Chapter 21

"Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree. How lovely are thy branches. Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree, How lovely are thy branches..."

I shut the window against the cold as well as the voices singing from below. Then I fall back on the bed, placing the pillow over my head and try to block out the remaining sounds of Christmas songs that I don't want to hear.

It's not the first time in my life that I haven't wanted to hear Christmas carols and wished Christmas away. I remember the first Christmas after my mom died. I didn't want to go into a shop. I didn't want to see the ice forming outside. I didn't want to think about how she would put up the Christmas tree, humming Christmas carols and making me hot chocolate to drink under the tree while she told me the reason our gifts arrived so early and that it was already under the tree was because Santa Clause had so many kids who didn't believe that he had to surprise on Christmas Eve, that he made sure I got mine first for believing, and off course it did free up his time. I believed this story until I was eleven years old. Well... Maybe I didn't quite believe until that age, but I wanted to believe so I did. But when I was eleven I heard my mom crying. Also the presents wasn't under the tree yet and it was only a few days before Christmas. I remember her arguing through the crying with Derrick, my stepdad. She wanted to know what he did with the money. All the Christmas money. He was drunk. I sneaked back up to my room and I knew that I could not pretend to believe anymore. The next morning I got up really early. I picked up pine cones and rocks. I painted the rocks and turned the pine cones into chickens with paper wings, and then I wrapped them in old newspaper, painting the paper so that they looked like presents. I left them under the tree that night when I was sure my mom was asleep. The next morning she asked me about them and I told her that Santa came by the previous night. That he hadn't forgotten us at all, he was just running a little bit late. She pretended to believe for me. Yet, Christmas morning as I expected only my wrapped rocks and pine cones were under the tree, but when I returned to my room when my mom told me to get dressed there was a huge present inside my cupboard. She told me that day that we should always pretend if we need to escape the real world. I wrote my first letter to Santa that year, thanking him for the best Christmas ever.

After my mom was gone there were no more Christmas trees, and no presents. Just Derrick sitting on the sofa, drunk off his ass, and me trying to make a bit of money from somewhere with an odd job.

My next Christmas was spent with foster parents. My face was still sore. I still couldn't touch it and everyone kept on looking at me. At least they got me a gift. Sunglasses and a hat. I took offence to it, believing they wanted me to hide my face so that they didn't have to look at it. I ran away from that foster home a week later. The Christmas after that was also with a foster family. The 'friendly' lady told me very carefully that she wasn't going to buy me a present because with what the state paid her to keep me she was already almost not making a profit. I ran from there as well. But I was sure this Christmas would be better when I ran away again. I knew that either by this time I would be spending the best Christmas of my life with E.J. or I will be dead by now. Turns out I was wrong on both guesses.

"This is utter fucktup," I mutter into the pillow over my face as I feel my own tears wetting the pillowcase.

For a moment I consider climbing onto the roof and just jumping. I will be on top of the world, or at least as far up as I can get at this moment, and then I can jump and then end it all. I might be able to see my mom again if I believed some people, which I don't, but still... She taught me well. Sometimes when the reality becomes too much you just need to pretend, so many if I pretend that everything will be okay and that I will go up to some pearly gates and see her again, everything will be okay. Maybe then I will be able to not be afraid. Maybe I will then never be afraid of the future again, because god dammit, I am afraid all the time. I am afraid that I will lose E.J. as a friend, which is looking more likely by the minute. I am afraid that nobody will ever be able to look at me and see me, but that they would rather see the monster that I see when I look in the mirror. Most of all, I am afraid that maybe something inside me is really in love with E.J... That I have been pretending my whole life because I have been afraid. That nobody, not even me have ever met the real me. And to add insult to injury I don't even know if I want to meet this new Brody either. The current one is pretty fucktup, so how bad would the one I pretended so hard not to be, be like?

I hear the bedroom door creaking, making me pull the pillow down even tighter over my face, hoping that maybe I was in a cheesy horror movie, and I have just made the ghosts' job very easy by putting the pillow on my face myself.

"Brody?"

His voice sounds scared. Almost trembling. I don't know if I should trust it. A few minutes ago I could hear him singing Christmas carols, his sweet voice sweeping in through the window. And now he sounds like he just wants to cry. Maybe he is just pretending to be my friend. Maybe he is only here because he feels sorry for me.

I feel the bed next to me as he sits down, and I pray that he won't touch me. If someone touches me now I might just think it is love, which would make the few tears I am currently crying run over my face like the Niagara Falls.

"Brody..? You haven't spoken a word since we came home... I'm getting really worried," E.J. says in a trembling voice. I can hear his hand moving closer to me on the duvet, but I pull my body away from him, making him retreat his hand as well.

"What happened? Could your grandmother not tell you anything? Did she not remember you?" he tries again, and I want to take the pillow from my face and shove it into his mouth.

How could I ever tell him to just stay away from me? That I am nothing but an abortion that went wrong? That my mom just as well killed my grandfather and then helped my grandmother cover it up by keeping him in a freezer for his money? I wouldn't even know where to begin. I would just advise him to stay away from me, since obviously there's something seriously wrong in my genes. And on top of all of that my mom might have been using drugs when she was pregnant, which might be why I am so fucktup in the first place. Maybe my brain doesn't even work properly and I don't even know it.

"Brody... Just tell me what you need. If you need more time, I can give you more time. Or else, I can sit here and listen. Or if you need someone to hold you I can do that as well?"

I want to answer him so badly. I want to tell him I want him to hold me. To hold me and tell me that I am real. That we are real. That this is just a bad dream and that we will wake up and be back in New York, but that we are real. That I am not what I feel I am, just a floating corpse through the dimensions of space, looking down on a kid who's life was doomed before he was even born. A guy who should have been an abortion, and would probably been spared a lot of pain if he was.

"Brody... I just want you to know that no matter what happened, I love you... If all else fails and you only want to remember that one thing from tonight, please remember that. Remember that I love you and that we are together and it is Christmas. And Christmas is only as magical as what we make it," E.J. says and this time I don't pull away as he puts his hand on mine, intertwining his fingers into mine, making me hold his hand tighter than I have ever held anyone's hand before. As if his hand is the only thing tying me to this life. That and the wet stains where my eyes are on the pillow. The only two things that keeps me rooted to this earth.

"You know I am here if you want to talk," E.J. tries once more, and I can feel his fingers loosening from mine, which make me pull the pillow away and finally sit up, not wanting to lose my grip on life.

"I don't want to talk about it," I say, tears streaming down my face, and I know I must look horrible, but I don't care anymore. I just can't let him leave. "I don't want to talk about the fact that I was supposed to be an abortion. Or about my mom doing drugs. I don't want to talk about what a horrible human being my grandmother is. I don't want to talk about my face, or my stepdad, or any Christmas before this one, or ones that could come in the future. I don't want to talk about how I have been thinking that I would be better off dead. I don't want to talk about how I pretend like I have been pretending since I was eleven years old. I don't want to talk about how I hated playing football and how hard I pretended that I didn't look over at the other guys in the locker room. I don't want to talk about how when I saw you in the hospital I wanted to grow wings so that I could fold you in them and keep you safe and warm from the evil fucking world outside. I don't want to talk about how I didn't care about my face when I was only caring about you and that if you didn't walk out of that hospital and promised me you would be waiting as my friend on the outside, I would have ended it right then and there. I don't want to talk about how much I hate Chris because of what he has done to you. I don't want to talk about how much I want your stepdad alive again so that I can kill him myself. And most of all I don't want to talk about all my pretending to be straight to the point where I feel brainwashed and I don't know who I am and how afraid I am of getting to know the real me, because he will probably be as fucktup as I am if not worse!"

I draw a deep breath after I finish. And then another one. And another one.

And I know that E.J. is holding me. And I know that maybe I might be hyperventilating. And I know that he is whispering in my ear that everything will be okay. And I know his one hand is still in mine and the other one is wrapped around my shoulders, the opposite of what it should be since I am the one supposed to be protecting him.

I draw a deep breath to try and calm myself down again before I pull myself out of his embrace and feel in my pocket for the golden chain with the cross on it.

I pull it out and then I let it dangle between us.

"This was my mom's. My grandmother gave it to me and now I want to give it to you. I might not believe in a saviour that died on a cross, but I believe in you and you have become my saviour," I whisper, waiting until E.J. closes his hand around the cross, not breaking eye contact with me one single time.

A/N: And I am late again... I do have an excuse this time however. Apart from this pandemic and what is going with it kicking my ass, the last three weeks has been crazy. I truly mean it... Week one... My fiance... yeah, let's just say we are still together, but it will take a very long time for my heart to mend, and even more for me to trust anyone again. I don't know how I got through these last weeks without murdering someone or just wishing to not exist, but I guess I can thank my kid for that. I kept my eyes on him with each decision I made. Then, exactly a week later (not even emotionally nearly okay yet), I got up with a face swollen to twice its size on the one side, an infection caused by biting on my teeth with how stressed I have been. Then last night my kid's first pet we got him passed away. And on top of all of that my fiance was trapped in the middle of a shoot out between armed robbers and the police in the mall where he works, for a moment getting really cold not knowing if he would make it. And then afterwards I heard that my brother was in the same mall when it happened. So yeah... Seriously. 2020 can end now so that I can be less emotional and become more steady in my writing. At least our ban on tobacco products has been lifted, so in everything going wrong, I will on Tuesday for the first time be able to buy a packet of my favourite cigarette brand and not have to cough my lungs out with the illegal crap (costing about 300% more) I have been smoking since March when this lockdown started. At least there's one silver lining I guess. And I promise I will start working on the next chapters tomorrow so that I can have something to post next week before something else hits me. I want to see Brody and E.J's story unfold and end before the end of this year so that next year I can focus on bringing you all print books, merch, and the tour I have been talking about in my work here on Wattpad titled "Questions". Please also go there and leave any questions about me or my books that you might have. I will be happy to answer them all!