Jared
Jared stormed out of the kitchen door and straight into the middle of a forest. The snow was deeper there, wrapping around his feet and snaking up his ankles. He tried not to mind it, but his socks were getting wet. He thought for a second about going back, but there were crazy people in the kitchen. At least with the snow, he knew exactly what to expect. He didn't know where he was going, and he certainly didn't know how to get there, but his feet were moving, and for now, that was enough.
After a few minutes, he found a small river. It was frozen over. He didn't stop to think that he hadn't seen any frozen creeks yet in Alabama this year, although he was certain he was still in his home state. Even if he had thought about the creeks, he would have rationalized it by saying the hot chocolate was still showing him things that weren't really there. He'd also been given hot chocolate the night of his worst nightmare ever. They'd forced the images into him, and the words from the dream still echoed in his head in the inky black of the night.
The workers at Santa Command had been very good at playing with his mind. When he first came to live with Beth, she brought him there, hoping that the “magic” would convince him that things were going to be okay. They showed him flying reindeer, the Inklings (deformed squirrels in his opinion), and Santas traveling up and down chimneys in a puff of smoke. They'd even sent him to Chris' house and insisted he'd been to the North Pole.
As a child, yes, he would have called it magic. As an eleven-year-old, an age he liked to think of as young adult, he knew that all of those things were tricks designed to keep the public in the dark. There was no magic. Santa existed, but only as a club of old men playing dress up.
Chris may have been retired, but he was still one of them. He was still part of the joke that had been played on the world for centuries. Jared didn't wish to be any part of that joke. Any time Beth talked about work, Jared would mutter something about homework, retreat to his room, and lay on his bed with his iPod blasting into his ears. The sound took him into his head where he could leave the world behind him. Chris spoke about magic, but the only real magic Jared could imagine was the kind that would make him forget. For him, music was magic.
As Jared followed the river, he shuffled through his mental playlist until he came up with something angry, something Beth would forbid him to listen to because of the four-letter words in the lyrics. He found the perfect song and screamed it at the top of his lungs.
He stomped through the snow for a long time, bringing each foot up and pounding it back to the ground. It made him feel better, like he was accomplishing something. Or maybe it just made him feel not so lost. Because that was how he'd felt for one year and forty-five days. No. It was past midnight. Forty-six days.
He stomped and screamed. The ground quivered beneath him. He smiled.
Stomp. Scream. Stomp. Scream. Stomp.
Crack!
Without realizing it, he'd stomped onto the ice. It was a very thin patch of ice, with very cold water running beneath it. And as he plunged into the water, he forgot to scream.