Your Loyal Servant

(20) A Christmas Gift?

Tommy wasn't about to complain. In fact, he was quite content with the situation. His bowl was constantly filled and he could sleep all day long, curled up next to something warm.

Because it was Christmas break and I was recovering from heartbreak (very similar to being ill, I've discovered), Tommy got special treatment those several days before Christmas. I spent my days holed up in my bedroom with the lights on and a stash of junk food while I watched sitcoms. And for a cat, that meant sleeping on a comfy, warm lap to get petted almost all day.

Of course, he did jump from my bed and wander downstairs occasionally. He did that for two reasons. The first: he was a cat, and cats are bipolar. The second reason I didn't blame him for: no one wants to spend twenty-four hours with a gloomy person. It's actually a bit depressing.

This wasn't to say I was depressed. I really wasn't. I didn't cry or develop a permanent pouty lip. I wasn't all that sad either, not in a "It's the end of the world" way. I was just sort of tired—a broken heart is an exhausting thing. But otherwise, I wouldn't have classified myself as a weepy girl who got dumped, just someone who was sleepy and hissed at sunlight.

Though, every time I thought about Brick, I did want to punch something or growl. But the sitcoms and junk food served as distractions from that topic (Who wants to think about the person who played you when you'd wasted four years liking them and thought they were perfect? Honestly.), and they were effective distractions.

Unfortunately, there was still some romance in the sitcoms, and that would banish me from my bedroom. The first time that happened, I hadn't showered for two days and hadn't bothered with my hair that day, so when I headed downstairs, I looked like the walking effects of a disaster.

Mom proposed another effective distraction: Christmas decorations. She put me in charge of the tree, of the lights, of the ornaments, of the other miscellaneous Christmas items. And I was excited about it.

I enlisted The Freak's help with the outside lights—actually, he helped with pretty much everything. But I needed someone to hold the ladder, and catch me if I happened to fall, and I knew he was fully capable of doing that. However, I couldn't get the lights to stay up for the life of me, so we switched: he strung up the lights and I kept the ladder steady.

Our Christmas tree was fake, the kind with "some assembly required" printed on the box and lasted forever and a day. Freaky and I had a branch war, where we pretended the branches were swords and attacked each other—I won. After we had the tree assembled, we pulled out the decorations and ornaments and went to work.

I argued with him where to put things. It wasn't serious; it was just a bit of playful debate. And it helped lift my spirits, which he noticed, and that was why he played along. If it hadn't brightened my day, he would have simply bowed and obliged and put the ornaments were I said—and where was the fun in that?

We even argued what to put atop the tree. I wanted the star but he wanted the angel. I said it was awkward having a mutant with wings staring down at us while he claimed a star of the top of the tree was unrealistic. Finally, Dad had to yell at us to knock it off, which we promised to do if he chose which one to go on top. He chose the star because the angel freaked him out.

As we decorated the rest of the house in Christmas, we played Christmas music, since it was only appropriate. At one point, we paused to sing as loud as we could—Freaky wasn't that bad of a singer. We also danced around the tree and from room to room, laughing until we couldn't breathe.

Junk food and sitcoms may be effective distractions, but nothing helped like just having a good time with a good friend, laughing and not having a care in the world. That was what allowed me to smile fully the day before Christmas Eve, or Christmas Eve Eve as my family lovingly nicknamed it. It was a day my family took very seriously.