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PREST: This shaky note on Christmas is no joke

Here is a two-part work of fiction as a holiday gift for you. For those who really don’t like it, I’ve attached a gift receipt.
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Here is a two-part work of fiction as a holiday gift for you. For those who really don’t like it, I’ve attached a gift receipt.

PART 1: The Note

The two brothers raced down the snow-covered walkway and skidded onto the street, their boots surfing the frozen pavement.

Gaining traction, they ran towards the bus stop as fast as they could, excited to show Rose their matching elf costumes.

Their dad walked slowly behind, keeping a watchful eye on his cellphone. It was the last day of school before Christmas, and the boys – separated by two grades but nearly identical in height – had both been cast as wise-cracking security elves in the school’s play, a holiday stage adaptation of the beloved Christmas movie, Die Hard.

The fact that Sam, a second-grader, had a speaking part of any kind was a minor miracle considering he’d barely spoken more than two words in his life to anyone who wasn’t his mother, father, or younger brother, Theo. That, however, was before they met Rose.

Truth be told, if Sam had  his way, they never would have met Rose at all. Four months before, on Theo’s first day of kindergarten, Sam had warned his little brother not to talk to the weird lady in a wheelchair who was always sitting on her porch right across the street from their bus stop.

“She talks funny and she smells like a skunk,” Sam whispered to Theo. “The older boys say she does weed.”

The boys reached the bus stop and Theo kept on walking, confidently marching across the road and up the steps of Rose’s house.

“Stop. Stop!” Sam whisper-shouted, but it was too late. Theo, a friendly rooster in a family of silent hawks, walked right up to the Rose, sniffed deeply and smiled.

“Hi, I’m Theo. My brother says you smell like a skunk and do the weeds. I do the weeds too! Me and my mom picked weeds for two hours yesterday. I got so hungry!”

“They do give you the munchies,” the woman said, her twinkling eyes contrasting with her otherwise hunched appearance.

“My brother is mean. You smell like coffee. And lemons.”

“And just a bit of gin!” Rose said with a smile.

Sam slowly crept onto the porch, trying to stay invisible as he pondered how he could fetch his younger brother away from this woman.

“Your older brother, he has a good heart,” Rose said quietly to Theo. “And I’m a good judge of hearts. Do you know why?”

“No,” said Theo.

She held up her arm, curled her fist into the shape of a mouth and wagged her thumb up and down like a hand puppet.

“Because I’m a ventricle-ist!” she said, bursting into a laugh. The boys were silent. “Or maybe I’m just a dummy.”

At that, both boys snickered.

“I tell you what,” she said. “If you come up here every morning and say hello, I’ll tell you a joke every day.”

“OK!” said Theo. Sam said nothing, grabbing Theo by the collar and yanking him down the stairs just as the bus pulled up.

As they walked down the aisle of the bus, looking for a seat that they could share, a bruiser of a fourth-grader named Nolan punched Sam in the shoulder.

“Welcome back, dork!” he said. Theo, trailing behind his brother, puffed up large.

“Don’t do that!” Theo said, getting close to the boy’s face. Nolan, four years his elder, laughed at Theo, but then glanced at the brothers and leaned back in his chair.

Sam and Theo sat down two rows back. “What’s a dork?” Theo whispered to Sam.

Rose watched and chuckled as the bus pulled away. One day later she was back on the porch to meet the boys before their second day of school.

“What do you get when you cross a wolf with a bunny?” she asked after Theo sprang up the stairs.

“I don’t know,” said Theo.

“Just a wolf,” said Rose.

As the school year progressed, Rose kept her word, greeting the boys every single morning with a joke. She continued even when her voice stopped working and she was left to write out all her jokes on a piece of paper. Sam was now fully involved, reading all the jokes to his brother. At first the writing was strong, but by December it was a scribble that Sam could barely make out.

“Bad news,” she faintly scrawled one day in mid-December. “The doctor told me I have cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. That’s life, I guess. At least I don’t have cancer.”

The boys didn’t understand, but Mom laughed and cried at the same time when they showed her the note.

Finally, it was the day of the play, and the two little elves raced up Rose’s stairs.

“Yippee Ki-Yay Mothe-” Sam started to yell, stopping abruptly. The porch was empty.

“Where is she?” Theo asked, big tears starting to roll down his cheeks. He’d never experienced a single day of school without first saying hello to Rose.

Sam knocked on the door but there was no answer. The bus pulled up and the boys raced away. As they flew down the stairs, Sam noticed an envelope tucked into the railing.

“To Sam,” it said on the front. He grabbed it and ran onto the bus, sitting down next to Theo, who was still sniffling.

He flipped over the envelope and saw more writing.

“Do not open until just before your play,” it said. It looked like Rose’s handwriting, but Sam thought there was something odd about it. Suddenly it struck him. It was her alright, but this was no scribble. Her writing – it was strong again.

Part 2 of this thrilling Christmas tale will run in this spot two weeks from now, on Christmas Eve.

aprest@nsnews.com

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