” came a voice, and Ethan turned to see Jack standing in the doorway.
“Hey, Jacqueline,” he said, because no one who knew her ever called her that, and he knew it would bug her. “What’s up?”
“Way to be a jerk to the hired help,” she commented.
He went back to looking at his phone. “I don’t tolerate incompetence.”
She took a seat next to him. This time her hair was a bright orange, like a living flame dancing off her head. She even had a tattoo on the inside of her wrist now—a Sanskrit symbol or something. She smiled at him. “Nice to see you, too, little brother.”
“What do you want, Jack?”
“I was in the neighborhood and came to see if you wanted to get some dinner. But I can see you already have that covered.”
“I can get the cook to make something for you,” he offered. “Although I can’t promise it will be any good.”
“Don’t bother,” she said. “I’ve lost my appetite.”
He looked up and saw her disgusted expression. “Oh, come on,” he scoffed. “She’s a cook. She should know how to—I don’t know—cook, don’t you think?”
“She’s a person, Ethan. It wouldn’t hurt you to give people a little bit of grace.”
“Grace is for screwups.” Another one of his grandfather’s zingers.
“Nice,” she said wryly. “You make me weep for humanity. Seriously.”
He sighed. “So that’s what you’re here for? To give me another ‘be kind to your fellow man’ lecture? Because there’s a morals and ethics class we’re forced to take at my school, and I can assure you, I’m getting an A.”
She shook her head sadly. “I’m done giving lectures. I just hope you’re happy with the life you’re choosing here.” She stood up. “I know my way out.”
“So, what, you’re just going to leave now? Until the next time you want to stop by and take the moral high ground?”
Her lips pursed. “There’s not going to be a next time, Ethan. I’m not going to come back here again. You’ve changed. I don’t even recognize you anymore.”
He scoffed. “Me? You’re the one who changes your look, like, every fifteen minutes. You freak.”
She gave a sad smile. “Call me if you decide to grow a soul.”
I nodded at Marty again, and he paused the video. “You see? This is the breakup scene. She even says some of the lines straight from the Scrooge script. Jack is Ethan’s Belle.”
A murmur went around the room.
“Jack is Ethan’s Belle,” Boz mused. “Well, it makes a certain bit of sense. Of course there’s no rule that it has to be a romantic entanglement.”
“Right?”
Dave looked uncomfortable with the idea, but after a minute he said, “But I still think we need to figure out what’s going on with Victoria Scott.”
I tried not to roll my eyes. Did I ever mention that Dave, in spite of being the nicest guy at the company, could be, like, mule stubborn?
“I think Havisham is correct in saying that this Victoria person is not important,” Boz said. “She was probably just a passing fancy to our Ethan.”
Blackpool nodded. “I don’t see a real future for Ethan involving anyone named Victoria. But who knows? Perhaps he does have a certain amount of love in store.”
He looked at me. He was messing with me now; I was almost sure of it. First with the part about how Ethan was incapable of love, and now that he might have love in his future? What was Blackpool playing at? And—for, like, the hundredth time—what exactly did he know? If he was aware that I was Victoria Scott, he still hadn’t told anyone. Maybe he just didn’t care. One Scrooge or another, a success or a failure, maybe none of this mattered to Blackpool. He was serving out a prison sentence, like I was. Doing his time.
Or maybe, just maybe, in spite of all of his grouchiness, Blackpool was on my side.
“It’s settled, then,” Boz said. “We focus on Jack. What else do you have?”
I rattled off the exact dates, times, and locations of the three stops I’d be making into Ethan’s past: a moment with his dad from when he was a kid, the Christmas party with his mom, and the breakup scene with Jack. Then my part of Ethan’s night would officially be over. For the rest of the night I’d be forced to watch from the sidelines.
“Very good,” Boz said when I finished giving him the rundown. “Excellent job, Team Lamp. So then we’ll move on to Act Two. Copperfield.”
Dave stood up. “So, like Holly, I begin with a brief introduction, and then . . .”
He stopped and glanced down at his notes. He still seemed on edge, which was weird because Dave was usually a pretty laid-back guy. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Then I’ll take him to see Dent and his mother—our Cratchits—and then the homeless man on Sixth Avenue, and then on to his grandmother’s for the Christmas party.”
Good luck getting Ethan to feel sorry for the homeless, I thought. Seeing as how he basically blamed a homeless man for the death of his father.
Dave frowned. “That’s all on my end.”
“Then he’ll be passed along to me,” Blackpool said as Dave sat down. “I don’t make polite introductions. I’ll take him straight to the school, where he can see his classmates cleaning out his locker. Then the Denton house with the heartbroken mother losing her job. And then the mortuary on Eighty-First.” He smiled. Blackpool always liked that part—showing the Scrooges their own deaths. I bet he loved that look of pale terror on their faces.
“And then we make him sleep, and get him back to his room, no later than four a.m.,” Boz filled in. “Good. It sounds like everything’s in place.”
Even thinking about Christmas made my heart beat fast. So much was riding on this one night. In some ways it felt like my entire life (or my entire afterlife, that is) had been leading up to this Christmas with Ethan. Which was silly. This Christmas was just like any other, I tried to tell myself. I just happened to be in a secret relationship with the Scrooge.
Boz surveyed the room like the captain at the helm of a ship. “Let’s go get Christmas ready.”
We all flooded out into the hall and headed off toward our separate domains as Past, Present, and Future.
Steph trailed right behind me, talking, of course. “I’ve got a pile of work orders for you to sign when you get a minute.”
Ugh, paperwork. “Do you know what the status is on the GCP costume? I haven’t seen it around yet.”
“They delivered your costume this morning. Do you need to try it on, make sure it still fits?”
I gave her a sharp look.
“Oh, right,” she said sheepishly. “Of course it still fits.”
“I always have to try it on for the costume department,” I said. “They like to change it a little bit every year—add some flair. Call Marie—her number is in my contacts—and she’ll set up the time.”
“Okay, boss,” Stephanie said. “So about these work orders . . .”
“And make sure that Grant’s got that lag fixed from last year. That was a bit of a disaster.”
“Oh, I think he’s got it fixed. He said—”
“Make sure,” I said. “There’s no room for error here. Just imagine what would happen if we got Ethan into the Time Tunnel and then it shorted out.”
She nodded. “Right. I’ll make sure. So, the work orders—”
I stopped so quickly she bumped into me. “Okay, okay. The work orders.” I grabbed the stack of folders from her hands and started flipping through them.
“Wait, those aren’t the . . . ,” she started. “The work orders are . . .”
“What’s this?” I held up a thick manila folder. It had the word HAVISHAM printed in black marker along the edge.
“Oh. That. It’s . . .” She obviously didn’t know what to say. Stephanie wasn’t a liar, not like me. The minute she tried to think up a lie her blue eyes got all buggy and her voice failed her and she kept licking her lips like the idea of telling a falsehood left her all dried out.
“This is my file,” I said. Obviously. The one that I’d found on Dave’s desk. I’d been so wrapped up in Ethan for the past few months, I’d forgotten all about it.
“I was just doing some research,” Stephanie said.
“On me?”
Her mouth opened and then closed again. She knew. She’d probably known all along, and she’d just wanted to hang out with me in order to—I don’t know—study me or something. My brain cycled through all the questions she’d asked me over the past few months: questions about my death, my life, my past relationships, the way I thought about things. It all made sense now.
“Holly—” she tried.
I handed her the folder and turned away.
“Wait, Holly.” She grabbed my arm.
I looked at her coldly. “So I was, like, what, an independent study for you? A psychology experiment? A test subject?”
Her hand dropped away from me. “Well, at first of course I was curious about you. You’re unique. A failed Scrooge—do you have any idea how rare that is? So yes, I was thrilled to be able to study you. But after a while—”
I let out a sharp laugh that hurt somewhere in my chest. “I actually thought you were my friend.”
“I am—”
I shook my head. “It’s fine. I’m already over it.”
I went back to my office. She followed me, of course. Because it seemed like I was never going to be able to get rid of her.
“Holly, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” I sat down at my desk and stared out the window. Snow was falling outside. God, I hated snow. I wanted to move to Bermuda.
“I know you must feel—” she tried again.
“We all have our games, right?” I said, waving off her lame attempts to explain herself. “You were just playing yours. It’s my fault, really, for thinking it could be anything else. People lie. It’s what they do.”
“I am your friend,” she protested. “I really am.”
“Great. You’re my friend,” I said tonelessly. “So where’s this paperwork you need me to sign?”
She sighed and sorted through her jumbled papers for a minute. Then she laid three work orders on my desk in front of me. I scribbled my signature at the bottom of each form.
“There you go.”
“Thank you. Can I get you some coffee?” she asked in a wavering voice. “I was thinking of making a run to that shop you like.”
I looked up at her. “Just do your job, Dorrit. I don’t need anything else from you.”
Her head dropped. “Okay.”
She turned to go.
“How long is your internship, by the way?” I asked before she reached the door.
“My internship?” She turned back.
“Are you only supposed to work here for this one year?”
“Oh,” she answered. “Yes. This one year.”
“So it’s almost done, then,” I pointed out.
“I guess it is.”
“Can I offer you some professional advice?”
“Okay,” she whispered.
“You need to rethink your wardrobe. I mean, look at you.”
She stared down at her outfit. She was wearing a bright red sweater with a Scottie dog on the front and a black skirt and black cable tights and red flats.
“You look like a ninth grader,” I observed. “How old are you, nineteen?”
“Almost twenty,” she squeaked.
“It’s ridiculous. You’re working at a prestigious business in New York City. Dress like it. Otherwise no one is ever going to take you seriously. Oh, and get some new glasses, too. Those are terrible.”
She swallowed and nodded shakily. “Okay. Thank you.”
“Why don’t you spend the rest of the day helping Marty set up those cameras we’re going to use,” I suggested. “I don’t need you here.”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” I parroted. “Off you go, then.”
It was only after she’d left that I allowed myself to cry.