'Twas the Hour

Chapter 1 - Published on November 14, 2024

“Hang in there, folks! That song marks just an hour and five minutes before the clock strikes midnight and Santa comes to town! If you’re a child listening in, remember to be nice, and go to sleep before your parents let you eat too many of those -” 

I turned off my car, silencing the radio along with the engine. I didn’t quite know why I had decided to leave the radio on in my car on the drive home, instead of blaring one of my old, non-seasonal rock CDs. I supposed that I was too tired to care, after a twelve-hour shift full of frenzied husbands who had forgotten to buy their wives a gift, and fussy toddlers who didn’t understand why their parents wouldn’t buy them the last festive teddy on the shelf. As the night had gone on the slow stream of customers had trickled down to almost zero, until I was the only living thing left in the building. The store closed at ten, but I was left alone to close up, swaying on my feet in exhaustion as I unplugged every last set of Christmas lights and made sure that the music was finally shut off, living on only as an earworm in my skull. 

For a second my wipers screeched against the windshield, wiping away at cold raindrops which were so miniscule they were barely there at all. Then the wipers, too, went still, leaving me to sit in the quiet for a minute. 

Then I rolled my neck, tugged my hood up over my head, and headed out into the cold mist that would take me to my apartment and the warm, dry bed that waited for me inside. 

Even with the radio turned off, the cheerful Christmas music had followed me home, as though it had escaped the store’s overhead speakers and drilled itself deeply into my eardrums. I had asked my boss if I could turn it off - afterall, I was the only one closing at the convenience store, and there weren’t more than a handful of customers after eight P.M. had come and gone - but he had made it clear that, through fire or flood, Mariah Carey and Bing Crosby must sing on. Luckily none of my neighbors were blaring any music of their own this late into the evening, and I was able to climb the familiar two flights of stairs in relative peace. 

I reached my landing and breathed a sigh of relief, eyes trained on my apartment door. I had been half afraid that Maggie would’ve decked out our door while I was at work, but she hadn’t. The same forest green flag bearing the words Tidings of Comfort and Joy still flapped gently in the breeze from the HVAC, but there was nothing else to glare in my eyes. I could only hope that she would be asleep already, resting before she hit the road to make her family’s Christmas brunch. If she was still awake she would be urging me to join for brunch, too, and that would just devolve into another argument that neither of us wanted. I was looking forward to sleeping in, leisurely sipping on mid-morning coffee, and watching a movie or two. Maybe getting some laundry done while Maggie was out for the day. I had wanted to work the Christmas Day shift - double pay was no joke, afterall. But one of my coworkers had snatched it up before I could, and I was forced to take the entire day off. I wasn’t going to let it go to waste, though, and would savor my vacation day even while mourning the lost hours on my paycheck. 

Our next door neighbors, unlike my roommate, had gone all-out with their door decor. Their patch of wall was draped in garlands and ornaments, and a doormat to match. Hand-drawn Christmas trees and letters to Santa were hung up with peeling tape. At the heart of it all was a two-foot tall robotic Santa Claus puppet. I veered out of its way, hoping that maybe, just maybe, they had turned it off for the night. 

But, to no one’s surprise, I failed, and Santa Claus sprung to life, belting Jingle Bells in a low, grating voice that made a shiver run up my back. Almost immediately, the little boy who lived inside started singing along. I gave the writhing Santa a wide berth and hurried toward my own door as the boy’s mother tried to tell him to be quiet, and his father’s deep, booming voice joined in with the song. I hoped that his mother won the battle sooner rather than later - the walls were paper thin, and if the child didn’t sleep, there was a chance that I wouldn’t, either. 

My apartment was dark when I stepped inside. I breathed a sigh of relief, and my fingers barely brushed the lightswitch before I decided to not disturb the darkness. Opposite of the front door, though, there was a thin line of light seeping through the cracks of another door. It wasn’t Maggie’s bedroom - it was mine. Frowning, I shut the door behind me. I skirted past the tree - still undecorated - and shuffled around the couch that halfway blocked the entrance in our tiny living room. I heard Maggie’s soft snores filtering out through her half-cracked door. She was asleep, but then why was my bedroom light on? I navigated through the dark, mine and Maggie’s possessions lit only in shadow by the streetlights shining in through our balcony door. I almost made it, too. 

Halfway across the room, my foot caught on one of the many pieces of clutter. For about a second I entertained the idea of keeping my balance, but gravity won, and I landed on the thin carpet with a hard thud. 

I let out a hiss, then pressed my lips together. Maggie’s snores carried on. I scrambled, quietly as possible, onto my knees, and turned to glare at the culprit. It was a battered plastic instrument case - my battered plastic instrument case, in fact. My cello. It had been two years since I last played the thing, and I wanted to tuck it out of sight and out of mind in some hidden closet or basement. Sadly, our apartment offered neither. It usually sat tucked away in a corner, half hidden behind the couch. But then Maggie insisted on putting up a tree, and the junk that usually stacked up against our walls had to be shuffled. Meaning, among other things, that my old cello was sticking out into the walkway, just waiting to snare me in the dark. 

I hefted the thing onto the couch cushions and hurried on toward my bedroom. The door was closed. It opened silently. The air was still, but my bedside lamp was on, illuminating a plate, a paper, and an unlit candle in a small pool of light. I stepped forward, frowning. The plate held a cookie; the paper held words. 

Lydia - 

MERRY CHRISTMAS! 

Actually, is it Christmas yet? I never know with you and your work schedule. I figure it’s probably somewhere close to midnight when you’re reading this, if it’s not already passed. Either way, I’ll probably be asleep. And if I know you like I think I do, you’ll still be asleep when I head out in the morning, too. 

Unless…you join me? My parents said they have a spot saved for you at the table. The more the merrier, as they always say. Plus, we’d have a fun road trip! I’d even get you back in time for work on the 26th, I promise! 

You can’t argue with me when I’m already asleep, can you? See what I did here, with the note? At least this way I can leave my closing remarks, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Unless you come wake me up, or murder me in my sleep, or…how about you forget I said anything and just let me make my closing remarks in peace. Please? Pretty please?

I’ll stop my nonsense. But I wanted to be the first to wish you a Merry Christmas, even if it’s just on paper. And I wanted to give you your first Christmas gift - a cookie! One of my coworkers brought them in - he baked them himself! There’s more in the kitchen, if you want. Just please please please leave some for me. And don’t murder me in my sleep. Please? 

Merry Christmas again! Don’t waste the day acting like it’s no big deal. And maybe call your parents. Text them, at least? 

And yes, you can be angry at me all you want for nagging you. But I think they’d like it. 

Oh, and you should light the candle. It’s my favorite. Puts you in the Christmas mood, whether you want to be or not. 

The best roomie ever,

Maggie 

I rolled my eyes and set the note back down. It was 11:09 P.M. I had to remind myself that it was too late to knock Maggie’s door down and make my own closing remarks. 

I stopped looking at the clock, and stopped thinking about what day it was, or what day it was about to be. I went through the usual motions of getting ready for bed, but took a few extra minutes in the shower, and got dressed in my warmest pajamas. I scrolled on my phone until I got tired of scrolling past Christmas-themed posts, then I set my phone down for the night, right on top of Maggie’s note. 

I had ignored the Christmas cookie earlier, but now it caught my attention. It looked like chocolate - double chocolate, actually, and it was sprinkled with crushed-up candy cane. I stared at it for another minute, considering being stubborn, but then I caved. I took a bite, then another, and soon the cookie was gone, leaving only the barest bit of festive flavor on my tongue. 

I picked up my phone again, then quickly remembered why I had set it down in the first place. I clicked the lamp off instead. The red letters of my alarm clock shone through the dark. 11:40 P.M., it read. If I had the radio on right now, I bet that Mr. Radio Man’s voice would be quivering in excitement. Maybe the boy next door - Steven, was that his name? - would be asleep by now, or maybe he was laying in bed, giggling his head off. I knew that around the city, children were laying awake, listening for hooves or sleigh bells, or humming Christmas songs under their breath. Parents were stuffing stockings, and grandpas were sipping hot chocolate. All were counting down the minutes until the clock ticked to midnight, and it was Christmas Day. 

I crawled under the covers. I was tired. I didn’t want to stay up. 

Outside my window, an ambulance siren flared to life, moaning between the buildings as it raced down the street. I wondered what the keen-eared children made of that. An ambulance, in place of Santa Claus, not delivering presents, but somber expressions and medical nightmares. I shut my eyes, willing my mind to go blank as the siren faded into the distance. 

Outside my window, much closer, someone started to sing. 

My eyes popped open. I listened. It was the voice of an old woman, I figured, though I had never heard her before. A neighbor, out on her balcony? It must be. Straining my mind, I remembered an older lady moving in next door sometime in the past few weeks. I hadn’t bothered to learn her name, or give her my own. But why was she out now, in the cold and wet midnight air? I strained my ears, trying to make out the tune that she was singing. It tickled at my eardrums, stirring familiarity in my chest. 

“A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices…for yonder breaks, a new and glorious morn…” 

“O Holy Night,” I whispered. It escaped my lips in something close to a sing-song. I had once known the song well - it used to be one of my favorites, years ago. I used to play it on my cello, alongside the other musicians at my church, every year at Christmas. I hadn’t thought about it in years, yet I still knew the words, and I followed along with the woman in my own head. Then, as she rattled into the final verse, I looked at the clock again. 11:58. 

I supposed that I might be awake for the stroke of midnight, after all. 

I closed my eyes and willed myself to go to sleep. 

“O night divine…o night, when Christ was born…”  

And then, as the woman’s voice faded into silence, it looked as though the blackness behind my eyelids turned to light, and it felt as though my very body dissolved into the same cold mist that swamped the world outside. 

And then I was standing in my apartment doorway once again, staring into a darkened living room, with a robotic Santa Claus screeching behind me. 

Chapter 2 - Published November 14, 2024

For what could have been seconds or what could have been hours, I stared straight ahead of me, into my darkened apartment. A car drove through the parking lot below, throwing a flash of white light across the back wall. I took a step - and nearly fell over backwards, losing my balance, because I hadn't been standing a second ago, I hadn't been - 

I caught my balance, arm braced against the doorway. The chipping paint and wood underneath my fingertips brought me back to my senses. My keys jingled, still attached to my purse, which was still slung over my shoulder. 

Hadn't I just been laying down in bed? 

I sucked in a breath. No. That was ridiculous. I was standing in my doorway, dressed in my work clothes, slightly damp from the cold Christmas Eve mist hanging in the air outside, and my purse was still on my shoulder. I had just gotten home from work, just unlocked the door, I must have… 

That didn't keep me from yanking my phone out of my purse. I turned on the screen as quickly as I could, looking at the time. It was…11:01 P.M. The same time that I had gotten home from work, not midnight, like it had almost been, just a second ago…but that couldn't… 

Did I just freeze in my own doorway and hallucinate a whole hour? 

I shook my head. Tired. I was just tired, and stressed, and I really needed the day off tomorrow. Whether I had hallucinated or was sleepwalking, or…or…whatever had just happened. Sleep would help. Sleep would fix it. 

I shut the door behind me and stumbled into the apartment. From the wall to my left, the sounds of a robot Santa and hyper child Jingle Bells duet continued to ring in my ears. The father's voice joined in, and the mother laughed while shushing them, and a wave of deja vu crashed over me. I hurried across the living room, not bothering to turn on the light. My bedroom was already lit up, the lamp illuminating my closed door with a silhouette. I could hear Maggie snoring… 

And then I tripped, sprawling to the floor, over my cello case, which had been jutting out into the walkway. 

This time, I was too stunned to swear or shout. I sprawled out, laying on the floor for a long second. My heart beat rapidly. I had - I had put the cello on the couch, hadn't I? But wait, no, I had hallucinated that.  Except, if I had hallucinated it, how would I have known that the cello was in my way, and how - 

Sleep. 

I needed sleep. 

Badly. 

I scrambled to my feet, feeling like I was swimming through the cold mist itself, and hurried to my bedroom. I pushed the door open and paused, ever so briefly, to stare at the lamp that Maggie had left on for me, and the plate, and the candle. I had known that those would be there - hadn't I? But then…how? How could I have known that? 

The theory that I had hallucinated was feeling less and less true, and the theory that I had somehow gotten up out of bed, sleepwalking through getting dressed and heading back to the front door, maybe even putting the cello back in its place, was feeling more and more accurate. But then how…my eyes drifted to the clock on my bedside table. It was 11:04 P.M. How was it still Christmas Eve? But then… 

It would all make more sense in the morning, wouldn't it? Or maybe I would forget this all, as some half-remembered Mariah Carey-fueled fever dream. 

I didn't give the bedside table a closer look, and hurried through my bedtime routine, taking an extra few minutes to scroll mindlessly through my phone while curled up on the bathroom floor. Then, when the time read 11:36 P.M., I slipped back into my bedroom, wrapped in my warmest pajamas once more. 

I paused when I saw my grandpa’s old wool cardigan, hanging over the back of my desk chair like it always was. I fingered the brown and white gingham pattern for a minute, then slipped it on, wrapping it tightly around my stomach. Then, feeling like the ground was once again solid beneath my feet, I crawled into bed. I had almost forgotten about the strange dream-hallucination - almost - until I propped myself up on my elbow to turn off my lamp. 

There, on the plate, sat a cookie. Chocolate with crushed candy cane sprinkles. I knew what it would taste like - sweet, buttery, with chunks of chocolate that would've been melty if the cookie hadn't already grown cold - and I knew where it was from, even without reading the note. Maggie's coworker had brought some to work, and she wanted to make sure I got one, and there were more in the kitchen, but she had left one for me. One cookie, which I had already eaten and savored over an hour ago. 

“Maggie?” I called, not taking my eyes off of the cookie. 

The only sound I heard in response was her loud snores. 

I stared at the cookie for another long moment. Then, I shut the lamp off. I did not eat the cookie. I did not check on Maggie, to see if she was just faking being asleep. I did not check the kitchen to see if there were any more cookies on the counter. 

I did not read the note. 

Instead, I squeezed my eyes shut, and covered my face with the blanket, and willed myself to go to sleep. 

It almost came - I was barely hovering on the edge of consciousness, half-untethered from reality, when a distant ambulance siren split the night. Unbidden, the lyrics of O Holy Night came drifting through my head. And a moment later, the voice of an old woman started singing them, too, from just outside my window. 

I covered my head again, pressed my hands against my ears, but I did not fall asleep until after her words had fallen silent once again. 

Breathe in. Breathe out. When I woke up, this would all seem silly. 

I did not check the clock. I just breathed. In, and out. I felt myself drifting, drifting. I felt myself falling into the fog, cold piercing every inch of my body despite the warm blankets and pajamas. It even seemed to seep through my grandpa’s sweater.  

This time, when the Jingle Bells duet reached my ears, and my weight settled onto my feet, and cold, damp work clothes crawled across my skin, and my purse strap dug into my shoulder - 

This time, I screamed. 

Chapter 3 - Published on November 21, 2024. 

For a minute, the darkened living room seemed to spin around me. I latched tightly to the doorway, trying to steady myself. Why was I back here? How? And - again. It just happened again. Which meant that I hadn’t been sleepwalking, or hallucinating. Whatever was happening to me was happening, whether or not I wanted to believe it. And I had no clue what any of it meant. 

From the apartment to my left, the neighbor’s child stopped singing mid-sentence. His parents’ concerned whispers leaked through the wall. 

Was I still screaming? I pressed my lips together and inhaled through my nose. 

I reached for the light switch. I wasn’t going to do this in the dark. Not this time. Nothing made sense in the dark. Maybe, just maybe, it would make sense if the apartment was fully lit. 

The overhead light came on, flooding the room with light, but it helped nothing. My eyes instantly landed on the cello case, sticking out into the middle of the walkway. The rest of the room was a mess, but that was nothing new. The collected junk of two young people crammed into a tiny apartment with no storage space, with a scraggly, undecorated Christmas tree at the center of it. Maybe tomorrow, on my day off, I could try to organize the space. Maybe I would close up the cardboard box of ornaments and shove them into Maggie’s bedroom for her to use next year. 

If tomorrow came. If Christmas Eve ever ended. Because, as impossible as it seemed, I was beginning to worry that morning was never going to come.  

The reality (and oh, it didn’t feel real at all) came crashing back into me with enough force to send my blood boiling through my veins. I let my purse slide off my shoulder and hit the carpet, right in the middle of the doorway. I sprinted across the room, leaping over my cello case, and shoved open my bedroom door. 

“Lydia?” Maggie called groggily from her bedroom. 

My grandpa’s sweater was no longer on my shoulders, and goosebumps rose up and down my arms, as though my thick hoodie was nothing more than tissue paper covering my skin. I grabbed it from my desk chair and pulled it on as quickly as I could. Then I turned toward my bed. 

That was how Maggie found me, two minutes later, with my back pressed against my headboard, knees curled to my chest and wrapped in Grandpa’s cardigan, staring at my trembling hands. She stood in the doorway and took me in, her eyes filled with sleep and worry. 

“Lydia?” she asked. 

“I'm fine,” I said. 

“You don't look fine.” 

I wanted to argue, but what was the point? Instead, I pressed my forehead against my knees. 

“What’s wrong?” Maggie took a couple steps into my room. “Did something happen at work?” 

“Work was fine,” I mumbled. 

“Are you sure? I know the Christmas Eve shift can be hectic -” 

“It was fine,” I repeated. 

The corner of my mattress sank down as Maggie took a seat. “Does it have to do with tomorrow?” she asked quietly. 

I almost said no, it has nothing to do with tomorrow. Except…it actually did. Not in the way she was thinking, though. I was upset because I wanted tomorrow to come, I was stuck in today, and I was about halfway sure I was losing my mind. 

“I know Christmas can be stressful,” she said. 

“Do you?” I grumbled. 

She sighed. I kept my face firmly pressed against my knees, my tangled hair falling like a waterfall over my sweaty work pants, but I could still picture her rubbing a hand across her forehead. “Maybe not the same way you do,” she admitted. “But still. I know that it can be hard to celebrate when you’ve lost someone -” 

“Maggie.” I lifted my head and met her eyes. “I don’t want to talk about this right now.” 

She looked back at me. From the concern flooding her eyes, I wondered what I looked like. Were my eyes red? Bloodshot, like I was drunk, or unfocused, like I had a concussion? Maybe I had gotten drunk without remembering, or banged my head on my way home and gotten just enough amnesia to forget I was injured. Maybe that would explain why I was now living the last hour of Christmas Eve for the third time. 

Or maybe Maggie was right. Maybe the stress of Christmas was too much, and it had broken me. 

Maggie stood up, then left the room without another word. 

I checked the time. 11:13 P.M. 

 Forty-seven minutes. Forty-seven minutes to go. 

But until what? What would happen in forty-seven minutes? Would it finally be Christmas? Or would it be 11:00 P.M. again, and I would suddenly be standing in my doorway again, panicking? Was there a point in getting into my pajamas at all, if I was just going to end up wearing my work clothes again? Had I wasted my time, grabbing Grandpa’s sweater? Was there a point in doing anything? If whatever I did would only last for forty-seven - 

The front door closed with a dull thud. Maggie. I must have left it open when I panicked. I heard my keys jingle, too. Maggie must be hanging up my purse for me. 

The clock had changed. I didn’t have forty-seven minutes anymore. I had forty-six. 

I slowly uncurled my body and lowered myself onto the covers, fully clothed, and tried to remember to breathe. 

Maggie had left my bedroom door open, and I watched the living room light go dark. I squeezed my eyes shut, wondering if Maggie would check on me again before going back to bed, or if she would let me be. She didn’t come knocking on my door frame again, but after a few minutes voices drifted through my open doorway. Sitcom voices, on the TV, played at a low enough volume that they drowned out the muffled conversation of the family next door. I kept my eyes squeezed shut, but opened them when canned laughter resonated throughout the apartment. 

My alarm clock seemed to draw my eyes like a magnet. 11:16 P.M. 

“Maggie?” I whimpered, peeking my head out of the doorway. “You should be asleep.” 

Maggie was sprawled out over one half of the couch, her Christmas-tree pajamas half-covered by a white blanket. The room was dark, but light came from two sources: the TV, and the Christmas tree. 

The colorful lights reflected off her glasses as she glanced my way. “I’m okay,” she said. “It’s not even midnight yet.” 

“You…you should still be in bed,” I said. “I woke you up.” 

She eyed me. “That does tend to be what happens when you walk into the house and immediately scream bloody murder.” 

I leaned against my doorway. “Sorry.” 

“You don’t need to apologize,” she said earnestly. 

“But you need sleep -” 

“Why do you care so much about my bedtime?” She gasped, eyes going wide, a mischievous smirk on her lips. “Is it so that Santa can come?” 

I care because you’re supposed to be sound asleep until midnight. I’m supposed to be hearing your snoring right now, not your voice. “You have to be up early to drive tomorrow,” I reminded her. “That’s why I care.” 

She snorted. “I’m a big girl, I can handle it. It’s not like I haven’t done the drive on two hours of sleep before.” Her smile sunk into a frown. “And I don’t want to go to sleep with you having a panic attack.” 

“I’m not having a panic attack.” Maybe a concussion-triggered mental break, but not a panic attack.  

She gave me a look. “Lydia. You look like a wreck.” 

“Thanks,” I grumbled. 

She sighed. “I’m a little afraid to leave you here alone in the morning.” 

“I’ll be fine in the morning,” I told her stiffly. 

Her frown deepened, but she turned away, gesturing to the coffee table. “I heated up some of those cookies,” she said. “Did you see my note?” 

Yes, I had, twice, but had I really, if I had made a point of never looking in its direction on this loop of the hour? I nodded, though. My brain was swimming. 

“Thank you,” I said softly. “It tasted really good.” 

“Ha, so you did eat it!” she said. “I won the bet!” She waited a beat, no doubt wanting me to ask, against who? When I didn’t, she answered the question anyway. “It was against myself. I bet against myself.” She waited for another beat. “I won ten bucks. I also lost ten bucks.” 

Had I eaten the cookie? Was it still sitting on my bedside table, untouched? My stomach did a flip-flop. I forced myself to take a few steps forward - dodging the cello case - and collapse onto the couch beside Maggie. 

She seemed unbothered at my lack of reaction to her joke. She picked up the plate of freshly-warmed cookies from the coffee table. “Take them,” she said. “Eat.” 

I did. The melty chocolate and candy cane tasted even better warm. 

I stared straight ahead at the TV while I took small, slow bites. The show was one Maggie and I had watched half a dozen times over. I expected to see ugly sweaters and blingy hats, hear tinned jingle bell music and suffer through some forced happy ending. I narrowed my eyes at the screen. 

“This isn’t a Christmas episode,” I realized. 

Maggie shrugged. “I didn’t figure you’d want one of those.” 

I swallowed the lump in my throat, then reached for another cookie. 

“When did you put the lights on the tree?” I asked after another few moments. I didn’t know what time it was. We didn’t have a clock in our living room. 

“This afternoon, after work,” she said. She started to push the blanket aside. “I can turn them off, if it’s bothering you.” 

“It’s not,” I said quickly. “It’s sort of…” Nice. Sort of nice. Just the lights without the ornaments was…simple. And the gentle way they lit the dark room was soothing. It was enough that I could see my cello case in the walkway, but not enough to make me face reality. The tiny colored bulbs plunged everything into a dreamlike state. I reached for a blanket and covered myself up with it, eyes trained once again on the TV. 

Another episode started, and I pressed my face into my knees again. Maybe if I fell asleep here, nothing would happen. Maybe I would wake up on the couch on Christmas morning, with a plate of cold cookies in front of me. 

“Are you going to tell me why you’re so upset?” she asked after a while. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, or something.” 

I snorted. “Maybe it was the Ghost of Christmas Past.” 

Maggie chuckled. “I was always partial to the Ghost of Christmas Future, myself.” 

“I wish,” I said. 

I felt a tap against my shoulder. I lifted my head again to see Maggie holding out another cookie. I took it and bit into it. The chocolate had started to solidify again, but it still melted against my tongue. 

“Seriously, though,” she said. “I’m worried about you.” 

I inhaled through my nose. 

“I am, too,” I whispered. 

“I can help, if you tell me,” she offered. 

“You wouldn’t believe me.” 

“You won’t know that until you tell me.” 

I leaned my head against the back of the couch. I studied Maggie.

“No,” I said. “Because I don’t believe it, either.” 

Maggie’s concerned frown deepened. “Lydia - “ 

Her words were cut short by a distant siren. I straightened. Looked toward the balcony doors. 

“She’s about to sing,” I whispered. 

And sure enough, the old woman did. Her lilting voice carried, same as it had the past two times, from outside of our windows. 

Maggie turned at the noise. “Huh,” she said. “Isn’t it like, super cold? What’s Mrs. Joyce doing out there so late?” Then, as my whispered words registered, she whipped her head back toward me. “How did you know she was about to start singing?” 

“Mrs. Joyce?” I asked, instead of answering. “Who’s Mrs. Joyce?” 

“Our neighbor. She moved in two weeks ago. You didn’t know her name?” 

“How did you learn her name?” I asked. 

Maggie laughed. The crease between her eyebrows remained. “I introduced myself to her,” she said. “She’s nice.” 

Huh. “Do you ever talk to our other neighbors?” I asked, pointing toward the Jingle Bells wall. 

Maggie nodded. “You’ve never talked to them, either?” 

I shook my head. She rolled her eyes. “They’re great, too. They have a little kid, but I’m sure you’ve heard him -” 

“What’s his name? Steven, right?” 

“Sawyer,” she said. “But Lydia, how did you know Mrs. Joyce was about to sing? Did you see her out there earlier?” 

I opened my mouth to deny that I had said anything. To spin some lie. But nothing rolled off my tongue. 

Outside, Mrs. Joyce carried on singing. 

“Long lay the world, in sin and error pining…’til He appeared, and the soul felt its worth…” 

“You wouldn’t believe me,” I whispered. 

“I don’t know what’s going on,” she said. “But you can trust me. Really.” 

“It’s not a matter of trusting you,” I said. If Christmas Day never dawned, then I was pretty sure I could go shouting my predicament from the rooftops. Everyone would just forget it in an hour anyway. All it would do was make Maggie worry, and…I didn’t want her to. Just in case Christmas did dawn. 

“How about this?” She leaned forward. “I’ll try to believe you.” 

“I don’t think you will.” 

“Try me.” 

“Fall on your knees!”

“There’s no point,” I said. 

Because Mrs. Joyce was almost to the end of her song. 

Fear flashed in Maggie’s eyes. “What do you mean, there’s no point? Lydia, you need to tell me if something’s wrong. Let me help you!” 

“There’s not enough time.” 

“Oh hear the angel voices!” 

“What do you mean? We have all night. I’m not sleeping unless you do.” 

I lifted my chin and sucked in a breath. Then, I started to sing along with Mrs. Joyce. 

“Oh night, divine! Oh night, when Christ was born!” 

“Lydia, what are you -” 

I met her eyes and gave her a bitter smile. 

“Might as well sing while we can,” I said. 

Then the colorful Christmas tree lights blurred into white mist in front of my eyes, and Maggie’s face was swept away, along with Grandpa’s sweater. Mrs. Joyce’s hymn was replaced by Robot Santa’s rendition of Jingle Bells. Sawyer was singing along while his parents laughed. 

I leaned against the doorway, stared into the dark room, and let out a single sob. 

Chapter 4 - Published November 29th, 2024

I spent the next loop taking a long, scalding bath. The loop after that? I repeated the process, but this time with a mug of strong tea. The first time, I made sure that I was out of the tub, standing in the center of my bedroom, before the clock struck midnight. The second, I lost track of time, and found myself suddenly transported from the cooling bath water into my doorway, all traces of water gone. Even my fingertips were no longer pruned. 

I hadn't meant to lose track of time, but it was only a couple hours, wasn't it? There was nothing abnormal about trying to numb my brain and losing track of time for a couple of hours. If I was doing my math right, it had only been five hours since I climbed out of my car, home fresh after a twelve-hour shift, ready to sleep. To my own biological clock, it should be around four in the morning. 

That loop, I put on my pajamas and climbed straight into bed, certain that I was tired enough to go straight to sleep. It should be 4:00 A.M., after all. But sleep didn't come. I laid in my bed, desperately squeezing my eyes shut, until the siren came, then I hummed along to Mrs. Joyce’s song in a whimper until the loop started all over again. 

I found myself in the doorway once again. Was it the sixth time? Fifth? Seventh? There was no way I could keep track at this point. 

I turned on my heel and walked straight back out the door. 

The loops had blurred together in my head, and doing anything felt pointless. But, despite all that, there was a mystery that needed to be solved: did this strange time loop exist in the entire world, or was it just my apartment? Maybe finding that out would be the key to finally seeing Christmas morning. In all honesty, I should have investigated the outside world sooner. But it was cold, and it was late. And, to be quite honest, the mist freaked me out. 

I walked the sidewalks, hood pulled up over my ears and hands buried deep into my pockets, for about twenty minutes before I realized how futile it was. How was I supposed to know whether or not I was still in a loop? I didn't know what happened on these streets between the hours of eleven and midnight on Christmas Eve. Stores were closed. No one had clocks hanging in their windows. I stared up at a church steeple hopefully, but the clock mounted on the side hadn't worked in decades. All I could do was take note of a few details - a motorcyclist blazing down deserted streets at 11:27, wearing a bright red Santa hat. A toddler screaming from her second-story window that was inexplicably open. A young couple, dancing in twinkle-light silhouettes against their window. 

I kept walking, farther and farther from my apartment, hoping that I wouldn’t need to remember any of these things. Hoping that, just maybe, the loop would break if I put enough distance between myself and that stupid doorway. 

I didn’t check the time, even though I had my phone in my pocket. I walked, and walked, and sucked in lungfuls of cold, misty air. When my teeth started to chatter and my feet started to ache I slowed to a halt on a random sidewalk near a bus stop. I had been walking a long time, right? Surely it was over an hour. My heart lifted, I let out a breath of relief - 

Then the fog seemed to thicken, and seep into my very bones. I let out a scream of outrage, but shut my mouth just in time to feel my feet hitting the living room carpet. Sawyer and Santa Clause were singing, and I didn’t want to intterupt their duet again by screaming. 

I stood in the doorway for a long minute, considering climbing back into the bathtub. But I had a list of outside-world time loop events floating around in my head. I needed to go investigate before I forgot them completely. I adjusted my purse strap up on my shoulder, and headed back outside. 

I shouldn’t have been surprised to see the motorcyclist, or hear the toddler, but I still was. By the time I spotted the couple dancing the night away, I was shaking, the reality of my situation once again sinking into my bones. I could keep walking, see if I could get even farther away this loop, or do something crazy to distract myself. But I was cold. I was chilled from the mist and the fear, and I wanted to crawl under my covers and scroll through my phone until I forgot the world existed. 

I checked my phone. It was 11:39 P.M. I wouldn’t have much time to numb my brain this loop, but at the very least I had time to make my way back home. 

So I walked, and I walked, feet trodding familiar roads and mind wandering through everything and nothing at all. When my apartment building came back into view, I took an extra moment to look. Some windows were brightly lit, others, like mine, were dark. Most had Christmas tree lights twinkling out of the darkness. Mine did not. I sought out Sawyer’s window, darkened, and wondered if his parents had managed to get him to go to sleep yet. I wondered if anyone else would trigger Robot Santa before morning came. 

Then my eyes drifted two balconies to the left, and I spotted the old woman sitting in front of a dimly lit window, wrapped in a thick blanket, a sagging hat fitted snuggly over her ears. She stared out at the city lights from her third story balcony. 

I stood on the sidewalk in front of the building, not going in, staring up at Mrs. Joyce, wondering. 

In the distance, I heard the siren. It was louder out here. I closed my eyes, forming my lips into the first word of the song, ready to sing under my breath once again. I inhaled gently, and tucked my head against the cold. 

“O holy night,” I whisped. “The stars are brightly shine…”  

Something was wrong. 

“...ing.” I looked up at the balcony. 

Mrs. Joyce wasn’t singing. Instead, she was staring down at me. 

It felt as though I had just done something terrible, something that tremendously upset the universe. The old woman’s song, the constant in this chaos that I had found myself in, was missing, and it was my fault. 

I half expected to be whisked away to my doorway right that instant, or worse, caught up by the mist and left there to freeze. Some sort of punishment for intterupting Mrs. Joyce’s cornerstone song. 

But, nothing happened. A minute passed and I was still standing on the sidewalk, the air cold and misty but the ground stable under my feet. Mrs. Joyce continued to observe me. I offered her a small, nervous wave. 

I couldn’t really make out her features from three stories down, but I could’ve sworn that a small smile graced her face. 

I hurried inside, wondering about the woman, and why she was sitting out on her balcony, and why she sang that song. I wondered why she hadn’t.. Had she heard me singing, even though it was soft and under my breath? Or had she just spotted me and been distracted? Did she recognize me as her neighbor, or was she just as perplexed by the young woman out for a walk on this cold December night as I was by the old woman out on her balcony? 

I successfully skirted Robot Santa and reached my doorway, fumbling with my keys. When I swung the door open, a beautiful sound met my ears from the balcony. Mrs. Joyce, no longer able to entertain herself by watching the flustered stranger on the sidewalk, had started to sing. I set my hand on the doorway and sagged in relief, letting her song once again wash over me from the balcony door. 

When the loop restarted, I barely changed positions at all. My hand shifted a few inches up on the doorway, my foot moved to the side. My purse was hanging from the opposite shoulder. I knew that it was once again 11:00 P.M., though, because I had felt the mist seep into my bones, obscure my vision, then release me. 

That, and the Jingle Bells duet next door. 

I set my purse down, flipped on the living room light, and headed straight to the bathtub. 

_______________________________________________________________________

The novelty of spending an hour in a warm bathtub had officially worn off. 

I stared down at the cooling water, wondering if it had been a full hour yet. I had planned to wait it out, like I had once before, but the water was cool to the point of being uncomfortable. My brain was spinning, my nerves fried, and I wasn’t sure that baths would help anymore. I couldn’t get Mrs. Joyce’s gaze out of my mind, or her small smile. I couldn’t get the tune of O Holy Night out of my head, either, or the lyrics that wound their way through my head like the gnarled roots of an old tree.  

I climbed out of the tub, careful not to slip, and dressed in my coziest pajamas. I threw Grandpa’s cardigan on, too, and tugged it around me as I stepped back out into my bedroom. I was just in time to hear the siren fade into the distance. Mrs. Joyce started up her hourly caroling. 

I considered my options. My hair was wet, my fingers pruned, and I wasn’t wearing any shoes. But my elderly neighbor was just on the other side of that wall. And I didn’t feel like sitting around doing nothing while I waited for the clock to turn back again. 

I slid on a pair of slippers and strode through the living room, eyes fixed on my seldom-used balcony door. 

I stepped outside and into a wall of cold. The mist didn’t cling this close to the brick wall of the apartment building, but it was in front of me, giving everything a hazy glow. I barely wasted a second looking out, though. Instead I turned to my right, to the neighboring balcony that was only four feet away, and met the eyes of the old woman who had been haunting my loops. 

“The star is -” 

Mrs. Joyce stopped mid-lyric, her eyes locking onto mine. She closed her mouth and tilted her head ever so slightly to the side. The large pom-pom on the top of her hat flopped sideways. I wasn’t sure, but it looked as though her thin lips formed the barest hint of a smile. 

“Hello there,” she called softly. Despite the three-story gap between us, her voice carried easily on the mist. 

“Hello,” I said. I tugged at the hem of my cardigan. It was too cold for just the sweater; I should’ve grabbed a coat. “I-I’m Lydia. Your neighbor.” 

The old lady raised a single eyebrow. 

“And you’re Mrs. Joyce,” I said. “My roommate told me. Maggie. She said she met you.” 

The woman spoke. “She has. I was wondering when her roommate might knock on my door to introduce herself as well.” 

I nodded. Unsure of why I was so nervous around this woman. “Well, here I am. Not-not knocking at your door. But introducing myself. I wanted to introduce myself.” 

“And so you have.” Then, Mrs. Joyce did something that caught me off guard. She tilted her head backward, letting the pom-pom fall, and laughed. 

Mrs. Joyce’s laugh wasn’t the bell-like laughter that you might expect out of a sweet old lady. It was not gentle, or particularly warm. It sounded raspy and loud, and I wondered if she might have been a smoker at some point in her lifetime. But her whole body shook with each peal, and her eyes crinkled at the corners. I found myself instantly put at ease. 

When she was done laughing, she looked back at me. “I like your sweater, young lady.” 

I smiled. “I like your hat.” 

Mrs. Joyce’s thin-lipped smile turned into a wide grin. “Thank you. My granddaughter made it for me.” 

Oh. “That’s sweet,” I said. “Is she coming to celebrate Christmas with you?” 

The woman’s face fell. “No. She and her cousins live in Florida, you see.” 

I did see - more than Mrs. Joyce could know. Though, as she studied me from across the balcony railing, I wondered if she did, somehow, know more about me than she was letting on. 

I turned out to face the world. I scanned the patchwork of mist-drowned streets for the flashing lights of the ambulance, but I couldn’t spot it. Maybe it had reached its destination and turned the lights off, or maybe it simply blended into all the festive Christmas lights. 

“Why do you sing?” I asked Mrs. Joyce. 

“Come again?” 

I turned back toward her. “Why do you sing?” I asked. “You were singing a Christmas song when I walked out here.” Again, and again, and again. Every hour at 11:43 P.M. 

“It is Christmas Eve,” said Mrs. Joyce. “That seems like the time to sing Christmas music, doesn’t it?” 

“I guess so, but…” I gripped the railing. The metal was cold under my bare skin. “You started singing when the ambulance drove by.” 

“You really pay attention to little details, don’t you?” 

I frowned. “Weren’t you? Isn’t that when you started singing?” 

“That is,” said Mrs. Joyce. “And it is why I started singing as well.” 

I had suspected that the ambulance triggered her to start, but it was still strange to hear her say it so bluntly. “Why?” I said. “Why would you start singing such a…such a happy song when someone might be dying?” 

I let go of the railing. I was shaking. Letting anger rise up in me. 

Mrs. Joyce didn’t mention it. “O Holy Night isn’t exactly a happy song, now is it?” 

I took a deep breath. Cold air seared my lungs. “What do you mean?” 

“It’s not happy,” she repeated. “But it’s hopeful. There’s a difference.” 

“There is?” I asked. 

Mrs. Joyce nodded. “And that’s exactly why I started singing it. A happy song wouldn’t be appropriate, would it? Not when, as you said, someone might be dying. But a hopeful one is appropriate. Necessary, even.” 

“Necessary,” I repeated. 

She nodded. “Yes. Don’t you see?” 

I didn’t see, and I opened my mouth to say so. But Mrs. Joyce opened her mouth, too, except she was no longer talking. The familiar song floated out of her mouth again, melodic and warbling. She kept her eyes on mine. 

“Long lay the world, in sin and error pining…’Til He appeared, and the soul felt its worth.” 

Her eyes held mine in a challenge. I didn’t want to - didn’t want to sing this time, not out in the cold, with the mist creeping ever closer. But her eyes implored me, and I shriveled back against the glass door, and joined in quietly. 

“A thrill of hope, the weary -” 

“-world rejoices,” I squeaked out, suddenly singing alone. 

“Weary,” said Mrs. Joyce. She leaned into the word, turning it into almost three syllables and letting the melody roll on her tongue. She even leaned into it physically, tightening her blanket around herself. “You hear that, Lydia? Weary. That’s an important word here.” 

“Weary,” I repeated. Then, at her look, again. “Weary.” 

“There you go! Now, there’s another important word coming up. Do you know which one it is?” 

I tested the lyrics in my head. “I think so.” 

Mrs. Joyce shook her head sharply. “Don’t think. Sing it to me. Lydia.” 

“I don’t -” 

“You were singing just fine a moment ago.” 

I sighed. Then inhaled. “The weary world rejoices.” 

She nodded her head enthusiastically. “Keep going.” 

I shot her a look, but sang anyway. “For yonder breaks, a new and -” I paused here to give it extra emphasis. “ - glorious morn.” 

“Good, good!” said Mrs. Joyce. “But it’s not just that word, you hear? All those words are important.” 

“In that line?” 

“In all the lines, dearie. In all the lines.” 

Before I could reply, she had launched into her song again. She turned her gaze out toward the foggy world in front of us, and I did, too. I didn’t join in her singing, though, instead choosing to listen. 

“Fall on your knees! Oh hear the angels -” 

Mrs. Joyce didn’t have time to finish the song this time. Not since I had interrupted her. The fog before my face seemed to seep into my bones, blurring until I saw nothing at all, as her voice faded into nothing. 

Chapter 5 - Published December 5, 2024

I stood in the doorway, the soundtrack of Jingle Bells grating in my ears, and considered my next move. The living room was still dark, the tree still unlit, and I knew that my stupid cello case was still hiding in the walkway, waiting to trip me. I also knew that Maggie's cookie was sitting on my bedside table, uneaten and full of chocolaty goodness that would definitely calm my nerves, as it had every time so far. There was a whole plate of those cookies on the kitchen counter. I could grab them and eat them all if I wanted to. 

I could take another bath. I could make coffee. I could go stand on the roof and yell to the world that I was stuck in a time loop. I could wake Maggie up and tell her that I was stuck in a time loop. I could wake Maggie up and challenge her to an epic late-night dance battle. We could even have a karaoke night and start a neighbor war with Sawyer and Santa. 

A car drove past, casting its yellow lights across the back wall of the living room, before the room gave way to darkness again. The only light came from the balcony door, half-covered by dusty blinds. I stared at the dim, foggy light for a couple of minutes. Then, before Sawyer had finished the second verse, I shut the door behind me, lowered my purse to the ground, and started across the room. 

The balcony door creaked loudly as I pushed it open. It had been weeks since Maggie or I had been out here - with the exception of my visit in the last loop, but did that really count? I pulled my hoodie tighter around myself. Mrs. Joyce's balcony was empty. I wondered when she came outside. Was it just before the siren, or did she spend most of the last hour of Christmas Eve sitting out here by herself? 

The scene in front of me couldn't be any different than the one I had seen minutes ago (or an hour in the future, from my perspective), but I took the time to look at it with new eyes. The fog was thin enough for me to make out the buildings and streetlights, but heavy enough to drape it all in a blanket of softness, even as the tiny droplets pricked at my skin. Each streetlamp, headlight, Christmas light, or window had been turned into a halo, shining out into the darkness. 

Mrs. Joyce's door creaked open. I turned to see the old woman stepping out onto her balcony, clutching her blanket tightly around her collarbone. She spotted me, too, and gave a little jump. 

“Lydia, dear, you startled me!” She exclaimed. “I didn't expect you to be out here.” 

“Sorry,” I said quickly, and I hoped she could tell I meant it. “I was just stepping out to…” 

…To speak to her. Because I wanted to talk to someone. Because I wanted to know more about the old lady with the grating laughter and the granddaughter from Florida who knit hats. Because I was stuck in a time loop, and I didn't want to spend the next hour alone. 

“To…?” Mrs. Joyce prompted. 

I shook myself. “To see the lights. The mist is pretty, isn't it?” 

She gave me a long, hard stare. “It's cold out.” 

“You're out here.” 

She nodded as though she had expected that answer, and settled into her creaky metal chair. “Touche, young lady.” 

Young lady. She had called me that before. Except, she hadn't. Not when she stepped outside. 

“What did you call me?” I asked abruptly. 

She raised an eyebrow. She had angled herself toward the mist, and had her head ever so slightly turned. If I weren't already in the middle of a conversation with her, I might think that she wasn't paying attention to me at all. “Young lady,” she repeated. 

“No, earlier -” I cut myself off, fairly certain now that I sounded like I was losing my mind - which, to be fair, I probably was. 

“Are you asking me to tell you your own name?” the woman said with a hint of humor in her voice. 

“I know my name.” I let out a frazzled huff. “But, well…you knew my name, didn't you?” 

“Lydia,” said Mrs. Joyce. “I do believe I do know it.” 

My brain was spinning. It was impossible, but could it -? I sucked in a breath. “How?” 

“Your roommate told me,” she said, deadpan. 

And now I was totally certain I sounded like an idiot. “Oh,” I said. 

Part of my brain still clung to a tiny bit of hope. Mrs. Joyce hadn’t known my name on the last loop. Or, maybe she had, and I had just introduced myself before she acknowledged whether or not she knew it. 

She could be lying. The old woman mysteriously singing on the balcony could be in this loop, too, and maybe I wasn’t so alone - 

She met my eyes with a pitying look. Not the kind of look you gave someone you understood; the kind of face you made when you were wondering if the person across from you might be out of their mind. 

I squeezed my eyes shut, and took a breath. Then I forced them open, and offered her a smile. “Sorry. I’m a little out of it tonight.” 

“The holidays can do that to the best of us,” she said. She let out a sniffle, then stared out at the lights for a bit. I continued to stare at her. 

“Why are you out here?” I asked her. 

“I suppose I’m rather like yourself.” My heart sped up against my will. “Out of it. Alone.” 

“I never said that -” What? That she was alone? That I was alone? 

“But I did,” said Mrs. Joyce. “I said that I’m alone.” 

I suddenly was a bit too interested in what to do with my hands. I wrapped my hoodie tighter around me, then dug my fingers as deep as possible into the front pockets. 

“My husband died ten years ago,” Mrs. Joyce said, as though she was commenting on a pretty display of Christmas lights on the next building. 

“I’m sorry,” I said. 

She kept her eyes trained on the lights, but offered me a half smile. “It’s been a long time. There’s not a day that I don’t miss him, but this isn’t my first Christmas without him.” 

“Oh,” I said, unsure of what else to say. 

“I’ve spent most of those Christmases alone. This is my first one in this new place, though. I rather like it. It’s a lovely view.” 

I looked again into the rainbow-dotted mist. “So you just…spend the night sitting on the balcony?” In the cold, I wanted to add, but wondered if that might sound nagging. 

“I spend the night thinking about my life,” she answered. “Reflecting on all the Christmases before.” 

“That sounds…” I searched for words. “Depressing.” 

“You would think so, wouldn’t you?” she said. “I expected that at first, too. But this really isn’t such a bad way to spend Christmas Eve, is it? It’s not as though I had other plans.” 

I hadn’t had plans for Christmas Eve, either - other than work and sleep, that is. I hadn’t been dreading Christmas Eve, exactly, but I hadn’t really wanted to dwell on the significance of the date, either. But now, stuck in this suffocating loop, I wanted nothing more than for the night to be over. 

I hadn’t seen Mrs. Joyce shift in her seat, except now she was staring straight at me. “What about you? Do you agree?” 

I wondered if the mist - or the pending insanity of the situation - had loosened my tongue. I didn't hesitate for a second before answering bluntly, “I hate it. This is a terrible - and I mean terrible - way to spend Christmas Eve.” 

She blinked. “Not much of a Christmas person, are you?” 

“No, I -” I rocked back and forth on my heels. Flashes of memories of my own Christmas Eves flashed behind my eyes. Being a child, opening the first presents of the year, getting to put the remaining ornaments on the tree. Cozying up in my warmest pjs in my mom’s lap, with my brothers at my side, listening to our grandpa as he read from the book of Matthew. 

What was it about this mist? Mrs. Joyce stared into it to relive her Christmas memories, and now I was being forced to relive mine. 

“I used to be a Christmas person,” I said finally. “Just…not this year. Maybe not anymore at all.” 

Mrs. Joyce allowed those words to hang between us for a few heavily-weighted moments. “Care to explain?” she asked. 

I took a step back toward the door. “I don’t have to tell you anything,” I sputtered. “I just met you.” 

“You don’t have to, sure,” she said. There was a sharp edge to her voice. “But you came out here in the middle of the night to talk, didn’t you? All I’m doing is offering an ear.” 

“I came out here before you did,” I pointed out. 

She set her hands in her lap. “And yet you were rather eager to speak when I arrived, weren’t you?” 

I opened my mouth to protest again, but she held up her hand. “You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to,” she said. 

I closed my mouth, then worked my tongue across my teeth, then groaned. “I’ll talk.” 

“Well, good!” said the woman cheerfully. “I was rather enjoying our chat.” 

I wondered what time it was. I couldn’t see into my darkened living room through the blinds, and I had left my phone in my purse. 

Maggie and I didn’t keep any chairs out on our balcony, so I awkwardly leaned against the railing, facing my neighbor. The metal was ice cold and damp. “I’m technically not alone,” I pointed out stubbornly. “Maggie’s still here.” 

“Of course,” said Mrs. Joyce. “And you’re celebrating with her tomorrow, are you?” My face fell and gave me away. “I’ll take that as a no.” 

“We watched a show and had Christmas cookies,” I argued. Technically, that had never happened, and Maggie had no memory of it. But the old lady didn’t need to know that. 

“Wonderful,” she said drily. 

“She’s going to visit her family tomorrow,” I said. If tomorrow ever came. “She invited me.” 

“And I suppose that, by the rather bitter sound to your voice, you turned her down?” 

“I don’t sound bitter,” I said sharply. 

“Are you sure about that, dear?” 

I wanted to go back inside. But all that would get me was another however many minutes crying in my dark apartment. “What was I supposed to do?” I asked. “Go celebrate with some people I barely know? Interrupt their family traditions?” 

“If they invited you, it was probably genuine,” she said kindly. “I don’t know your roommate well, but she seems like the sincere type.” 

I shook my head. “Yeah, but, well…I didn’t want to. It just didn’t feel…right.” 

Mrs. Joyce studied me. “I suppose I can’t blame you there.” 

I saw the opportunity to turn the conversation back on her - to give her a taste of her own medicine. “Why do you say that?” 

I knew from the appraising look she sent me that she was entirely onto me. I didn’t care. “I’ve been invited to many a family Christmas celebrations over the past ten years,” she said. “Families that weren’t my own, mind you. I’ve turned all of them down.” 

“Do you do anything with your own family? You have kids and grandkids in Florida, right?” 

Her gaze sharpened. She stared at me with those eyes that made me feel uncomfortably like I was being x-rayed. Yet I could’ve sworn I saw a hint of amusement playing behind her dark gaze, too. “Pray tell, how do you know about that?” 

Panic set in. “Maggie,” I said quickly. 

“She’s a talkative girl, isn’t she?” 

“Yes,” I said. I crossed my fingers in my pocket, desperately hoping that the details of this conversation never made their way to Maggie’s ears. “She is. But, about your kids…” 

“They visit on occasion,” she said. “And what lovely occasions those are.” She reached up to squeeze the tassel on her hat. “My granddaughter knit this for me, you know. She’s a special girl, that one is.” 

I acted surprised and delighted by this piece of information. 

“But they’re not visiting for Christmas?” I asked. 

Mrs. Joyce’s expression fell slightly, just like it had when her grandchildren had been brought up last loop, and I immediately felt bad for prying. “No. Not this year, at least. My children each married into families with quite a few in-laws, so they tend to take priority.” 

I unexpectedly had to blink back tears. “I’m sorry.” 

“It’s quite alright, Lydia. Quite alright.” 

“But then…what do you do on Christmas? Do you still like it?” 

I had looked down at my shoes, and the concrete balcony floor beneath me. When I looked up, I saw the woman’s eyes, intense once again. “Why don’t you tell me a bit more about yourself first, Lydia?” 

I didn’t want to talk about it, except maybe I did, because the story spilled off of my tongue easily. I faced the lights, and somehow the fog seemed to soothe me. It was as if this time loop was happening in a different world, and nothing I said here mattered. I could waste time, I could take baths that scalded my skin, I could pig out on cookies, I could make an absolute fool of myself running around in the streets. 

I could be open about my emotions. 

And nothing bad could come of it. 

“I love my family,” I said. “I’ve got three older brothers. But they’re all married now. My parents are still in Ohio, and one of my brothers is, but the other two are off in other states, too. I moved here, and well…” I shrugged. “It’s too far to travel for Christmas. Especially when I’m working.” 

“Do you like working on the holidays?” she interrupted. 

I shrugged. “It pays well.” I had often wondered, when the nights got long and sleepless, if I actually was okay with working on the holidays, or if I just told myself that to cope. Now, I let myself think about it some more, and I knew I was being honest. “It’s not the best, but I’m okay with it. Most of my coworkers have places to be, and I don’t. So it’s sort of like…sort of like I’m helping them out. And making more money, too.” 

I sort of expected an argument. A lot of people, especially those of the older generations, argued when I said that I was okay with my long work hours. But Mrs. Joyce just let out a non-judgemental hmm. “Would you visit them if you could?” 

“Of course I would -” 

I cut myself off. I was lying. And for some reason, lying here in this liminal space with Mrs. Joyce on the opposite balcony felt like a felony. 

She waited. 

“I miss them,” I admitted. “It’s been six months since I saw any of them at all, and that was just when my parents stopped by here for a weekend. But…but…it’s hard.” 

Mrs. Joyce, once again, waited. I cut a glance sideways to see if she had fallen asleep. She hadn’t. She had, however, angled herself back out toward the fog. I was grateful. It made me feel less exposed, as if I was spilling my deepest yearnings to myself and not a virtual stranger. 

“My grandfather died. Two years ago,” I added hastily. “It’s been awhile. It’s been…it’s been long enough that it’s not fresh. But I went home for Christmas last year - used up all my sick time and everything - and it was just so uncomfortable. I had thought that I had finished grieving, but I…I hadn’t. It felt fresh all over again, and I just…I didn’t want to do that again this year.” 

“Were you close with your grandfather?” 

I nodded, even though I wasn’t sure she was looking at me. We both stared out at the glowing, halo-crowned city lights. “Very. We just…I miss him.” My voice cracked. I didn’t care. “So much.” 

I turned to her, and saw her hat, and remembered the conversation we had had on the last loop. I had been wearing my grandpa’s cardigan, then. It felt wrong, somehow, for me to know about her hat but for her to not know about my cardigan. “I have one of his old sweaters,” I added hastily. “I wear it a lot. Especially when I miss him.” 

I had been wearing it a lot recently. Not just on the holidays, but all times of year. 

“I’d love to see it,” she said softly. 

I felt tears cluster into my throat. I excused myself quickly, and ran back into the dark warmth of the living room, then to my bedroom. I stopped to blow my nose but didn’t linger long before grabbing Grandpa’s sweater. I spotted the clock on my bedside table. It was 11:38 P.M. 

“It’s beautiful,” said Mrs. Joyce, when I stepped back out onto the balcony, wearing the sweater over top of my hoodie. I no longer felt cold, wrapped up as I was against the mist. 

Beautiful wasn’t the first word I would use to describe my grandpa’s cardigan. It was classy, sure, and I had always assumed it must have been vaguely fashionable when he bought it in the ‘70s. But it was simple, brown and cream gingham with patches on the elbows and a few clumsily darned holes where it had worn weak with age. Grandpa had told me, when I was a child who played with his sleeves as I sat in his lap, that Grandma had been the one to mend the holes. She was never a good seamstress - Grandpa had said that, loudly and proudly, with a loud laugh as he remembered his late wife - but she cared, and she mended the sweater because she knew he loved it. Three months back I had worn a hole of my very own, right up at the seam above the left shoulder. I had mended it myself, thinking all the while of the grandmother I never knew, and wondered what she would think of my own mediocre sewing skills. 

“Thank you,” I whispered. I looked back out at the lights. Any moment now, the ambulance would race down the street. I wondered if Mrs. Joyce would start singing spontaneously this time, or if my presence would once again affect it. 

“We should sing,” I said, just in case. 

An odd smile played on the corner of her lips. “Oh? And what song did you have in mind?” 

“O Holy Night,” I said. “It’s a good song. Hopeful, but not happy.” 

“That does fit the tone of our Christmases this year, doesn’t it?” she mused. 

I still didn’t think I felt very hopeful - I had no hopes of making it past midnight on this loop. In a few short minutes, Mrs. Joyce would forget all of this. But I did feel lighter than I had when I stepped out onto the balcony. I looked forward to closing the hour with Mrs. Joyce’s familiar song. 

In the distance, the siren flared to life. 

“Before we sing,” said Mrs. Joyce suddenly. 

I spun to face her. “What?” 

“How old are you, Lydia? May I ask that?” 

I wasn’t sure how it was related, but I obliged her. “Twenty-three.” 

She made that hmm sound again. “Here’s my advice to you, dear. Don’t give up yet. This Christmas may rather suck, but you have many ahead of you. Wallow in this one all you want, but don’t lose hope for Christmases of the future quite yet.” 

The words should have caused me to groan, or spiral, but her word choice made me laugh, instead. “I’ll try,” I said. If I ever reach this Christmas, much less any future ones. 

“And please know that, as you told me just under an hour ago, that you are not truly alone during this one. Call your parents, if you’d like. Or perhaps talk to that roommate of yours.” 

That advice, delivered bounty, startled me silent again. I nodded jerkily. My thoughts drifted to Maggie, in her bed, likely still asleep and snoring as she had at this time during most of these loops. 

“Maybe I will,” I said. 

Mrs. Joyce looked at me, and she nodded. And when she opened her mouth next, it wasn’t to speak, but to sing. 

I joined in, and we both sang to the city until the mist rolled in and took us away. 

Chapter 6 - Published December 12, 2024

“Maggie?” 

At 11:05 P.M. I knocked lightly on my roommate’s half-open door, a plate of reheated Christmas cookies balanced on my arm. The kettle was burbling in the kitchen, ready to make instant hot chocolate powder or tea or coffee or whatever Maggie and I might need to make it through this conversation. 

I had only spoken to Maggie once since this whole time loop started, and I had scared her enough - and made myself feel guilty enough - that I had sworn to let her sleep out the hour, regardless of what nonsense my time loops were causing. But that was seven loops ago, give or take a few, and I was feeling braver - and more bored, and more risky. Last time, Maggie had begged me to tell her what was bothering me, completely sincere, but I had refused. 

This time? I was going to tell her the truth. Because, even if she forgot the whole conversation in an hour, maybe she’d actually be able to help me out. 

Besides, so what if she didn’t believe a word I said, flipped out on me, and locked me in my room wearing a straightjacket until she could get a hold of the nearest mental hospital? In an hour, I would start fresh. 

“Mmhm,” murmured Maggie. 

“Maggie…” I sing-songed. “I have cookies.” 

To prove my point, I stepped into her cluttered room (flipping the light on first, since I didn’t want a repeat of the cello incident), and waved the cookies above the spot in her pile of blankets where I assumed her face would be. The covers rustled, then her head rose from an area three inches over. She blinked up at me rapidly, squinting. 

“Lydia?” she mumbled. “What do you want?” 

“To bring you cookies,” I said. “For Christmas?” 

She sat up straighter, letting the covers fall around her waist. “What do you actually want?” 

“I can’t just be in the mood to celebrate Christmas late-night with my favorite roommate?” 

“No.” She stretched her arms above her head. “Not this year, at least.” 

A pang went through my chest, and I opened my mouth to stammer some protest, or maybe an apology. But before I could, she had snatched a cookie off the plate, biting into it. I saw the bliss wash across her drowsy face as the chocolate melted on her tongue. 

“You warmed them up.” 

“Yeah.” 

She took another bite, another second to shut her eyes and savor it. “What time is it?” 

“11:07.” 

She opened one eye a crack. “That’s specific.” 

“I know.” 

She stuffed the rest of the cookie in her mouth, peering at me now through both half-open eyes. “This isn’t normal for you.” 

I wasn’t exactly sure what she had picked up on, but I wasn’t going to argue, considering she was right. “I don’t exactly feel normal right now.” 

She grabbed another cookie. A few crumbs tumbled down onto her sheets. “What are you buttering me up for?” 

I let out a sigh and leaned against the side of her bed. “There’s something I need to tell you. Something big.” 

Her eyes widened, instantly more awake than she had been a second before. “What? Is it bad? Did something happen at work -?” 

“No,” I said quickly. “And it’s…well, not bad so much as weird.” 

“Weird?” 

“Real weird.” 

She narrowed her eyes at me once again, no longer because of sleep but because of confusion. “Okay. Whatever you need…can I have five minutes to wake up a bit?” 

Time was of the essence, unfortunately. My stomach gave a flip. “Umm…not really?” 

“What?” She stared at me before deciding not to question it. She shoved her blankets off her legs and swung her feet to the floor. “Fine, then. But you do need to give me a second for coffee.” 

“Kettle’s already hot.” 

Her eyes widened. “Say what now?”

By 11:11 P.M., Maggie was curled up on the couch, knees drawn into her stomach with a blanket over top, a cup of almost-midnight coffee cradled in her hands. She looked at me expectantly, reaching for another cookie. 

By 11:15 P.M., the cookie was forgotten, laying half-eaten on the blanket, and the mug was held loosely in her hands, suspiciously close to being spilled all over the blanket. 

“So let me get this straight,” said Maggie. “You're in a time loop?” 

“I said that already.” 

“That doesn't mean it makes sense.” She shook her head, shifting positions. Probably considering reaching for her phone. “Lydia…” 

“Look, it's okay if you don't believe me,” I said. “But…but…hypothetically. If it was true, then what would you say? How would you help me?” 

She definitely was about to get up and go back to bed now. “Lydia, it's late.” 

“Please,” I said. “I only need forty-five minutes. Can you pretend for forty-five minutes? After that I don't care what you do.” 

She leaned forward, carefully setting her mug back on the coffee table. “Why forty-five minutes?” she asked shrewdly. 

I flicked my eyes to my phone’s clock, sitting on the coffee table between us, but I didn't need to actually look to know what time it was. This loop, it was as though the ticking minutes were ingrained in my skull. That didn't stop me from glancing at the clock every ten seconds just to be sure, though. 

“Why do you think?” I asked her. My voice tripped, leaning toward a tone or utter desperation. And to think, I felt clearer-headed on this loop than I had most of the previous ones. No wonder Maggie had been worried about me the last time we talked. 

She looked at the phone, then quickly back at me. “Lydia, are you…do you actually think you're in a time loop?” 

I sat down heavily into the armchair. “Why would I wake you up and tell you if I wasn't?” 

“I don't know, you could be joking -” 

“Have I ever pulled this kind of prank before?” 

She let out a huff of air. “Well, no. But it just…it doesn't make sense. It's not possible.” I opened my mouth to protest, but she shook her head sharply. “I'm not even saying that you're pranking me, maybe just that you…you've…” 

“Lost my mind?” I asked curiously. 

“Not…necessarily. Just…you're under a lot of stress, aren't you? We both are. All the time. Maybe you just need sleep.” 

Despite everything, I felt a rueful grin tugging at the corners of my mouth. “That's what I thought the first loop, too!” I said earnestly. “And the second one, and like half the ones after that.” 

She rubbed a hand across her forehead. “Why only half?” 

I mirrored her, resting the weight of my head on my palms. I massaged my eyebrows with my thumbs. “I can never sleep. At this point it's been, what? Ten hours since I got home from work? At some point I gave up and started trying to find a way out of this instead. And mind you, I stumbled in here the first time half asleep, ready to do nothing but crawl into bed.” I gestured toward the cello, which I had never moved from its spot in the walkway this time. “I tripped over that twice.” 

Maggie winced. “I'm so sorry, I think that's my fault, I meant to move it earlier -” 

“Maggie,” I said sharply. She looked at me. “Thanks, but there are bigger issues right now.” 

I don't know why it was so important to me that she believed me. I had been the one to tell her that she just needed to pretend. Maybe, if this attempt failed and I had to try and ask for her advice all over again, I would start with claiming that it was a random idea for a story I was writing. 

(I couldn't help but snort to myself. Yeah right. Like Maggie would believe I woke her up in the middle of the night because I wanted to play make-believe.)

But, as I finished massaging my eyebrows and looked back into Maggie's eyes, I really, really hoped that she might actually start believing my chaos in the next few minutes. 

“Who are you and what did you do with my roommate?” she asked in half-jest, half-shock. “You normally would've fumed about that cello for days.” 

I felt a pang of guilt. Was she right? I got the bad feeling she was. “It's been hours,” I said again. Hours that felt like a lifetime. “And I don't care about those little things anymore. I just…I just want to see Christmas morning.” 

She peered at me. “Never thought I'd hear you say that.” 

“Me neither.” I swallowed. “I guess it's just…just…” 

Tears were prickling at my eyes. Come on, I'm supposed to be composed this loop! I had, for once, started the loop with a game plan, warmed up cookies, woken up Maggie and had a spread of late-night panic food ready within ten minutes. And now here I was, losing all composure and crying. 

I rubbed at my eyes. The couch creaked as Maggie reached forward to set a hand on my shoulder. “Hey,” she said. “It's okay.” 

“It's not,” I said. “I'm stuck, and I can't…I can't…all I want to do is sleep, but I can't, and I've tried other things, but I can't figure out a thing. And maybe I could even try and just relax on the loops, you know? But no, bath water and tea get way less soothing after five hours…” 

I trained off, a bumbling mess, and Maggie tightened her grip on my shoulder. 

“The loop ends at midnight, right?” she asked. 

I peered at her through wet eyes. “11:59.” 

“Okay. So we've got…we've got 39 minutes. Tell me what all you've tried so far.” 

I pulled my hoodie sleeve, now damp with tears, away from my eyes. “You…you believe me?” 

“Don't take this the wrong way, but you're acting weird. Like, real weird.” I smiled slightly, and she mirrored it back at me. “And supernatural time loop isn't my first guess - or even my seventeenth - about why, but you know what? I'll entertain it until midnight.” 

I launched myself at her in a hug. 

She laughed and squeezed back before pulling away. She had a sort of dazed look in her eyes, like maybe she thought she, too, and gone crazy. I wanted to thank her profusely, tell her how much her willingness meant to me. 

But time was of the essence. How was it that I felt like I had way too much time and simultaneously not enough by a long shot? 

“And after midnight?” I asked. The answer wouldn't matter, but I wanted to know. “What will you do then?” 

Maggie weighed the question. “Depends. If you convince me by then, nothing. If you don't, then I might start researching some professional help for you.” Again, this was said in a half-joke, half-worried way. “But I think it'll wait a day or two, because if it's after midnight, I'll be too busy forcing you to celebrate Christmas.” 

I rolled my eyes, but secretly - for the first time in about five loops - felt a little bit of hope. Like maybe, just maybe, 12:01 A.M. on Christmas Day was actually an achievable sort of future, and not just a dream that I couldn’t even have in my sleep. 

Maggie and I talked. Mainly I did - explaining to her my late-night walks, and my two conversations with Mrs. Joyce. I mentioned the siren and the song, and had the strangest urge to start singing the entirety of the words, all by myself, to her, so that she could really understand my hourly experience. But I kept it short, thanks to the ever ticking forward clock, and told her as many details as I could in the few precious minutes we had. 

By the time the clock had struck 11:33, we had polished off the plate of cookies entirely. Maggie's mug sat completely forgotten, and she sat as far forward on the couch cushions as she could possibly get, her elbows on her knees and her fingers laced together. 

“So if this is like, say, A Christmas Carol,” she started. 

“This is nothing like A Christmas Carol.” 

“Fine, then. Groundhog Day, or something. Maybe you're supposed to, like, learn something. Or do a good deed, or something, before you can break out.” 

I flopped back in the chair and sighed. I was trying not to start sobbing again. “How am I supposed to do that? Even if - even if I wanted to do a bunch of good deeds to even out whatever faults I have, then I still can't. I don't have a day. I have an hour.” I glanced down at my darkened phone screen and scowled. “And it's like the worst hour possible.” 

Maggie raised an eyebrow. “Because it's right before Christmas?” 

I shook my head. “Because it's almost midnight. Who's awake at midnight?” 

Maggie pointed at the left wall. Sawyer had long since finished singing, but we could hear the occasional shuffling noise, no doubt the sound of his parents hurrying to make sure Santa Claus had finished his responsibilities before morning. “It sounds like they're awake.” 

I snorted. “I got that, based off of the Jingle Bells duet.” 

“The what?” asked Maggie.

“Don't worry about it.” She had still been asleep when Sawyer and Robot Santa finished their song. She had slept through it every single time. And unless I raced to her room and rattled her awake within a minute of the loop starting, I bet she wouldn't ever hear it. 

Since waking Maggie up, I had finally felt a little bit less alone in this never-ending hour. But the thought of her never hearing the background music to the scariest event of my life left me feeling lonelier than ever. 

“My point is,” she said, eyebrows creasing. “It's Christmas Eve. Right before midnight. Everyone's awake. Maybe you can find someone to help.” 

My eyes drifted to the balcony, where Mrs. Joyce was undoubtedly sitting silently, but I forced my thoughts away. “You weren't,” I said. 

She laughed. “I'm not normal, am I? And I have to be up early to drive.” 

We held each other's gaze for a second before simultaneously looking away. We had had the argument again and again, about whether or not I would come with her to her family's Christmas brunch. I could tell she had given up and didn't want to have the argument again. 

I didn't either, not really, but honestly I would've welcomed the bit of normalcy. 

“I'm sorry for waking you up,” I said. 

She seemed surprised that I wasn't instantly changing the subject. “It's okay.” She gave me a half-shrug, a half-smile. “If you're telling the truth, I'm getting plenty of sleep anyway, aren't I?” 

I tried to chuckle, tried not to cry, but ended up having to settle for something in between. “You know,” I said after a minute. “If I do make it to Christmas morning - if this is the last loop - I'll go with you.” 

Her eyes widened. “Really? Lydia, that's -” She reached out to grab my hand in excitement, but then froze. “You're just saying that because you don't think it'll actually happen, aren't you?” 

I threw my hands up. “Yes. Or maybe…maybe that's what I need to do to end the loop. Maybe if I…if I promise to go celebrate Christmas, I'll actually be able to.” I met her eyes. “I just…I don't even care what day it is. I just want to be done with this.” 

I did want to see Christmas, didn't I? Except I didn't actually care what day it was. I just wanted to see morning. I wanted to see a day. I wanted to see the sun streaming through my windows, even if it was muggy and overcast. 

Maggie studied me for a minute, and eventually nodded. “Okay. I know it's not because you actually want to, but…still. I hope you can come. For all the reasons. I really, really hope you can come.” 

“I do, too,” I whispered. But not for all the same reasons she did. 

We stared off into space for a minute and a half, each lost in thought. I knew my time was coming to a close. I couldn't decide whether waking up Maggie had been worth it or not. 

“What if it's your own parents?” she asked, shattering the silence. 

“What?” I said. 

She met my eyes, apologetic. “What if that's what this is about? I mean, Christmas is about family, isn't it? Maybe you're supposed to use this hour to get back in touch with yours.” 

“I can't exactly go visit,” I protested. “Even if I just planned it and that broke the loop, then I still can't just drive twelve hours to go see them in the morning!” 

“Call them,” she said. “You can call them.” 

I swallowed. “They both go to sleep early. Even on Christmas Eve. Actually, they usually go to sleep extra early on Christmas Eve.” 

“They would wake up if their phone rang, right? Here–” she grabbed my phone off the table. 

“Hey!” I shouted. 

“You have to try.” She tapped at my screen, then held the phone back out to me. Mom was pulled up on the call screen. The green call button was taunting me. 

“It-it's too late,” I stammered. 

“Like I said, it'll wake them up.” 

“No, it's too late in the hour. I only have like 12 minutes left -” 

“Lydia!” she shouted. “What if this is the thing that breaks the loop? What if you call, and you can keep talking and talking because you don't loop back?” 

I stared at the phone. I tried to calm my breathing. 

“They're your parents,” Maggie whispered. “It can't be so bad, can it?” 

They were my parents, and she wasn't wrong. All the panic and pain that had kept me at an arm's length the past six months had nothing to do with them, and everything to do with my own grief, and theirs. They texted at least once a week, called at least once a month, and I replied, with as little emotion as I could give while still being polite, because I was afraid that if I let any of that emotion show, all of it would come flooding out. It was the same with why I wouldn't go visit my childhood home; memories of how things used to be, of Grandpa, would be drowned out by the knowledge of my present loneliness, and heartache would overwhelm me. 

But I was aching now, with grief, with panic, with loneliness. And despite everything that I had told myself over the past couple years, I suddenly felt the burning desire to talk to my mom, and to let her make everything better. 

I took the phone from Maggie, and pressed the green button. 

The dial tone started and I pressed it against my ear. Maggie gave me an encouraging look. I took a few deep breaths, imagining my parents stirring and waking up slowly in the same bed they had slept in since before I was born. They would be awake, now, roused by the ring tone. They would assume it wasn't important, but then see my name on the screen, and answer immediately. 

The dial tone rang, and rang, and - 

The call went to voice-mail. 

I hurried to hang up, and dropped my phone onto the floor. It suddenly was hard to breathe. “They didn't wake up,” I said. 

“Try again,” she suggested. 

I shook my head. “There's no time.” 

“Then try again on another loop.”

“No, I - if the ring tone didn't wake them up now, it won't wake them up on any loop. Maybe they silenced their phones, or they're just really tired, or…” I struggled to suck in air. “Maggie, what if you're right? What if calling them is the only way to fix this? What if…what if they never answer, and I'm stuck here?” 

“Lydia, you're spiraling.” 

“Of course I'm spiraling!” I shouted. “You would be too if -” 

In the distance, the siren went off. 

Breath flooded back into my lungs, clearing my mind and making me feel almost lightheaded. 

“Lydia?” asked Maggie. “What is it?” 

“Time to sing,” I whispered. 

From the balcony, Mrs. Joyce started her hourly hymn. I couldn't find it in me to sing with her this time, but I did let my eyes fall shut, and my shoulders sag into the chair. 

Maggie looked at her phone's clock. “You were right, weren't you? 11:54.” 

“Every time.” I peered at Maggie. She looked spooked. “Does that prove it to you?” 

“I…I think so.” She stared out toward the balcony, dazed. 

“This is my favorite part of the loop,” I said. “I used to play this song on cello every year at church. I used to love it.” 

Maggie didn't quite seem ready for nostalgia or pointless musings. We were coming to the end of the line for her, and she knew it. For me, it was simply time to start thinking about the next loop. 

“How much longer do you have?” she asked in a whisper, as though saying it any louder might interrupt Mrs. Joyce's singing. 

“Until the end of the song,” I said. I didn't bother looking at my phone to check. Once the song started, minutes no longer mattered, only notes and beats and lyrics and warbles of Mrs. Joyce's voice. 

“Are you…?” I was still looking out at the balcony, considering just getting up and going out there. But Maggie suddenly gripped my shoulders, dragging me back into the reality of the half-dark living room. 

“Lydia,” she said sharply. “You're about to do this again?” 

I nodded. 

“And I'm not going to remember this conversation? Like, at all?” 

“You'll be sound asleep,” I told her. “Oblivious to everything.” 

She let out a grunt. “I knew I should've stayed up later. You know how sometimes you get a feeling about something? If I had still been awake when you got home at eleven, then maybe you could've told me about this every time. I could've helped you more.” 

I personally was sort of glad she hadn't waited up for me. Not because she hadn't been of help - I was now sure that, yes, it was entirely worth it to wake her up - but because if she were awake, and sitting up in the living room, she would have witnessed every single one of times I started a new loop, sometimes sobbing, sometimes screaming. And I was quite glad that I had a little bit of privacy to process the chaos each time. 

The relative silence, and darkness, and heavy air were about to make me lose my mind, but they were also sort of peaceful, and the stillness was almost soothing in the midst of my panic. Maybe I was wrong - maybe almost midnight wasn't the worst hour to be trapped in. 

“Lydia, you're not listening,” Maggie said, shaking my shoulders gently. 

“Sorry,” I said with an awkward smile. “There's a lot on my mind.” 

“Of course there is.” She took a deep breath. Mrs. Joyce was reaching the final chorus of the song. It wouldn't be long now. “Listen. I want you to wake me up as many times as you need to. Even if that's literally every loop.” 

“I'll have to explain things to you from scratch again,” I reminded her. “That's not exactly practical, no offense.” 

She looked pained, but then her eyes lit up with an idea. “Tell me - future me? Past me? Whatever. Tell me that my first kiss was with a guy named Kyle under the giraffe enclosure.” 

That was the only possible thing that could've distracted me from the final seconds of this impending loop. “What?” 

“It's my biggest secret. I've never told a soul. And if you tell me that right off the bat, maybe I'll believe you.” 

“Wait, but -” 

“We don't have time, that's what you said, right? Maybe other me will explain it to you.” Her eyes narrowed in warning. “Emphasis on maybe. So tell me that. And wake me up however often you need to.” 

“Okay,” I said. 

“You promise?” 

“Promise.” 

She breathed a sigh of relief. “And try calling your parents again, okay? At least another time or two. Don't give up on that part yet.” 

“I won't.” 

She released my shoulders and slumped back on the couch as Mrs. Joyce reached the final Holy of O Holy Night. I could see a look of fear on her face, but also of curiosity. I wondered, too. What happened to her? Would this version of my friend just be erased from existence altogether, or would she somehow live on, having watched me disappear? 

“I really do hope you can come to Christmas with me,” she whispered. 

In the final seconds, as I felt the mist start to creep at the edges of my vision, I smiled at her. “Me, too.” 

Chapter 7 - Published on December 19, 2024

When the fog settled once again, I took a long moment to breathe. 

The living room was dark again, lacking the Christmas tree lights and overhead that I had turned on to bring some wakefulness to my conversation with Maggie. My roommate was back in bed now, having forgotten everything I had told her in the past hour. I could hear her gentle snores. Likewise, the smell of reheated cookies and the soft burbling of the kettle had gone away, leaving only the sound of the oh-so-familiar Jingle Bells duet. 

“What do I do now?” I whispered to myself. Maggie had wanted me to wake her again, and I would, eventually. I knew I would need her companionship again soon before I lost my mind. But the conversation still laid heavily in my mind (with a sort of comforting warmth, too), and I wanted to give it an hour or two to settle before I started it all over again. 

Mrs. Joyce would be out on the balcony soon. I could go talk to her. 

Or I could take a bath, drink some tea, go for a walk. Eat some cookies, or try and call my mom again. 

I took a few steps forward. My toes touched my old cello case. 

I could do any of those things that I had used to pass the time before. Or, I could try something completely different. 

I had to turn on the overhead light to set up my cello. It had been so long since I even opened the case that the muscle memory of screwing on the foot and steadying the bow was gone. But as soon as I had it in place, propped against the couch, I flipped the lights back off and plugged in the Christmas tree instead. The wash of the many-colored lights was just enough for me to see my fingers and position them on the strings. 

Next door, Robot Santa had run out of steam, but Sawyer was still cheerfully belting the song. His parents tried to shush him again but were quickly losing the battle to giddy laughter. 

I pressed down the strings, took my bow in my hand, and played a note. 

It had been a long time since I played, and I'm not sure that Jingle Bells had ever been in my repertoire. The first few notes came out horribly squeaky. I played a few wrong ones as I tried to sound out the melody. Next door, Sawyer and his parents went quiet. 

I fumbled to spin the tuning knobs, then tried again. 

I was plucking out the notes, my by-ear song sounding more like a clumsily-played fiddle than the epic orchestral Christmas music I used to play at church. But, after a minute, Sawyer started to sing again. His father joined in, and his mother exclaimed something in a loud, delighted voice. Then she started singing, too, and a smile worked its way across my face. 

My fingers flew, clumsy but spirited, and my neighbor's laughter seeped into my bones like the cold fog had so many times before. 

There wasn’t a clear ending to the song, seeing that I could barely remember the tune of the verses. I paused after the chorus, letting my fingers rest, catching my breath. 

“Again! Again!” shouted Sawyer from the other side of the wall. 

“Shhh!” said his mom, but she was laughing. “Don’t bother -” 

I launched into the chorus again, and the cheerful celebration resumed on both sides of the thin apartment wall. 

I tilted my chin down, watching my fingers on the strings, watching my bow start to move as if the instrument was playing itself. The motions were coming back to me, and I felt free. The Christmas tree lights reflected off of the shiny neck of the cello, and I couldn't remember the last time I felt so festive. 

I ended the song with a flourish, letting my bow vibrate on the strings for an extra second. “Thank you!” shouted Sawyer's mother next door. I could still hear their laughter. 

“Wow, that’s been awhile,” said Maggie. 

I looked up to see her leaning against her bedroom doorway, eyes bleary. She had wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and a bright smile on her face.

“Sorry to wake you up,” I said. 

She waved it off. “This is totally worth it. But - and don't take this the wrong way - why?” 

I gestured to the neighbor's wall. “Sawyer was singing.” 

“And you joined in?” she asked. “At…what is it, like midnight or something?” 

“Eleven. Ish. A few minutes after.” I rested the cello against my knee. “Do you want some cookies?” 

“Found those already, did you?” She chuckled. “I hope you haven't eaten them all yet.” 

“Only a few,” I said. 

She turned toward the kitchen, glancing curiously at the neighbor's wall, where we could still hear muffled laughter. “You really made their night, I think.” 

“He would've been singing anyway.” I looked toward the balcony. I wasn’t sure what it was that had drawn my eye. Was it the sound of a creaking door, or a whistle of wind? Was it someone’s gentle breathing, or had I spotted a shadow move across the binds? 

Maybe it was just that I knew what happened over the course of this hour. Maybe I had lived it so many times that I just had a sense of what would happen. Of what needed to happen. 

“Could you open the balcony door?” I asked Maggie. 

She frowned. “What? It’s cold.” 

“Just a crack. I want some fresh air.” I tapped my fingers against the neck of my cello. “This is working up a sweat.” 

Maggie chuckled and muttered something cheerfully under her breath, but crossed the room and cracked open the door anyway. Now that the barrier had been breached, I was even more certain that I could hear Mrs. Joyce’s steady breathing and the creaking of the balcony in the wind. 

Maggie saw me eyeing the strings once again. “So, what are you going to play next? More Jingle Bells? Maybe Sleigh Ride.” 

I made a face and she laughed. But, as I set my fingers once again on the strings and steadied my bow, she went quiet. The entire world seemed to hold its breath as I readied myself to play. 

O Holy Night wasn’t like Jingle Bells. I had played this one year in and year out for a good chunk of my life. Even without the muscle memory, I knew this song as if it were my own heartbeat. I knew the notes and the rhythms, the bowing pattern and the way that my cello gently vibrated in my arms. This was Christmas to me, this was something beautiful and holy and reverent. The song sounded eerily like the fog, with the lights bursting through in little shining halos. 

And then, Mrs. Joyce started to sing. 

“Oh holy night,

The stars are brightly shining, 

It is the night, 

Of our dear Saviour’s birth. 

Long lay the world, 

In sin and error pining, 

‘Til He appeared, 

And the soul felt its worth. 

A thrill of hope, 

The weary world rejoices, 

For yonder breaks, 

A new and glorious morn. 

Fall on your knees, 

Oh hear the angels’ voices. 

Oh night divine, 

Oh night when Christ was born.”

“What is it with you and our neighbors tonight?” asked Maggie with a laugh. But then, as I grinned at her and smoothly transitioned into the next verse, she, too, joined in with the song. 

“Truly He taught us, 

To love one another, 

His law is love, 

And His Gospel is peace. 

Chains shall He break, 

For the slave is His brother, 

And in His name, 

All oppression shall cease. 

A thrill of hope, 

The weary world rejoices, 

For yonder breaks, 

A new and glorious morn. 

Fall on your knees, 

Oh and hear the angels’ voices, 

Oh night divine. 

Oh night when Christ was born. 

Oh night divine, 

Oh night, 

Oh holy night.” 

I let my bow fall to my lap, and caught my breath, staring down at the strings. A feeling of exhilaration filled me. Inexplicable joy bubbled up inside me. 

“That was good,” said Maggie. “I think Mrs. Joyce liked it, too.” 

I laughed. A real, happy laugh that I was sure Mrs. Joyce could hear from her balcony. 

“You going to play any more?” Maggie asked. “Or do you want to sleep?” 

I gently rested my cello on the couch cushions beside me. “I’m not sure I could top that,” I said, still breathing heavily. “But I’m not quite ready to go to bed, either. What do you think we should do?” 

“You’re not tired after your shift?” she asked. “I was expecting you to crash the second you got home. That’s part of why I didn’t stay up.” 

I shrugged. “It’s been an eventful night. I guess it energized me.” 

Maggie tilted her head to the side. “Well now I want details.” 

I waved it off. “You got it. But let’s not worry about it right now, okay? I want to do something festive. Stay up until midnight.” 

“Who are you and what did you do to Lydia?” Maggie approached me and set her hand on my forehead. I whacked it away, and she grinned. 

“If you really want something to do…” She turned her head to look at our lit-up tree. The box of ornaments still sat beside it, opened but untouched. 

“Perfect,” I said. “But do you think we can invite some friends?” 

—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A few minutes later, Mrs. Joyce was stepping into our apartment, a blissful look on her face as she took in the decor. “Sorry it’s not much,” Maggie said quickly, hovering in the doorway behind her. “We didn’t exactly get the chance to clean.” 

“Of course you didn’t, it’s almost midnight.” Mrs. Joyce waved off Maggie’s concern with a thin-lipped smile. She had shed her balcony blanket, and I could now see that she was wearing an emerald-green sweater. She had added a wide red headband to her short white hair. I thought the look suited her rather well.  “And this was quite an impulsive invite, wasn’t it?” 

“We have cookies. And tea, if you want, or hot chocolate. We still need to decorate our tree, and since we could hear you outside, we thought we’d see if you wanted to join. The more the merrier.” I couldn’t quite seem to wipe the smile off my face. “Oh, I’m Lydia by the way.” 

“I know who you are.” Mrs. Joyce fixed me with a look that, not for the first time, made me wonder how much she knew. 

A chill went up my spine, my smile faltering. “Have you -? 

She waved her hand. “Now, now, let’s get to decorating, shall we? That’s what I came over here for. And lovely playing, dear Lydia. I love that song.” Her gaze sharpened. “Though you must have known that, didn’t you?” 

My mouth fell open. “Uh -” 

She shuffled past me. “No need to worry about that now, dear. No need.” 

“But -” 

Maggie, who had stepped back out into the hall as we talked, re-entered the apartment. “The Thompsons said they’d love to, but they’re busy. Sawyer won’t go to sleep for the life of him. No thanks to you,” she added playfully. 

“Hey -” 

She laughed. “Do you want to bring them some cookies?” 

The next little while was a flurry of activity as we fixed hot chocolate and heated up cookies. Maggie blared Christmas music from her phone speaker and I poured hot chocolate into a couple of spare styrofoam cups. Mrs. Joyce sat on our couch, occasionally chatting with Maggie. Her eyes occasionally met mine as I hurried past, sending that chill once again down my back. 

Maggie and I popped next door to deliver the cookies and hot chocolate - which Sawyer’s parents thanked us for profusely and quickly hid away from their son’s prying eyes. With a few final calls of Merry Christmas, we left them to their late-night mission and headed back to our own apartment. Mrs. Joyce still sat on the couch, her own mug of hot chocolate in front of her, but she had started on the box of ornaments, arranging them on the table by color and size. 

“These are some beautiful ornaments you girls have,” she said. 

“Oh, they’re mostly Lydia’s,” explained Maggie, looking down at the array. She selected a shiny red stocking and hung it on the tree. 

“Yeah,” I said, when Mrs. Joyce looked at me. “They mostly belonged to my…my…” 

“Your grandfather, was it?” asked the old lady. 

I met her eyes. “Hold on a second -” 

“Not at the moment, no,” she said quickly. “We simply must get all these hung -” 

“No, we need to talk,” I argued. 

“What’s going on?” asked Maggie. She let the ornament go, swinging merrily back and forth on one of the lower branches. “Am I missing something here?” 

“No,” I said quickly. 

Maggie raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t realize you two knew each other that well.” 

“We’ve only met on a couple of occasions, dear,” said Mrs. Joyce. “We’ve just had a chat here and there, is all.” 

“And you remember that,” I accused. 

“Why shouldn’t I?” said Mrs. Joyce dismissively. She looked down at the ornament in her hand, a shiny silver star, then up toward the top of the tree. “You girls really need a star, don’t you? I didn’t see one in the box.” 

Maggie frowned in thought, seemingly content to move past the topic that was still pounding between my ears. “I think we do,” she said. “Or, I do…wait, I bet it’s in the bathroom.” 

“The bathroom?” I asked. 

She nodded. “You know that big cabinet up on the wall? I keep stuffing boxes in there. And then I forget about them.” She turned toward the kitchen. “I need a…I’ll grab a chair. I’ll be back in a minute!” 

She left the room, and I turned back to Mrs. Joyce, arms crossed. 

“Whatever’s the matter, dear?” she asked, setting the silver star on the table. 

“You know!” I said. “You remember the-the…” 

“The what now, dear?” 

Her tone was enough to make me doubt myself for a second, but no. There was no way she didn’t remember. Not with the little hints she had been dropping all night. “Are you really going to make me say it?” 

She fixed me with her eyes, though her gaze was distant. “It doesn’t quite feel real unless you put it into words, does it?” She glanced toward the bathroom door. “Did you ever talk to your roommate about it?” 

“So you do remember.” 

She straightened her shoulders. “I never said I didn’t, dear. Only that I wanted you to say it for me.” 

My heart pounded and I wanted to protest, but instead I took in a lungful of the mist-tinged air that was coming in through our open balcony door. “I’m stuck in a time loop,” I said. “And I think you are, too.” 

Mrs. Joyce leaned back on the couch, studying the top of the tree for a long moment. “Yes, I do believe I am.” 

“I knew it! Are you…” I swallowed. “Are you the one who’s causing it?” 

“What?” Mrs. Joyce threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, that’s quite hilarious, Lydia. I do think I’ll remember that one.” 

“So you’re not?” I leaned forward. “You have no clue why this is happening, either?” 

“No, no, the one responsible for this is much more powerful than I. I do have some hunches,” she said simply. “I suspect that I have quite a bit more experience with such things than you do.” 

I blinked. “What?” 

“Based on the way you seemed to be panicking during that first conversation we had on our balconies…” 

“I wasn’t panicking!” I shouted. 

From the direction of the bathroom, there was a loud thud, followed by Maggie’s quiet shout of, “I’m okay!” 

“Shh, shh,” said Mrs. Joyce, not breaking her gaze. “I simply could tell that you were rather new to this.” 

I shook my head. “I wasn’t, though. I was already like seven loops in. I was just…still freaked out.” 

“I believe you on that,” she said. “But perhaps what I should have said is that this is your first Christmas Eve loop, is it not?” 

“I just told you, it’s been like a dozen already.” 

“No, not the number of loops themselves.” She picked up a shiny blue ball, staring at her reflection in it. “Though I do think you just answered my question. I meant to ask whether or not this is your first time ever caught up looping. Whether or not this is your first Christmas Eve that’s been, ah, should I say, abnormal?” 

Her words spun between my ears. “You…you mean that you’ve done this before?” 

She nodded, clutching the ball in her fist. “Every Christmas Eve for the past nine years. It started my first Christmas without my husband. You see, I was having a rather terrible evening, all by myself. I simply didn’t want Christmas to ever dawn. So, it didn’t.” 

I had a thousand questions. But the one I chose to ask was perhaps the simplest. “But you got out,” I said. “You saw Christmas morning.” 

“That I did.” A wry smile formed on her face. “And I walked away thinking it had been quite the strange dream, until it happened again the very next year.” 

My ears were buzzing. “But–how did you fix it? How did you make midnight come?” 

She studied the tree again. She slowly rolled the blue ball between her hands. “I don’t know, exactly. What I do know is that I had reached the point of feeling rather content in my circumstances for however long they may last, when all at once the loop was over. I don’t know if that means I learned a lesson that I was supposed to learn or not, but I faced the next morning all the merrier for it, I can tell you that.” 

I shook my head. “But then why did it happen again the next year? Weren’t you doing better then?” But I remembered what she had said, about rarely spending Christmas with anyone since her husband had died. How many Christmas Eves had she spent like this one, sitting out in solitude for hours on end in the fog? 

“I’m always lonely on Christmas Eve,” she said. “Those next few years were as bad as the first. But after all this time I’ve come to appreciate it. It gives me some extra time to sit and think, free from the distractions that come with the daylight. I know that it will always end eventually.” She let the blue ball dangle from her thumb and forefinger. With her free hand, she reached over and gave my hand a tight squeeze. “I can’t exactly say that it’s such a bad thing, when it’s allowed me to meet people like you.” 

I let out a breath that I must have been holding for a long time. I set my other hand on top of hers. “I’m glad I’ve met you, too. But, Mrs. Joyce–” 

“This is rather the best time I think I’ve had on one of these loops, wouldn’t you say?” she said. 

“It is nice,” I agreed, casting a quick glance at the tree, and the lights. A car flashed its headlights across the balcony window, lighting up our back wall again. I wondered if Sawyer was asleep yet.

“And to start it with that song, Lydia!” Mrs. Joyce said, voice crackling with mirth. “I didn’t know you played cello so beautifully.” 

“I haven’t in a while,” I said. “You inspired me. I’ve been thinking about that song.” 

“Yes, what about it?” 

“You said it was hopeful, but not happy, right? I think you’re wrong.” 

The corner of Mrs. Joyce’s lips turned up in a smile. She got to her feet, swaying a bit, and hung the blue ball on the tree. It glittered in the colored lights. “Do explain.” 

“Well, those are the same thing, aren’t they? Happy and hopeful. Just not the kind of happiness we normally think of.” 

Mrs. Joyce settled back onto the couch. “Oh, I like you, Lydia. We need to talk more often.” 

I decided that, as soon as the loop restarted, I’d go straight out to the balcony to pick up our conversation right where we’d left it off. “Are you going to sing again when the siren goes off?” I asked. 

She stared at me for a long moment. I squirmed. “What?” 

“The siren went off twenty minutes ago,” she said. “Didn’t you hear it?” 

Maggie’s phone was still playing merrily. With the volume turned only as high as a tinny phone speaker could allow, some of the notes sounded sharp and high-pitched. Enough like a siren that the sound could’ve been lost in the melody, distracted as I was by the revelations of the past hour. 

“Wait,” I said. “But then that would mean…” 

Maggie ran back into the room, a yellow tinsel star held above her head in triumph. “I got it!” she shouted. “It was all the way at the back, buried under four different table runners, if you can believe that -” 

“Maggie,” I asked, my voice shaking. 

She let the star fall to her side. She frowned at the look on my face, at the odd smile on Mrs. Joyce’s. “What is it?” 

“The-the clock in the bathroom. Could you tell me what time it is?” 

She seemed confused, but stepped back into the bathroom. A minute later, she emerged, a giddy smile right back on her face. 

“12:07,” she said. “Merry Christmas!” 

I felt dazed. Mrs. Joyce set a hand on my shoulder to steady me.

“I told you it would come around eventually, didn’t I?” she said. “Merry Christmas, Lydia.” 

Epilogue - Published on December 19. 2024

At seven A.M. on Christmas morning, I was sitting in Mrs. Joyce’s living room, drinking the mug of coffee that she had forced into my hands the second she opened the door. I had only gotten a few hours of sleep, as had Maggie. But I still somehow felt more awake than I had in a long time. 

“So, how likely do you think it is that I get trapped in a time loop again next year?” I asked her as she settled down across from me with her own cup of coffee. Mrs. Joyce’s apartment was laid out just like a mirror of mine, but she had decorated it in all sorts of knickknacks. The walls were hung with paintings and the tabletops were covered in framed photos of children and smiling adults. Quilts (gifted to her by her daughter-in-law, she explained) hung over the backs of every well-loved armchair. She grabbed one of these and threw it across her lap. 

“I don’t have a clue, Lydia. But if you do, call me, alright? I don’t care where you’re living by then, I want company.” 

I hid my smile behind the rim of my mug. “You got it, Mrs. Joyce.” 

“And if it does happen to you again, don’t fret, alright? It will end every time. Just enjoy the experience for however long it lasts. It’s really the best way to get through it.” 

“I’ll try.” I set my mug on the coffee table. Sunlight streamed through the windows. The fog had lifted in the wee hours of the morning. The world had come alive again. “But I still don’t get why it stopped.” 

“It’s best not to question things you don’t understand,” she said dismissively. 

I shook my head. I was going to question them, alright. “You said that it usually ends after you’ve reached a point of contentment. And yeah, I guess I could say that last night I did reach that point.” 

“I agree with you on that particular point, Lydia. It really was a lovely evening.” 

I nodded. “But was that enough? It still feels like it should have changed something. Like I needed to change, or learn something. Or do something.” Or maybe I had just been reading too many classic Christmas stories. 

She laughed. “Do you really not see it, Lydia? If it’s personal change you’re looking for, I do think you’ve found it in spades.” 

I frowned. Had I? Was I different than I had been the night before? 

She eyed me, answering my unasked question. “Let’s see. For one thing, you’re visiting your elderly neighbor’s home, when you had never so much as taken the time to introduce yourself to me before -” 

“Sorry,” I muttered. 

“No sorries about it. Just that you’ve changed. And what was it that you said you’re doing today? Some reason you had to come visit me so early?” 

I picked my mug back up, wrapping my fingers tightly around it. “Uh, yeah. I’m going to Christmas brunch with Maggie’s family.” 

“And for some reason, I get the feeling that isn’t something that you would have done before now,” she mused. “So I do think you’re quite changed, yes.” 

I took another sip of my coffee. It was good - she had hooked a candy cane over the edge and sprinkled the top with cinnamon. “It’s just…other than Christmas day itself, not anything is different. I still have to go to work tomorrow, and I haven’t even called my parents -” 

“Then do it,” she said sharply. “Just because the time loop is over doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t keep leaning into the things you wanted to do during it. I, for one, hope you pull that cello out again soon.” 

“But…” 

“Lydia dear, look at me.” She set down her mug and stacked her hands in her lap. “In a time loop, you have no choice but to make the most of what little time and resources you have. You did wonderful things with yours. You gave that child on the other side of you a beautiful Christmas memory, and you gave his parents some much-needed sugar. You certainly brightened my holiday. But, even the things that you couldn’t do in an hour, you thought about. And you did a lot of thinking, didn’t you? Now that you have all the time in the world, you can act on those things.” 

“Like promising Maggie that I’d go with her for Christmas brunch,” I said. 

She bobbed her head. “And like calling your parents. Visiting them, even.” 

Familiar guilt bubbled in my gut. “It’s too late to go visit them for Christmas, I can’t take that many days off work such short notice -” 

“Who said anything about Christmas?” she asked incredulously. “Visit them any old time! Some of the best family visits I’ve had in my lifetime have been just because.” 

“Huh,” I said. 

“Huh is right.” She scoffed. “You’d better get back to your apartment. Your roommate is waiting on you, isn’t she?” 

I shrugged off our conversation, and got to my feet, handing her my mostly-empty coffee mug. “Thank you.” 

“No, Lydia, thank you. For giving me the best Christmas Eve in a long time.” 

I hesitated. “Do you have any plans for the day?” 

“Not as many as I’d like, but that’s how life works, isn’t it? My grandchildren - all of them - are going to do a video call with me. And I’m going to order myself a nice, tasty dinner and blast some oldies as loud as they will go.” She smiled. “Don’t worry about me, Lydia. And besides, I’ll see at least one of my children on New Years. I just have to be a bit patient in living my life until then.” 

I smiled and told her goodbye and merry Christmas, promising myself that I would come visit her often, just because. 

Maggie was already at our front door, a tote bag full of gifts slung over her shoulder. I retrieved my gift from her from under our own tree, and we headed off toward the stairwell. 

“Are you ever going to tell me what’s going on with you and Mrs. Joyce?” she asked as we descended the layers upon layers of creaking stairs. “You two seem awful close all of a sudden.” 

I considered it for a minute. I remembered Maggie’s groggy, disbelieving expression a couple loops before, and then the way she came around to believing me. I had never gotten to use her secret about her first kiss to my advantage. 

“You know what?” I asked. “Sure. I’ll tell you on the drive.” 

“Awesome. Can’t wait for storytime.” 

“Mind if I call my parents first?” I asked. “I wouldn’t mind some moral support.” 

She didn’t reply as we reached the bottom stoop. I turned to see her staring at me, wide-eyed. “What?” I grumbled. 

“Something weird happened to you last night, I swear.” 

“It definitely did. But wait for storytime, remember?” 

Together, we stepped out onto the front stoop, the sun shining boldly in our faces, the cold air not seeming nearly so chilly anymore. 

It was Christmas morning at last. 

The End