The Night Before Christmas
In the end; she ran.
It’s what she did in the beginning, too, if she was really honest with herself.
She really should have grabbed a jacket on her way out the door, she thinks to herself as the icy air pierces her skin and settles in her shaking bones. She had left in such a hurry; a split second decision that ended with her here, in a two thousand dollar filthy dirty wedding dress, shivering under the pale moonlight glow, next to her broken down piece of shit hatchback from 1997.
She didn’t know what did it in finally. Could have been the motor, she suspects, or it could have been the oil or gas or tires or the fact that it was a twenty year old hunk of metal fuckall. All she knows is that it’s just after 1am and she’s on an exit-less stretch of highway some 50 miles outside Chicago and it’s two days - well, just now one day before Christmas.
Nay a car has reared its resounding muffle down the road in what feels like hours but in reality has only been about 20 minutes. She decides that purely because she’s not dead, she doesn’t think, and she isn’t sure would survive hours out here in this cold.
She kicks at the tires and immediately bites her lip when she’s reminded of what stubbing a frozen toe feels like. Like glass, ice, shattering. She’s starving, she realizes, when her stomach grumbles low and long and she remembers how little she’s eaten in the last week out of pure concentrated anxiety [and existential dread but that’s a different story for a different time and a different place].
Dani is near hopelessness when she feels the first snowdrop fall onto her nose. The child in her wants to stick her tongue out and catch as many as she can, but the adult she truly is can barely stop her teeth from chattering across the sky like a toy from a vintage thrift store.
She remembers, vividly, watching an episode of - well, she can’t remember the show off the top of her head - and they went through the stages of dying of hypothermia and now she’s counting on her frozen fingers how many signs she exhibits. It alarms and then panics her when she thinks she remembers that mental confusion is one of the first symptoms. She starts naming reindeer to keep herself sharp and not focus on how many steps away she is from forgetting her own name.
“You’re Dani Clayton. The year is 2017,” she looks around herself, darkness enshrouding every inch that surrounds her, “and you have no idea where the fuck you are.”
It’s maybe ten minutes later when she thinks she sees headlights off in the distance and tries to convince herself that this isn’t step number 5, hallucinations.
She thinks? She’s going to have to remind herself to look up all the stages of hypothermia when she gets out of here.
And while she’s busy contemplating whether or not she can’t remember any of these steps because she’s dying or if she can’t remember any of it because she’s forgetful, the truck [definitely not a hallucination now, she decides] is closer and she thinks she’s got about one shot at this point for survival.
So naturally, she jumps out in the middle of the road.
The sound of the tires skidding is deafening and Dani sighs because the sound is one hundred percent real and she’s about to be rescued in the middle of God knows where by a stranger in a truck; so long as they didn’t hit her.
It occurs to her far too late to move, so her only action at that moment is to scream. Scream long and shrill and so loud that she’s sure if Eddie had the ears of a dog he would have been able to find her instantly.
And then it’s silent. Her mouth is still open and she’s still screaming but she can’t hear anything else but that and she thinks maybe she’s dead. There are two bright lights and she can feel them burning her eyes beneath her closed eyelids and it's like looking into the sun. It's so bright and quiet.
And then it’s loud again. It’s ear piercing actually because on top of her scream she hears another. But this one is words and it’s low and it’s British and she never thought her guardian angel would be British.
“What the fucking Christ is wrong with you!” And hot damn, because when Dani opens her eyes she discovers that her guardian angel is pretty hot too.
She stares at the eyes in front of her, both blue and green, sinful and wild and gentle. There’s fire in them, anger perhaps or maybe fear. Dani settles into them and her screaming dilutes to a healthy panic as she realizes that she’s alive and she can feel the way this stranger is gripping onto her barely covered arms that are slowly turning blue.
“The fuck is wrong with ya’ mate?” This woman, this goddess in a blue truck who just barreled down the highway and [nearly] directly into Dani, panicking too, it’s quite obvious by the way she’s breathing. The puffs of icy breath swirl in the air as she looks up and down Dani’s body for any signs of trauma.
Dani studies the way the words sound on the tongue of the woman before her. She can’t decide if she thinks some of the vowels sound Scottish or Irish or,
“You’re British.” Dani decides. Well, she didn’t decide. The universe decided, ultimately, but Dani decides she agrees with the universe in this moment.
This woman, stranger, is beautiful, Dani thinks. Her hair is pulled back and she’s got it up in a tied bandana and she has a classic 80s beauty to her with a leather jacket and tight black jeans tucked into a pair of hiking boots. Her eyes are glowing and light, her hands are pressing all over Dani quickly, checking for damage, and it’s not until Dani speaks that her hands settle somewhere permanent.
“You alright?” The woman nods and takes a step back, letting go her firm hands she has pressed on either side of Dani’s face.
“Am I dead?” Dani presses her cold hand to her face and waits to see if she can feel either of them.
“You don’t look dead.” The woman raises her left eyebrow and takes its friend, the lip, with it. The smirk sends a flash of warmth through Dani and she thinks she could thaw.
“I don’t feel dead.” And she doesn’t, she knows that now. She thinks she finally feels alive for the first time in a long time.
“Then I think we can both agree that you are in fact, not dead.” She punctuates the last two words with a wink and a smile and Dani finally takes a deep breath. She was [now] confident that she would live to stress about everything one more day.
The woman looks around the two of them and it’s obvious to Dani that she’s thinking. Weighing exactly what to do next as the fog from the deep night air settles onto the earth.
“Right then, so you wanna tell me why you’re sitting in the middle of the road in a wedding dress at 2 in the morning.” The woman pulls Dani by the arm out of the middle of the road and over to Dani’s abandoned car - cold and idle and forgotten.
“My car broke down. I don’t have any service to call anybody so I’ve been standing out here waiting for somebody to come by and--” Dani’s running her hands through her hair and pulling at the roots. She looks at the watch on the strangers wrist; 1:52 am.
“Jesus, in that?” The brunette with the beautifully mysterious accent point to her dirty dress and thin material and her voice raises at the end as if she’s shocked Dani’s not pulling some elaborate prank. “Well you’re lucky you di’nt die of hypothermia.”
Her eyes roll and Dani smiles because that’s what she’s been saying this entire time. She swears she was nearly to step something-or-other and she was only moments from,
“I was really close to stripping off all my clothes and rolling in the show.” Dani’s eyes pop and she’s looking at the stranger directly under the lights now and she can see the dirt that gathers in her skin and the way her eyes pull together in confusion and her lip juts out and it’s almost a pout and almost a question.
“I’m sorry - what?”
“Nothing.” Dani shakes her head.
The woman starts to walk back to her truck and Dani, for a moment, panics that maybe this visitor was only temporary and she’s going to be back to being alone again any second. But then she sees a hand wave her over and a truck door open and the invitation is for her and only her.
“Alright well, we need to get you out of the cold. I’ve got a hitch in the back of my truck. I can tow you back to mine. You won’t find anybody out here on a holiday weekend.” The woman’s voice is raspy, Dani realizes. It’s got this low pitch that hums in the still air and it vibrates Dani from the inside out.
It should be curious, why she is now jumping into the passenger seat of a stranger on an abandoned highway right around the same time she should be jumping into her marital bed for the first time, but when the woman leans over her body from where she stands on the lift and turns the engine over into a gentle hum and presses a few buttons - Dani can only focus on how her body is starting to heat up quickly from the hot air that blows, the seat that heats and the body that energizes her.
It’s only a few minutes before her car is hitched up to the back of the pickup and they are barreling down the road. Dani studies the woman’s profile. Her jaw is sharp and defined and her nose is delicate. Her hair is messy, pulled up, falling around the bandana and into her eyes. Her skin is unblemished but has streaks of dark oil across her cheeks. Her hands are strong, boney, and firm as they grip the steering wheel. It’s silent, the radio off and the bumps of the road as the only soundtrack to their drive.
Dani is so busy getting lost in the angles of her guardian angel’s name that it takes nearly twenty minutes into their drive to realize that she doesn’t even know her name and hasn’t shared her own.
“Thanks for picking me up.” The woman doesn’t move to look at her, just stays silent and focused on the road in front her.
“I’m Dani, well Danielle, Dani Clayton. Everybody calls me Danielle. My mom always insisted and then Edmond, Eddie -- my, um-- well, and my class calls me Miss Danielle. I teach 3rd grade. Anyway, it’s Danielle.”
The woman chuckles under her breath but her eyes stay ahead, quiet and brooding. Dani thinks that maybe this nut is a hard shell to crack when there’s no response and she goes to open her mouth again just to fill the silence but then she hears the rasp of the other woman’s cadence for the first time since she turned the truck over.
“What do you prefer to be called, then?”
Dani has to think about it because nobody has ever asked her that and the choice feels freeing. “Dani, I guess?” She rolls it around on her tongue, testing out how it sounds and it sounds like a decision that was never hers to make before and it’s really the first step towards freedom. “I think. I never got a chance to choose.”
Greenish blueish eyes find her in the dark and the stranger smiles again. “Dani teaches third grade. Regular old Mary Fucking Poppins.”
Dani laughs and it’s from her stomach because she’s far from practically perfect but she feels new and like she’s ready to explore what she could be.
“Jamie.” The woman states like it’s a gift and Dani knows that it is because even though she knows nothing about this stranger, about this Jamie, she feels like not many do.
Dani found that she’s pretty good at reading people, albeit mostly children, and she’s trying to read the feeling behind those two syllables. She’s cold, maybe not in temperature but in candor and she’s got a lot of layers and baggage and Dani thinks for a moment that maybe not many know much more about her.
But Dani can’t help to wonder more, wonder deeper, “Jamie no last name?”
“Jamie no last name.” And it feels like a closed topic with nothing else to add until Dani mumbles more to herself than to anybody else,
“Everyone has a last name.”
Jamie’s eyes harden briefly, swiftly, as the passing headlights from an oncoming car flash quickly in their reflection. Dani wants to pry them open and let them flood out with their secrets.
“Well then you can make one up for me.” It’s dry and it’s sarcastic but Dani decides that she doesn’t much care for the fact that Jamie is clearly just fucking with her when she says it.
“Taylor.” Dani decides promptly after a near seven minutes of total silence and ruminating over such a meaningful task, “Jamie Taylor.”
“Whatever you say, Poppins.” And it’s probably a bit of a dig, but it feels sort of nice to have something that’s just for her, tailored to fit, by a mysterious stranger in the dark.
It’s only a few more turns and several more minutes before the truck turns off the paved comfort of the back country roads and onto a gravel stretch that’s long and it’s ominous and all Dani can see in front of her is a lit up structure that looks somewhat like a mansion but all the way like a bad idea. It suddenly registers that she doesn’t know this Jamie or her enigmatic British accent or her secretive smile or her cryptic eyes.
“You’re not taking me out here to murder me, are you?” But the laugh she gives off is calm because even though this unknown person just walked into her life, she feels a sense of comfort in her presence.
“Keep talking and I just might.” Dani falters, her hands that had previously been tugging at themselves fall into her lap and she looks over at Jamie, jaw dropped and curious. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea.
The house is stunning when they get inside. It’s all wood and oak and dark and there are these two beautiful twin staircases that lead to a landing. It’s dark and it’s almost as mysterious as the woman who lives here but Dani can’t help but marvel at the architecture.
“Wow it’s beautiful.” She whistles under her breath. She’s never seen anything so stunning.
Jamie follows her inside and shuts the door to the cold, locking it and moving around the blonde rooted in place. She places her keys in a bowl by door and looks back at her new house guest. Dani walks towards the steps, finding herself being pulled in like a magnet to the energy of this grand home.
Jamie is, to her credit, unimpressed by it all if her tone is anything to judge by. Dani assumes she’s used to this all, used to its beauty. Though she can’t imagine she would ever tire of it.
“It’s too late for the grand tour tonight.” Dani loves the way the word, tour, falls out of her mouth. It’s foreign and it’s beautiful and it’s uninterested. “But I promise it’s all just-”
“Perfectly splendid” Dani finishes in an exaggerated accent of her own. Turning to face Jamie who was still lingering behind her. She’s met with a face filled with befuddlement and annoyance.
“The guest room is down the hall here.” Jamie nods her head to the dark corridor behind her. Dani can tell she’s ready to go her own way and leave Dani alone with her thoughts. But as Dani takes in the moodily lit room it suddenly occurs to her,
“You know it’s Christmas right?”
“Can’t imagine.” Jamie’s tone is impatient and Dani knows she doesn’t know this woman or anything about her but she’s just so taken back by this magnificent home being bare on a holiday that it’s seemingly made for.
“Well it’s just that -- where are your lights or your tree?”
Jamie looks around as if trying to figure out why Dani cares and Dani wishes she had an answer for that. She drops her head and slowly starts to walk back towards Dani, inching closer and closer and moving further into her just when Dani thinks she will stop.
“Can you keep a secret?” Jamie leans in close as if whatever she’s about to say is of utmost importance “The grinch stole them.” And when she pulls her away her eyes are wide and sarcastic and Dani thinks she may hate this woman in a really wonderful way.
Jamie turns on her heel to walk back towards the guest bedroom, turning on the hall lights as she does. Dani trails her, hot on her heels, her voice high and sharp when she asks, “So nothing, huh? Not one piece of tinsel in this whole huge place? No tree? Or stockings?”
“I don’t believe in Christmas.” Jamie throws open the door to the room and gestures inside, flipping the light on the dark space. It's modest but warm. There’s a four poster bed in the center, two tables on either side, and a dresser in the far corner.
Dani peaks inside at the doorway, taking it all in, holding her tongue to bring up how wonderful it is. Her body wraps around the molding as she checks all the corners, vetting it before turning back to Jamie who is close, only inches away and her eyes are locked on to Dani and she’s got just a faint smile on her face but it looks sad.
“Like you don’t believe in the birth of Christ or--” Dani’s eyes flicker back and forth between the ones in front of them, heavy with questions and curiosity.
But Jamie's eyes don’t have the answers when she leans in quickly, jolting, and Dani has to move her head out of the way of it’s pop, “I don’t believe in the ‘merry’ of it all.”
“Oh well that’s--” Dani can feel Jamie’s breath on her cheeks and she fights the small urge she has just to lean in. Just slightly, just a press. But then the warmth is gone and Jamie is halfway down the hall when she yells without turning back,
“Goodnight, Poppins.”