Page 4 of Light Up My Life

“No, I want to do a think piece, Banksy style. About the commercialism surrounding Christmas.”

“Banksy style? As in anonymous? As in graffiti?”

She waved her hand through the air as if to say All of the above. But out loud she only said, “I’m still working out the details.”

“I’m sure it will be brilliant.” Fiona really was a brilliant artist. I tried not to be jealous of that fact, but I often wished I was as confident in my art and style as she was in hers. “Oh!”

“What?” she asked at my outburst.

“Speaking of the Christmas lights, I forgot to tell you that I talked to Ryan today.”

“Who?”

“Neighbor Ryan. Moreno.” Not her neighbor. Fiona lived in Cherry Ridge as well, but on the other side of our town square. I had to drive to reach her, which for a town this small was saying something.

“Oh, hot Ryan.”

I smacked her arm. “Stop. He’s not hot. He’s the enemy.”

“I thought his parents were the enemy of your parents,” Fiona pointed out.

I shrugged. “Yes, and? Ryan is just like his parents.”

The feud between our families had started way back when my moms were in high school with Mr. Moreno. Yes, they had all gone to high school together (except for Ryan’s mom, Mrs. Moreno, who’d moved here from Denver as an adult). Cherry Ridge was one of those towns where the same families lived for generations. Apparently Mr. Moreno had been just as cruel back then. A prankster. Among many other things, he’d cost Momma a track race senior year because he’d hidden her sneakers. It had been the finals. And even though she didn’t dwell on it, I knew it still ate at her to this day. She could’ve won. She would’ve won.

And now Mr. Moreno was still a prankster, and Mrs. Moreno seemed to go along with his antics or at least defend them. Several years ago, one of our prized Christmas decorations was stolen. It wasn’t just any decoration. It was our Christmas elf. Mom’s late mother had painstakingly pieced it together from branches she had collected from a cherry tree in the backyard. There was love in that elf, Mom often said.

Mom swore it was Mr. Moreno who’d stolen it. She’d seen drag marks and a trail of sticks leading to his backyard. When she’d asked Mrs. Moreno about it, she said her husband would never do anything like that. We all knew he would, that he had. Possibly with Mrs. Moreno’s help. We’d since set up some motion sensor lights in our yard that, whenever set off, sent Mom running to the window. But we’d yet to catch our neighbors in the act.

“You don’t know that he’s like his parents,” Fiona said.

“Don’t I?” I saw how close Ryan was to his dad. Even today he’d listened as his dad was rude to me. Didn’t say a word. I was pretty sure the whole apple-and-tree thing applied here. “His family stole something important from our yard! Who does that? And one year, his dad called my mom a screeching banshee. Who does that?”

“Which mom?”

“Does it matter?”

“Well, one would take it better than the other.”

She wasn’t wrong. “It was Mom.”

She cringed. “That’s what I feared. Also, what’s a screeching banshee?”

“Something not nice,” I said, not quite sure myself.

“Okay, fine. They’re the enemy.”

“Exactly. And you know their house will be so over the top this year. Especially now that there’s a contest.”

“You think they have something extra big planned?” Fiona asked.

“Probably.”

“Like what?” she asked.

I shrugged. “I guess we’ll see tomorrow when decorations start going up.”

“Your bedroom window faces their house, right?”