Christmas Criminal

2. Nick

2

NICK

Saturday, November 30th

N oelle shuffles through the doors of the high school at a quarter past eight, wearing leggings and an oversized sweatshirt. Big sunglasses cover her eyes, and she holds a coffee from The Lucky Mug, a little family-owned place that happens to be a two-minute drive from my house. She gives me a stiff wave as I stand from the desk.

"Good morning, sunshine," I say, and the way her jaw ticks at my words tells me she is not a morning person.

So, I guess she was annoyed that I suggested eight in the morning.

And I get that she's upset because of whatever contentious family situation she has going on, but she doesn't have to take it out on the town. No town is perfect, but when I was searching for a place to live a few years ago, Snow Falls checked off almost every single box.

Close-knit community with regular events, check.

A big high school where I'm not the only math teacher, check.

A local watering hole I can go to without getting in trouble with parents, check.

I've been alone for most of my adult life, but I didn't start feeling lonely until my friends from college started getting married and having kids and I realized that, as great as my friends were, I couldn't rely on them to consider me a part of their growing families.

I would have to go out and find my own, whether that's a person or a community. And I’m happy with where I ended up, even if I do get lonely every once in a while.

There was a time I thought I had found my person. Emily, who wanted a fancy life in the city I couldn’t give her without sacrificing everything I’ve worked so hard for. Who picked fights like it was her job and then asked why I never raised my voice to her. Who used to poke and prod at me, "searching for an emotion" underneath my stoic exterior.

She left with a bluff, accusing me of being too scared to fight for her.

And I let her go.

So while I never found the right person, I did find the right community.

A place that feels like home. Especially this time of year.

When I was little, Christmas was my favorite. My mom would take me to all of the Christmas parades, and we would make paper snowflakes on Christmas Eve and bake cookies and put up the tree together. It truly was a magical time of year.

When she passed away during my senior year of high school, that was what I missed most. The smile on her face when the air turned crispy cold. The way her eyes would shut and her shoulders would hunch up by her ears. She'd pull me into her side and say, "You smell that, Nicky? Christmas is coming."

She raised me on her own, and despite struggling at times to make ends meet when I was young, she managed to leave me an inheritance that got me through college and gave me a reasonable down payment on a home just outside town.

In a way, it's like she left me with my favorite part of her–the part that loved this time of year.

Suffice it to say, I'm sure growing up and going to school here is a whole different experience than finding it as an adult. No one gets through high school unscathed, and although I'm sure Noelle doesn't want to bring up bad memories, sometimes it can be healing to go back and say, "Hey assholes, look who I am now."

She had a tough time here. Many students do. They’re somewhere between a kid and an adult, hormones are raging, and not a single parent I've ever talked to has felt like they've figured out the teenage stage.

That's part of the reason I do what I do, especially around the holidays. I don't have a family to go home to and shower in love and support like I want, so I turn that onto my students. Onto the townspeople who seem to love Christmas almost as much as my mom did.

And for me, that's turned a time of year where I could sit and wallow in my grief into a time I look forward to.

I think my mom would be proud of me for that.

"Good morning," Noelle says stiffly, drawing me back to reality.

She starts down the hall toward the garage, and I'm left to follow in her footsteps and ignore the way her hips swing from side to side as she moves. The way her wavy brown hair cascades down her back.

When Hank asked if I was busy this weekend, he failed to mention the egg-thrower was pretty, a fact that threw me off for half a second when she showed up that first day. One second I was reading, and the next, a dainty brunette stood at the front desk, admitting to being the naughty egg-thrower Hank wanted me to take under my wing

Hank isn't the asshole that Noelle thinks he is. She happened to be throwing eggs in the wrong place, at the wrong time. And while she could have been dealing with a hefty fine or even jail time, she got a dose of small town community service work. The kind that skips a judge and gets brushed under the rug as long as you show up and do what you say you will.

There's a reason I like Hank as much as I do. I've seen a lot of good kids make one wrong step, and before they're able to correct course, they're tugged further in the wrong direction. Hank gives the benefit of the doubt when he can, and that's something I always appreciate.

Even if it means I get saddled with the pint-sized brunette with an attitude problem.

"How are you today?" I ask, taking a few quick steps to catch up with her.

She pushes her sunglasses up onto her head and narrows her eyes at me. "I'm doing great. I woke up at five in the morning to drive three hours to this stupid town to do community service for a community that can suck my ass, and instead of going home and relaxing with a glass of wine tonight, I have to go sleep in my childhood bedroom on a lumpy mattress while my mother rage-sings Christmas songs at me."

I snort. I can't say I was expecting the outburst.

"Oh, cool. So you think that's funny."

"Might I remind you that you picked weekend hours."

She comes to a stop and stomps. "I don't live here anymore!"

I hold up my hands, turning to face her. "Okay, I get it. What would have worked better? Start at noon?"

"Then I'm not done until eight!"

I shake my head, throwing my hands out in front of me. "I'm trying to work with you here, Noelle. You have hours to do. Tell me what times work."

She shakes her head, running her hand over her face. "I'm sorry. I think I'm tired. I don't usually get up this early and I had a long week at work and I just... ugh. I swear, I have a visceral reaction every time I walk into this building, like I'm shrinking back into high school. And I hate that I'm giving up my weekend to come back here." She lets out a long breath, resting her hands on her hips. "I don't like being here and I'm throwing a tantrum over it." She bites her lip, her face tipping up toward the ceiling. "I'm sorry. You don't deserve that."

I cross my arms over my chest as I look at her, raising an eyebrow.

"What's your worst memory of being here?"

She grimaces. "Oh god, no. We're not going there. It's bad enough that I can feel it. I don't want to talk about it and make it more real than it is."

"Humor me. Let's see if we can end the feeling by talking it out really quick."

She raises an eyebrow. "Isn't this supposed to be community service?"

"If we're helping someone, it's community service."

She narrows her eyes. "Why would you want to help me instead of using me for manual labor?"

I shrug. "We have all day for manual labor."

She eyes me and then throws her hands out in front of her. "Okay, fine. When I was in high school, I used to have to sneak into the library over lunch to eat my food because I didn't have any friends so I had nowhere to sit in the lunchroom."

That hits me in the gut.

"You had to sneak in?"

She nods. "You weren't allowed to go to the library without a pass, and they wouldn't give you a pass over lunch because they were scared you wouldn't eat or something. So there was this kid who swiped one of the teacher's passwords, and when he got onto the shared file system, he found a printout of the pass sheets that he shared with the whole school. So as long as you could find the right color paper and make your signature terrible enough, you could write your own passes for anything."

I blink, vaguely wondering if we use the same passes as we did when she went to school here.

And if my students are passing out copies of them.

"You came up with quite the solution."

She shrugs. "It didn't always work." She's quiet for a moment. "I think the librarian knew."

I raise my eyebrows. "Yeah?"

She nods. "Mrs. Nguyen."

A grin spreads across my face. "Mrs. Nguyen is still here."

She swallows. "Is she?"

I nod. "And she does seem like the type of woman who would figure out what's going on. She's sharp. Kind of scares me a little, if I'm being totally honest. Did she send you away?"

Noelle shakes her head. "She never did. But every single day, she would look at my pass and mention that my teacher's handwriting looked a little off, compared to the one I handed her the day before." She bites her lip and lowers her voice. "I kind of think she was doing it to fuck with me because every single day I tried harder and harder to forge it better, and I think all it did was make it a little different every day, just like she told me it was."

I can't help my snicker, and a moment later, Noelle is laughing along with me.

"You know, I hated high school, but I did appreciate her. She used to let me check out more books than I was supposed to and every once in a while she would slip one into my pile that she thought I'd like."

"You should come back during the week. Say hello to her. I'm sure she'd like to see you again."

Noelle scoffs, turning and continuing toward the garage. "Please. I put her in a terrible position. She probably had to feign ignorance about why I was in the library for lunch every day."

I take a few quick steps to catch up and knock her elbow with mine, the touch sending a little jolt through my skin that I wasn't expecting. When she turns those piercing brown eyes on me, I clear my throat. "You know, just because she was an adult doesn't mean she knew everything . Speaking as one of the adults who has to take care of a bunch of teenagers all day, I feel clueless more often than not."

Her brow furrows. "Yeah?"

"She might have been doing you a kindness. Teachers will break the rules for kids who are technically stepping out of line but aren't a problem ." And I can't resist making the joke once it occurs to me. "You know, like Hank, for you."

The glare takes over her face again. "You're lucky I have to be nice to you."

"This is being nice?"

She tries her hardest not to show her grin.

But when I break, so does she.

She shakes her head, laughing. "Stop making me laugh when I'm trying to channel my moody teenage self."

"Hey, if you really want to be miserable, go right ahead."

She shakes her head, letting out a long breath. "Okay, so I guess going to the library over lunch wasn't the worst thing in the world. And I do still love books. Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm actually kind of relieved I still love books after all of that."

We reach the door to the garage, and I open it for her to walk through. "What kind of books do you like?"

"Arguably porn," she says.

I blink, wondering if I heard her wrong. "What?"

"I mean, depending on the day, you know? Sometimes I like a nice clean romance, sometimes I like a nasty one."

The door clangs shut behind us as I struggle to catch up. "So a nice clean romance is... arguably porn?"

She rolls her eyes. "No. I'm just giving you the category you're going to put it in before you can judge me for it first."

I raise my eyebrows. "Who hurt you, Noelle? No one cares that you read arguably porn . Or anything adjacent to it."

She eyes me as she drops her bag on the ground next to the float. "Okay, that was a good answer."

"Was that a test?"

"I don't know, Teach. You tell me."

I point to my chest. "Math. No good at words."

"You sure do say a lot of them."

This girl is feisty. I take her coffee cup from her and take a sniff. "Huh. Surprising."

"What?" she asks, her face showing blatant confusion as she tugs it back from me.

"Thought for sure there'd be some alcohol in there."

Her jaw drops open. "I drove here!"

"You are a criminal."

"Nick!"

Her screech sends a little shiver down my spine. I grin.

"So, you want to do the painting or the drilling?" I ask, ignoring her ticking jaw. I grab my drill from where I left it on the step this morning and squeeze the button for a moment, listening as it whirs to life.

She shakes her head almost imperceptibly as she tugs her sweatshirt off.

"I dressed for painting," she says, gesturing to the minuscule tank top she had been hiding underneath. She drops the sweatshirt on the ground on top of her bag, and I have to force my eyes to anywhere but that thin line of cleavage that's now exposed.

Her shirt is covered in little specks of paint, and what looks like a hand print on one side.

A hand print that is far too large to be her own.

A spike of jealousy zips through me from my caveman brain.

I'm not thinking of her like that. I'm not attracted to her. I'm supposed to be helping her.

But god, the curve of her waist is absolutely riveting. The way her shirt bunches there. The tiny sliver of skin that shows between her shirt and her leggings.

And now she's tying her hair up, her arms above her head as she makes one of those messy buns that are always fifty percent adorable and fifty percent sensual.

Maybe she's trying to kill me. That must be it. Maybe she knows my weakness for small brunettes and someone has sent her here to take me out once and for all.

She raises her eyebrows. "That cool with you?"

"Hm?" I ask, accidentally starting my drill again and jumping at the noise.

"If I start with the paint?" She nods to it. "Unless you need help with your little drill?"

I shake my head. "Nope. I can drill just fine on my own."

Noelle loses herself in painting. She takes care of the worn areas quickly, but as we take a step back to look at the fresh coat, we realize that after years of use, the fresh paint of the same color doesn't match the worn areas.

So she kneels down again and drags the brush to the corners of the float in an attempt to hide the difference in color. I've finished my stair repair at this point, and there's only one brush, so I'm stuck waiting until she's done. And my eyes are drawn to her. The way her body stretches to paint the far corners. She's on her hands and knees, and my eyes are drawn to the way her body moves back and forth. How perfectly mine would frame hers.

When I snap back into my brain, I force myself to think about how else we can use our time today.

"I'm going to run out to pick up some lunch. What do you want?" I ask.

Her head snaps up, brush hovering over the float. "Um. Some sort of salad maybe? Where are you getting it from?"

I shrug. "I was going to run to a Wawa. Do they have a salad you like?"

She nods. "Chicken caesar?" She scrambles up from where she's kneeling to reach into her bag.

"Don't worry about it. You can get lunch next time."

"Oh," she says. "Well, thanks."

"You good to hold down the fort?"

She nods, returning to her painting. "I'll keep slaving away."

I take a good look at the floor before I leave, scrunching up my brow as I gaze at her work. She pauses when she sees me and sits back on her ankles. "What?"

I point vaguely in the direction of the far end, where she can't get to unless she wants to step in fresh paint or dangle over the side of the float and say, "You missed a spot over there," before zipping along the side of the float and out the door into the school.

Just as the door shuts behind me, I hear her shout, "Where?" A second later, as I'm speeding down the hallway, she shrieks. "Nick! What spot?"

Nothing could prepare me for the sight I walk into when I return with my bag of food from Wawa.

She's hanging over one side of the float, angry-painting the spot I gestured to vaguely before I left. She found a step stool somewhere to hoist herself up over the edge, but now she dangles there, balancing by her hips with the paint can perched on the ledge of the float.

"Well fuck, it took you long enough!" she says, her foot moving in a small circle as she searches for the step stool. "I can't get this stupid spot. I don't know if the material is just, like, paint-safe or something but I've literally been painting this since you left and it won't freaking stick !"

Uh oh . Sounds like I've angered the pixie.

Her foot is still searching, and there's a part of me that wants to leave her there. At least while she's tipped over like that, she can't attack me, and something tells me once she finds out there never was a spot she missed, she's not going to be very happy.

I approach cautiously, nudging the step stool to where her foot can reach it, and peer over the edge of the float.

I look at the spot she's been working on and cock my head to the side when I see there does seem to be a darker line through the rest of the floor.

"I wouldn't worry about it," I tell her. "People are going to step on it anyway."

"But why won't it be painted?" she asks. "This is so frustrating. Like, I get that it doesn't matter. But it feels incomplete. If I'm going to spend this much time on a goddamn paint job, it better be freaking done!"

I glance down at it again as she looks behind her, one hand finding the edge of the float to push herself up.

And I realize the darker spot spreads with her movement.

I start snickering.

Her foot is still searching. "Jesus Christ, did you move my step stool? Are you playing a joke on me?"

I shake my head. "No, look," I say, pointing to where the gray spot continually moves. I wave my hand above my head, making our shadows dance. "It's a shadow."

She pauses, letting out a quick breath through her nose. "It's a fucking shadow?" She shakes her head, pushing herself up again. "Seriously, did you move my step stool? I can't get down."

I glance down and knock it another inch closer to her foot, but she seems to be doing everything in her power to avoid it.

I roll my eyes, dropping the bag of food to the ground and stepping behind her to grab her by the ankles and tug her feet down until they make contact with her stool.

And wow, even her ankles are attractive. A little bony, but her skin is soft and warm.

"Thank you," she says, clambering down to the floor and standing with her hands on her hips. "I can't believe a fucking shadow got us."

Got us? Yeah, it's probably in my best interest to let her believe that.

I lift the bag of food. "Hungry?"

"Yes!"

"Come on." I nod to the door and she throws her purse over her shoulder as she follows me out of the garage and through the empty high school halls to the cafeteria on the far side of the building.

"Ugh, this place," she says, wandering into the open space and spinning around slowly. Her shoes tap against the linoleum floor as she walks. "It always looks weird with all the kitchens boarded up and the tables up against the walls. Way better than when it's filled with a ton of kids, but still weird."

"Where do you want to sit?" I ask her.

She shrugs. "I don't care. It's a school cafeteria. No spot is a good spot."

"Well, you get to choose. Any spot."

Her eyes narrow. "Is this some sort of healing bullshit or something? Because if so, I don't need it. I'm an adult. I'm not still hung up on things that happened in high school."

Judging from the strange looks that overtake her face at random moments throughout the day, I'd have to disagree. Walking through the halls, she visibly flinches when we pass certain areas. And every once in a while when she doesn't think I'm paying attention, she cringes, her head shaking as if she's reliving some horrid experience.

I'm no stranger to what a bad high school experience can do to someone. I was one of the lucky few who actually had an okay time in high school, but when you become a teacher and start looking at kids' behaviors as indications of what might be going on inside, you get a whole different picture.

And as much as we don't want to believe it, a lot of those reactions don't change as you get older.

You just get better at hiding them.

She lets out a long breath. "I want to sit by the cookie station."

I raise my eyebrows. "Yeah? Do you want a cookie? I made friends with Rita the lunch lady and she gave me a copy of the key to the kitchens."

Noelle scoffs. "No. And why do I get the impression that you're the sort of person who magically makes friends with everyone?"

"Because I'm a nice person?"

Her nose crinkles at this answer. "You can't say that about yourself ."

"Why not? Objectively, I'm nice."

She doesn't say anything for a moment, so in lieu of continuing this conversation, I head to the area closest to the cookie station and drag one of the folded up tables out. I unlock it and spread it out gently in the middle of the cafeteria, right next to the cookie station.

"You're welcome to tell me I'm a nice person, if that would make you feel better," I joke, as I take a seat on one side.

For that, I get a reluctant smile and an eye roll. "You are," she says, her eyes flitting to mine and quickly away as she takes the seat across from me. I grin, and she points her finger at me. "But don't get gloaty about it."

"Nice people don't gloat," I say, shooting her a little wink that I realize after the fact is entirely too flirty for this situation.

Goddamnit. Noelle does something to me.

She's quiet for a second, her eyes on mine and a slight smile on her face.

I look away, filling this moment by dumping our food out onto the table.

She raises her eyebrows when she sees the spread I got us.

Because fine , I was kind of thinking of this as a healing thing for her.

I mean, I'm supposed to do something with this girl for another forty-some hours. There's not enough community service in this building to actually fill up that much time. I'm going to have to get creative, and like I said, is it not community service if someone from the community–even if she refuses to accept she's from here–benefits from it?

"Salad for you," I say, nudging the plastic container toward her with a fork. "As well as any candy, chips, energy drinks, or sweets you might like."

She snorts. "Yeah, if I eat that, my whole body is going to break out."

"What? From one piece of candy?"

She rips her salad open. "Yeah," she says, her eyes scanning the array in front of her. "But I can have some chips." She grins and bites her lip. "And the hot Cheetos. Oh lord, I love me some hot Cheetos."

I laugh. "Well, I'm glad I got you something you like."

She purses her lips, looking out over everything else. "I like candy a lot. I just can't really eat it." She's quiet for a second. "I have eczema. It used to be really bad when I was a kid, but I figured out my triggers. Sugar is one of them. I can have salty, greasy things, but no sugar if I can avoid it. Fruits are generally fine but I tend to stick to berries to be safe. I can only use one specific laundry detergent. And it always gets worse this time of year, with the season change and the stress of the holidays."

I nod as I gather the candy back into the bag. "Ah, okay. Well, I wouldn't have tried to tempt you into sugar if I knew."

"I don't usually tell people."

I nod. “Well, thank you for telling me.”

She shrugs. "Thank you for essentially doing community service with me. I know things could have gone a lot worse for me."

I shoot her a quick grin. “I’m always happy to help the community.”

She rolls her eyes.

"Eat your hot Cheetos, Criminal."