It makes me UPSET that you didn’t tell me.

Mom said, “I’m sorry, Lily bear. We didn’t want to make you upset before there was anything to really be upset about.” SHOULD I BE UPSET?

My hand started to feel tired from the erasing and writing. I almost wished my voice wasn’t being so obstinate.

Dad said, “It’s Christmas. Of course you shouldn’t be upset. We’ll make this decision as a family—” Mom interrupted him. “There’s some chicken soup in the freezer! You can thaw it for Langston in the microwave.” I started to write: Langston deserves to be sick. But I erased that and wrote, Okay. I’ll make him some.

Mom said, “If his temperature goes up any more, I’m going to need you to take him to the doctor. Can you do that, Lily?” My voice broke free. “Of course I can do that!” I snapped. Geez, how old did they think I was? Eleven?

The eraser board, and my conviction, were both mad at my voice’s betrayal.

Dad said, “I’m sorry this Christmas is turning out not so swell, sweetheart. I promise you we’ll make it up to you on New Year’s Day. You take good care of Langston today and then have a nice Christmas dinner at Great-aunt Ida’s tonight. That will make you feel bet er, right?” My silence returned in the form of my head nodding up and down.

Mom said, “What have you been doing with your time, dear?”

I had no desire to tell her about the notebook. Not because I was UPSET about Fiji. But because it, and he, seemed to be the best part of Christmas so far. I wanted to keep them all for myself.

I heard a moan from my brother’s room. “Lill ll ll ll ll ll ll yyyy …”

For the sake of expediency, I typed a message to my parents rather than speak or write it on the eraser board.

Your sick son is calling to me from his sickbed. I must anon. Merry Christmas, parents. I love you. Please let’s not move to Fiji.

“We love you!” they squealed from their side of the world.

I signed o and walked toward my brother’s room. I stopped rst at the bathroom to extract a disposable mask and gloves from the emergency preparedness kit to place over my mouth and hands. No way was I get ing sick, too. Not with a red notebook possibly coming emergency preparedness kit to place over my mouth and hands. No way was I get ing sick, too. Not with a red notebook possibly coming back my way.

I went into Langston’s room and sat down next to his bed. Benny had decided to be sick at his own apartment, which I appreciated, since tending to not one but two patients on Christmas Day might have tipped me over the edge. Langston hadn’t touched the orange juice or saltines I left for him a few hours earlier, the last time he called “Lill ll ll ll ll ll ll yyyy …” to me from his room, at about the approximate time when on a normal Christmas morning we should have been ripping through our gifts.

“Read to me,” Langston said. “Please?”

I wasn’t speaking to Langston that day, but I would read to him. I picked up the book at the point where we’d left o the night before. I read aloud from A Christmas Carol. “ ‘It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour.’ ”

“That’s a nice quote,” Langston said. “Underline it and fold down the page for me, will you?” I did as instructed. I can never decide what I think about my brother and his book passage quotes. Sometimes it’s annoying that I can never open a book in our home and not nd some part of it that Langston has annotated. I’d like to figure out what I think about the words myself without having to see Langston’s handwrit en comments, like lovely or pretentious BS next to it; on the other hand, sometimes it’s interesting to nd his notes and to read them back and try to decipher why that particular passage intrigued or inspired him. It’s a cool way of get ing inside my brother’s brain.

A text message came through on Langston’s phone. “Benny!” he said, grabbing for it. Langston’s thumbs went into hyper-motion in response. I knew Mr. Dickens and I were finished for the time being.

I left his room.

Langston hadn’t even bothered to ask if we should exchange presents. We’d promised our parents we would wait for New Year’s Day to do our gift exchanges, but I was willing to cheat, if asked.

I returned to my own room and saw I had ve voice mails on my phone: two from Grandpa, one from Cousin Mark, one from Uncle Sal, and one from Great-aunt Ida. The great Christmas merry-go-round of phone calls had begun.

I didn’t listen to any of the messages. I turned my phone of . I was on strike this Christmas, I decided.

When I told my parents last year I didn’t mind if we celebrated Christmas late this year, I obviously hadn’t meant it. How had they not figured that out?

This should have been a real Christmas morning of tearing through presents and eating a huge breakfast and laughing and singing with my family.

I was surprised to realize there was something I wanted more than that, though.

I wanted the red notebook back.

With nothing to do and no one to hang out with, I lay on my bed and wondered how Snarl’s Christmas was going. I imagined him living in some swank artists’ loft in Chelsea, with a super-hip mom and her super-cool new boyfriend and they had, like, asymmetrical haircuts and maybe spoke German. I imagined them sit ing around their Christmas hearth drinking hot cider and eating my lebkuchen spice cookies while the turkey roasted in the oven. Snarl was playing the trumpet for them, wearing a beret, too, because suddenly I wanted him to be a musical prodigy who wore a hat. And when he nished playing his piece, which he composed for them as a Christmas present, they cried and said,