Джей Эшер - What Light

“ Plus ,” Mom says sarcastically, “you should have thought of that before we came over.”

I begin to take off her sweatshirt, but she motions for me to keep it on.

“Next year, stay and help us with…” Her words trail off.

I shift my eyes to the stairs. She doesn’t know I’ve heard the conversations between her and Dad, or between both of them and Uncle Bruce, about whether or not we’ll open the lot next year. Apparently it would have made the most sense to pull up stakes two years ago, but everyone’s hoping things will bounce back.

Mom sets the plastic tub on the living room carpet and pops off the top.

“Sure,” I say. “Next year.”

Heather skips down the stairs in the faded red sweatshirt she only wears this one night a year. The cuffs are in tatters and the neckline is stretched. We got it at a thrift shop soon after my grandpa’s funeral, when Heather’s mom took us shopping to cheer me up. Seeing her in it always feels bittersweet. It reminds me of how much I miss my grandparents when I’m down here but also how great a friend Heather has been to me.

She stops at the bottom of the stairs and offers me a choice of two small flashlights, purple or blue. I take the purple one and put it in my pocket.

Mom unrolls a newspaper-wrapped snowman candle. Unless Heather’s mom changed decorating plans for the first time in forever, that candle will go in the front bathroom. The wick is black from the one brief moment Heather’s dad lit it last year. At the first smell of burning wax, her mom pounded on the bathroom door until he blew it out. “It’s a decoration!” she shouted. “You don’t light decorations!”

Mom looks at the kitchen and then to us. “If you want to make it out of here, you’d better go now,” she says. “Your mom’s looking for her entry in this year’s ugly Christmas sweater contest. Apparently she’s got a winner.”

“How bad is it?” I ask.

Heather scrunches her nose. “If she doesn’t win, those judges have no sense of horrendous.”

When we hear the back door open, we scramble out the front door and slam it shut behind us.

Next to the welcome mat is the small tree I carried over from the lot. Earlier, I transferred the tree out of the plastic bucket, so its roots are now bound in a scratchy burlap sack.

“I’ll carry it up the first half,” Heather says. She picks up the basketball-sized bag and settles it in the crook of her arm. “You can carry that little shovel thingie you brought.”

I pick up the gardening trowel and we head out.

Less than halfway up Cardinals Peak, Heather says it’s time to switch. I slide my flashlight into my back pocket and then we shift the tree into my arms.

“You got it?” she asks. When I nod, she takes the trowel from my hand.

I adjust my hold and we continue our hike up the hill, which the locals adorably call a mountain. We keep to the center of the packed-dirt access road, which will loop around three times before we reach our spot. The moon looks like a clipped fingernail tonight, barely lighting this side of the hill. When we circle to the other side, we’ll need our flashlights even more. Now, we mostly use them to scare away anything small that we hear scurrying in the bushes.

“Okay, so the guys you work with are forbidden,” Heather says, as if continuing a discussion that’s already been playing in her head. “So help me brainstorm other people you can… you know… spend time with.”

I laugh and then carefully pull the flashlight from my back pocket and aim it at her face. “Oh. You were serious.”

“Yes!”

“No,” I say. I check her face again. “No! For one, we’re busy all month; there’s no time. For another—and most important—I live in a trailer on a tree lot! No matter what I say or do, my dad is right there.”

“It’s still worth trying,” she says.

I tilt the tree to keep the needles out of my face. “Plus, how would you feel if you knew you had to dump Devon right after Christmas? You’d feel horrible.”

Heather pulls the small trowel from her back pocket and taps it against her leg as we walk. “Since you brought it up, that’s kind of the plan.”

“What?”

She lifts a shoulder. “Look, you’ve got your high standards about how relationships should be, so I’m sure I sound all—”

“Why does everyone think my standards are high? What does that even mean?”

“Don’t get all prickly.” Heather laughs. “Your standards are one of the reasons I love you. You’ve got this solid… I don’t know… moral foundation, and that’s great. But it makes someone planning to dump her boyfriend after the holidays feel kind of bad. You know, in comparison.”

“Who plans a breakup an entire month ahead of time?” I ask.

“Well, it’d be cruel to do it right before Thanksgiving,” she says. “What would he say at dinner with his family, ‘I feel thankful for having my heart broken’?”

We walk several steps in silence as I think about this. “I guess there’s never a good time, but you’re right that there are worse times. So how long have you been thinking about it?”

“Since right before Halloween,” she says. “But we had such great costumes!”

The moonlight fades as we round the hill, so we shine the lights closer to our feet.

“It’s not that he’s a jerk or anything,” Heather says. “Otherwise I wouldn’t care about sticking around for the holidays. He’s smart—even if he doesn’t act like it—and gentle and cute. It’s just that he can be so… boring. Or maybe it’s more like clueless? I don’t know!”

I would never judge anyone else’s reasons for a breakup. Everyone wants or needs different things. The first person I broke up with, Mason, was smart and funny, but also a bit needy. I thought I wanted to feel needed, but that gets exhausting real fast. I learned that it’s much better to feel wanted.

“How is he boring?” I ask.

“Let me put it this way,” she says. “If I were to describe his boringness to you, the words coming out of my mouth would be more exciting.”

“Really?” I say. “Then I cannot wait to meet him.”

“And that’s why you need a boyfriend while you’re here,” she says. “So we can double-date. Then my dates won’t be so dull.”

I consider how awkward it would be to start seeing someone here, knowing there’s an expiration date attached. If I wanted that, I could have said yes to Andrew last year.

“I’m going to pass on the double-dating,” I say. “But thanks.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” she says. “I’ll probably bring it up again.”

After the next turn, which takes us near the top of Cardinals Peak, Heather and I step off the narrowing dirt road and into knee-high brush. She sweeps her flashlight back and forth. What sounds like a small rabbit bounds away.

Another dozen steps and the brush mostly clears. It’s too dark to see all five Christmas trees at once, but when Heather’s flashlight hits the first one, my heart warms. She slowly scans the beam until I see them all. We spaced them several feet apart so one won’t overshadow another in the sunlight. The tallest is already a few inches taller than me, and the smallest barely reaches my waist.

“Hey, guys,” I say as I walk among them. Still holding the newest tree with one arm, I touch the needles of the other trees with my free hand.

“I came up last weekend,” Heather says. “I pulled some weeds and loosened the ground a bit so tonight will be easier.”

I set the burlap sack on the dirt and then face Heather. “You are becoming Little Miss Farmer Girl.”