One Night

The One Where I Make My Christmas Wish

My grandfather had always held a Santa-eque quality about him. Or a Zeus like appearance. At a push, you could even liken him to Leonardo da Vinci. He's old and has a bushy white beard, which is the main feature that Santa, Zeus and da Vinci all have in common. But seeing him wearing the full Santa costume, with the red jacket with gold buttons, the shiny black boots, the red, fur trimmed hat- and those glasses- made it really uncomfortable for me to sit here and talk to him.

"Can you take off the hat and glasses?" I ask, reaching my hand out to remove the hat. My hand, however is swatted away by my grandfather as he scowls at me.

"Do not touch the hat!" He practically yells, his face going puce. "How dare you disrespect Santa like that."

"Seriously?" I ask. Grandpa quirks an eyebrow at me, almost challenging me to say anything different. I hold up my hands and sit comfortably on the small wooden stool. "So, what happens next? I mean, I'm in here and apparently you're Santa, so what do we do now?"

Grandpa beamed. "Why, Peyton," he takes on a weird tone to his voice, almost jovial in the way he speaks. "You tell me what it is you'd like for Christmas. But remember, you'll only receive your gift if you have been good this year."

I face palm. Honestly, I do not understand how I ended up in this predicament. How is it that I've ended up sitting with my grandfather in a grotto two weeks before Christmas while I'm on a date that I hijacked from a girl that will probably kill me once she found out I imitated her? My life is beyond complicated right now, and all I want to do is wake up and realize that this was all a dream and that it's not really happening.

I close my eyes tightly and count to three, opening them slowly to see if I've woken up from my nightmare. Unfortunately, I haven't.

Grandpa looks at me like I should be in some sort of institute for the mentally disabled, and a part of me is there with him on that idea. There must be something fundamentally wrong with me that I would find myself in this situation with no way out of it. The more I think about how I ended up in this mess, the more I start to think about how I'm going to get out of it. Clearly, I haven't thought that side of it through quite yet.

I hadn't given any thought to what would happen after this night is over. Pretending to be Olivia Campbell and going out with Elliott Anthony was only supposed to be a one night deal, but it was more complicated than that. Tomorrow, or sooner, Elliott would find out that I'm not Olivia Campbell, and instead, I'm Peyton Ellis, the depressed girl of St. Bernadette's. He'll know that I lied to him and he'd know that I kept up the ruse for the entire evening. He'll hate me for it, too. I could feel it in my heart.

"Peyton, darling," Grandpa's sweet voice breaks through my thoughts as his hand comes to grasp mine tightly. "My love, are you okay? You've gone awfully pale."

I shake my head at him. "Grandpa, I messed up."

"I'm sure you haven't," he says assuredly. The big smile he sends my way is supposed to be reassuring, but all I feel is the bitterness that I'll disappoint him once he knows the truth. "You're one of the best people I know, Peyton, and there's nothing you could have done that cannot be fixed. Now, tell me all about it and I'm sure that we can work out a way to make things better. Start at the beginning, Peyton."

I'm not sure why, but I felt compelled to go back to the start of junior year, because for me, that's the beginning. It was a Tuesday afternoon and I was walking across St. Bernadette's campus, heading for the gate the led through to St FX's campus. Being partner schools, our campuses were close by and it was only a short walk to the boys' school. Because Political Science was a relatively new course, and not many girls were interested in it, the three of us that had enrolled were asked to undertake the classes at St. Francis Xavier, where there'd be a class of fifteen boys taking the course.