Page 204 of How My Neighbour Stole Christmas
“Cole, your house.” He points.
“What about it?” I say as I look out the windshield only to find my house completely dark, stripped of its lights.
Every last one of them.
Not a single light left, just some wires and nails hanging in plain sight.
It’s…it’s bare.
“Holy…fuck,” I say as Max parks on the side of the street. We bolt out of the truck and examine what has occurred.
All the lights are gone.
Nothing on the roof. Nothing on the porch, not even a bare strand hanging from the door. It was all removed, every single bulb.
Every decoration.
“Who…how…” I stutter, unsure of what to say. “I…I don’t get it.”
Hands on his hips, Max surveys my yard, the porch, the roof, and as he makes his way around to the side, he pauses and then slowly turns toward me.
“A ladder and footprints.”
“Where?” I say, jogging up to him.
Max points at a ladder that stretches up to the short pitch of the roof and then to footprints that lead from the ladder all the way to Cindy’s house.
“No fucking way,” I say as my eyes land on the pink house. “There’s no way.” I shake my head, not willing to believe it.
“Cole,” Max says softly. “It has to be.”
“But…but why?” I ask, pushing my hands through my hair. “There’s no reason.”
“Except that this will guarantee you last place in the light display, and they know how close you are to winning the whole thing.”
I shake my head and search the yard for more tracks, for any indication that this could have been someone else, but when I come up short, when I don’t see one single thing, my heart starts to seize and panic ensues.
“It can’t be. She wouldn’t. I…I don’t think she’d do that.”
“I know this is hard for you to accept, Cole, but I think she would.”
I turn toward my best friend. “You really think she would be that heartless? That she’d fuck with my head? Pretend to like me and just screw me over in the end?”
“You were the first one to take the shot. What would stop her from taking it further?”
I look over at the house again, a darkness starting to creep over me as my mind drifts to a place I didn’t think it would ever go, not with her, but I can’t stop it.
The idea of her taking advantage, of her pretending the entire time, I can’t write it off.
“But maybe,” I say, my throat growing tight, “maybe it was someone else.”
“Who?” Max asks, throwing his arms up.
“Jimmy?” I say, hoping that’s an option.
Max shakes his head. “He was out all last night at Prancer’s getting toasted. My mom heard it from Frank this morning. There’s no way he could climb the ladder intoxicated. Not to mention, look at the footprints, man. That’s all the evidence you need, and there isn’t a footprint leading from the sidewalk to Cindy’s house either, in case someone was trying to frame them. This was Storee. Remember what she did with the lights last time? This…this was all Storee.”
“Fuck,” I say as I grip my forehead, my stomach turning queasyimmediately. “I thought…hell, I thought she liked me. But this?” I gesture to the house. “Fuck, I guess I was completely wrong. I guess she was just pretending, just using me this entire time.” I swallow back my emotion, trying to find a place within me where I don’t care. Where I don’t mind that she just about ripped my heart out in one night.
