Wild Girl (Slateview High 2)

“Yeah, but I’m your spoiled little rich girl, aren’t I?”

Christmas for the Lost Boys was as unconventional as could be expected for a group of boys like the three of them. For one thing—I learned that they didn’t actually have any plans to celebrate Christmas at all.

It was mentioned the first night the boys stayed over at my place, just a week before Christmas. I was in the kitchen with Bishop, whipping up a positively delicious meal of pasta and chicken.

“So, what do you guys want to do for Christmas dinner?” I asked. Buying presents was out of the question; even with Mom’s “special friend” giving her favors and attention, I knew I couldn’t spend too much extra money. But a nice, hot meal? That, I could do.

But Bishop looked over at me, his head tilted in curious confusion.

“Christmas dinner?” He chuckled. “I figured we’d just get, like… regular food.”

I blinked at him, somewhat disbelieving. “Don’t you do a special thing for Christmas dinner?”

Bishop shook his head. “Nah. Christmas has always just been another day, y’know? Sometimes we have work, but it’s never anything heavy. Pretty sure Josephine has somethin’ to do with that, to be honest. She makes sure Nathaniel takes it easy over the holiday.”

I hummed, thinking for a moment. I liked that. It made me happy to think of Josephine making sure that even Nathaniel, a crime lord who probably knew the darker side of humanity better than most, found time for love and light. I liked how she seemed to balance him out.

With that idea bouncing around in my mind, I stopped stirring the sauce in the pot.

“Do you guys… want to do a Christmas dinner?” I asked. “Like, a special one. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but we can make it our own. Maybe invite Liam and Jessica over…”

Bishop glanced over at me, smiling a bit.

“Hey, guys!” Lifting his voice, he called to Kace and Misael, who’d been hanging in the living room. They poked their heads into the kitchen a few moments later. “Want to do Christmas dinner with Liam and Jessica?”

Misael tilted his head, an adorable grin spreading across his face. “Christmas dinner? Like with a whole turkey and sides and stuff?”

I laughed. “Well, maybe not a whole turkey… but, yeah.”

Kace shrugged, his light green eyes glittering as his gaze landed on me. “If the Princess will be there, I’m there.”

The simplicity of his answer, and the truth in his voice, made warmth trickle down my spine.

I grinned, pleased at their readiness to indulge in something that was near and dear to my heart. My childhood memories might be based on lies, but they still meant something to me. I wanted to create new ones—ones I would be sure were real.

Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I shot a quick text to Jessica about getting together for Christmas and doing a whole dinner with her and Liam and the boys. Jessica, social butterfly that she was, of course said yes. We made plans to get together and buy groceries the next day to make said dinner.

For the first time, I found myself almost glad that Mom had left. If she’d been here, I was certain there would’ve been no Christmas dinner, and certainly not with the people I cared about most in the world.

Appreciate what you have, Cora.

Hold on to it and love it.

I had never cooked a Christmas dinner myself.

Mom and Dad had always had a huge list of

dishes for the ‘“Christmas feast,” as they’d called it. Our cooks would go to the stores and buy the freshest meats, vegetables, and other ingredients. Everything would be micromanaged, perfect, beautiful and elegant.

Cooking dinner this year, with six of us crammed into the tiny little kitchen over the fixings we’d managed to buy, was a far cry from a carefully coordinated Christmas feast, but it was the most fun that I’d had on a Christmas holiday in my life.

We had a small turkey cooking in the oven, green beans with salt pork simmering on the stove—because Misael said that you couldn’t just boil green beans in water; that was blasphemy, of course—along with box stuffing, sweet potatoes loaded up with cinnamon and marshmallows, and cranberry sauce chilling in the fridge. Jessica, to my surprise, was apparently a bit of a baker and had a pumpkin pie in the oven.

It was crowded and hot, and there wasn’t a lot of space to really do much without bumping into someone.

Music thumped through the house from where Misael had brought the boom box that we always had at the warehouse—melodic, bass heavy music that was far from anything resembling traditional Christmas music, but it had everyone in the house swaying their hips, singing, dancing, laughing when our movements had us bumping into someone else.

It was warm and vibrant, and in all the memories that I had of Christmases past, I couldn’t remember feeling so happy.