Merry Christmas
Amity’s POV
Amity trudged through the front door of the house and stepped to the side to allow her siblings to enter as she took off her sludge soaked dress shoes and placed them down on a mat by the door. Emira and Edric followed suit as they entered the house, Edric stifling a yawn while Emira stretched out her back. Their family made an effort of going to Church every Sunday lest they run the risk of the general public thinking they were anything less than the ideal family, but the Christmas service was always unbearably long with the Priest quoting what must have been half the bible while the chapel itself was always hot as hell with the pews digging into every bone that dared have a place on her back.
“Well that was a lovely service, don’t you think?” Their mother asked as she strutted into the house followed by their father. Odalia’s chin was raised, making it so that she was still looking down her nose at them even though Edric still stood taller than her despite the heels she had on. “I particularly enjoyed the sermon, I think that it was something that a few families really needed to hear.”
Amity’s jaw clenched but she turned her head so that the reaction wasn’t visible to her parents. Of course the preacher had found a way to slip in the ‘one man and one woman’ speech into a sermon about the birth of Christ, and of course everyone’s attention had immediately gone to the new family that had joined last month. Two men and their two kids who hadn’t stuck around for the after service socializing, and Amity had a feeling that they probably wouldn’t be seeing them again any time soon.
A knot twisted in Amity’s stomach. The last time that sermon had been directed at someone, it had been Willow’s family. She and Amity had become friends in Sunday School while one of her dads was at the service and everyone had assumed that he was a single father until Amity had gone over to play at their house and had seen his husband cooking dinner. Amity didn’t understand what was happening and was too young to know not to ask her mother about such things. The next week, the preacher had used those same lines and Amity’s parents found her some new friends to play with. Amity and Willow still went to the same school but Amity had heard her parents saying some… cruel things about Willow’s family and back then, she didn’t know that her parents could be wrong. She’d repeated those cruel things in front of Willow and her dads whenever they picked her up from school. Looking back, Amity couldn’t help but wonder if she’d somehow known what she was back then and had done this as an attempt to stomp it out. Or maybe it was some form of karma.
However, Instead of displaying any discomfort at their mother’s statement, Amity, along with her siblings, simply gave their usual well rehearsed words of agreement while their father provided a curt nod, his attention focused on typing out an email on his phone. The only time he ever had it off was during church and it meant that he would spend the rest of the day responding to emails and making calls to make up for the absence, especially on holidays when services were longer.
“Darling,” he muttered without looking up from the device. “Would you mind assisting the children with breakfast and their gifts, there are matters that I must attend to in my study.
“Of course, dear,” Odalia responded, removing his coat from around his shoulders for him like a proper wife was to do when her husband was busy.
“Thank you.” With that Alador retreated to his private room situated in a distant corner of the enormous house, far away from any unstructured noise that his children had the possibility of making that could potentially take away from his ability to focus on more important matters like the stock market.
The rest of the Blight family, led by Odalia, began their pace towards the dining room where a few servants were just finishing placing breakfast on the table. It was a special occasion so there were trays stacked high with a variety of food laid out rather than just having prepared portions of whatever was being served like they usually did. There was sausage, eggs, fruit, pancakes, french toast, and, of course, syrup.
Amity shifted in her seat as the four of them sat down and she could see that her siblings were equally as uncomfortable. They watched as their mother placed a helping of eggs, fruit, and sausage onto her plate and began to eat before the three of them reached out and grabbed similarly sized portions of the same food. Emira paused before sitting back down though and, after glancing at their mother, reached for the serving fork on the tray loaded with pancakes.
“Do you really want to begin your day with that much sugar, Emira?” Odalia hadn’t looked up from the food on her plate as she delicately skewered a piece of cantaloupe with her fork.
Emira pierced her lips together before opening them just long enough to say “No, mother. My apologies,” and sat back down in her chair. Honestly, Amity wasn’t sure why Odalia even had the chef prepare half the food on the table if they weren’t really allowed to eat it.
Odalia gave a hum that somehow registered both approval for not taking the pancake as well as disappointment for having reached for it in the first place. As their mother placed a piece of the fruit into her mouth, the Blight children took that as a signal to begin eating.
Amity stuck a forkful of eggs into her mouth and forced her face not to sour at the flavour. It was cooked to perfection but as bland as anything that got served at this table and Amity didn’t even need to look around the table to know that there was no salt or pepper for her to add to it. Their family didn’t have a history of high blood pressure or anything but salt was so heavily regulated in their house that Amity wondered if they might be at risk of it being too low. Not to mention that Odalia couldn’t stand anything spicier than standard mustard so any flavour at all was pretty much out of the question.
During the last few weeks of their tutoring sessions, Luz had always had something that she was cooking in Eda’s kitchen. Amity had never been able to stick around long enough to enjoy a full meal with them but Luz usually had her taste whatever she was making to see if it was good and it was always fantastic. Maybe if she tried hard enough now she could imagine that what she was eating tasted like the fajitas that Luz had made during one of the last sessions that they’d had before the dance. Luz had made two different batches, one had a spice mixture that was pretty mild for Eda and the other one was supposed to be much hotter for Luz and her mom to eat later.
Amity had tried the mild one first, it was spicy on her tongue in a good way but, as usual, the fact that there was any flavor at all practically blew her away. Later that night she’d jokingly popped another piece into her mouth not realizing that it was from the other batch and had spent the next twenty minutes soaking her mouth in milk. ‘Welp, I guess that batch is good too.’ Luz had said with a nervous chuckle as she brought Amity a cup of yogurt to help sooth her tongue more. Amity now popped a piece of sausage in her mouth and it took everything she had not to visibly cringe. It tasted like sausage if sausage were made of plastic.
Once they had finally managed to finish their breakfast, they filed into the living room where the Christas tree was set up. There weren’t all that many gifts under the tree, even though their family had money, gift exchanges just weren’t something that they really did unless they were at a party full of people that needed to be shown up or something. Alador and Odalia usually gave each other something and made sure that every child had one or two gifts while Amity and the twins usually used what savings they had to get their parents a joint gift.
Odalia opened up her present from her husband first, a book that appeared to be about a historical figure that Amity didn’t recognize. She immediately opened it and began to read while her children opened up their own presents. Careful not to tear the wrapping paper and make a mess, Amity removed her gift from its cocoon and just stared at it.
Amity’s mom glanced up at her lack of movement and let out a breath before returning to her reading and spoke up. “We heard that Edric had loaned you his old headphones so we’ve acquired you a new set. I hope you enjoy them.”
There was suddenly a lump in Amity’s throat that she forced herself to swallow. They were new, the box still in the linoleum wrap, and though she knew little about the kind of specs that she was supposed to be looking for in a pair of headphones, she was sure that these covered the bases. “They’re perfect. Thank you mother.” Then why did just holding the box make her feel like she was going to throw up?
Somehow, Amity managed to keep her facial expression in check until she and her siblings were dismissed and allowed to return to their rooms. Once the door was shut behind her, Amity leaned her back against it and placed a hand over her mouth. The gift slid out of her hand and thudded onto the floor as Amity began sliding down the door to meet it there. Tears dribbled down her chin and her hand muffled the sobs as she sat there in her stiff, itchy church dress and let herself cry.
She missed Luz. She’d been missing her since Luz had yanked her arm away that night at the dance. She missed her jokes, her cooking, her laugh, her way of explaining things in a way that wasn’t condescending or like she was stating an obvious answer. Amity had thought that she’d be able to talk to her at school, to sort everything out and explain everything. She thought that she’d be able to message her over discord but the only response she ever got was a message that she had been blocked and after another round of getting yelled at by Willow, Amity had learned that she and Gus had been blocked as well.
Amity had never heard Willow this upset before. Not even at the things that Amity had said when they were younger. The plant lover was usually such a calm presence that Amity didn’t know it was even possible for her to raise her voice at anyone, but there she was, being the brunt of Willow’s anger for the second time in a single week.
Afterwards Willow had actually apologised to her for raising her voice like that because she knew that this was hard for Amity too, but Amity wouldn’t accept the apology. She didn’t deserve one. She deserved every word that Willow had said to her, every accusation about what could have been done instead, what she hadn’t been able to do yet. She knew that she actually deserved a great deal worse than what had been said and she definitely deserved to be exactly where she was, sobbing against the door of her bedroom as quietly as possible so that her mother wouldn’t hear and call her ungrateful for being upset after receiving such a thoughtful gift.
After an eternity, Amity finally managed to calm down enough to get to her feet and shuffle over to her desk. She didn’t plug them into anything because she knew she wouldn’t need to, but Amity still placed the old pair of headphones over her ears anyway. The ones that Luz had fixed for her. The ones that had allowed her to recognise Lazura for who she truly was. The ones that ruined everything.
Somehow those old, ragged, and perfectly operational headphones still brought her some sense of comfort and familiarity, as if the rest of the world had faded away the second she placed them on. Blinking the tears from her eyes, she opened up discord. There were no new messages, no one in the voice chat either, and there probably wouldn’t be for the rest of the day. Willow was spending the day with her dads and Gus was visiting his grandparents.
Amity sniffled as she opened up the chat conversation she’d had with Luz and the word ‘Blocked’ swam in her vision. More tears welled up in her eyes as she stared at the computer. She felt sick.
After a good length of time spent staring at Luz’s icon on discord, an idea popped into her head. Hesitantly she opened up her school email and searched up Luz’s name. No one really used their school email for anything, it was a crappy system and sometimes the emails wouldn’t even go through, but you also weren’t able to block classmates on it. Biting the inside of her cheek, Amity typed out the shortest email she’d ever written. She debated placing a subject in the box but ultimately decided not to. If Luz wanted to read a message from her, she would; if not, then she would delete it and that would be that. The message was sent with a whooshing sound on her computer's speakers and Amity slumped back in her chair, wondering whether it was too much or not enough.
Her throat felt tight but she refused to let herself shed any more tears. There was one more thing that she had to do though. After a small eternity, Amity worked up the courage to sweep her gaze over to the dress in the corner of her room. She’d thrown it there the morning after the dance, after she’d woken up at her desk after a night of desperately trying to message Luz on Discord to no avail, and hadn’t managed to bring herself to touch it since. Amity drew in a shaky breath and walked over to the piece of fabric, she picked it up and examined it. There was a smear of red on the skirt from where she’d gripped it after Luz had pulled her arm away.
With delicate fingers, Amity plucked the light sigil pin from the shoulder of the dress and gripped it in her hand. The ridges dug into her fingers and palm but she couldn’t bring herself to care.
It was barely afternoon but Amity crawled into bed anyway, her dress from church digging into her skin uncomfortably but her mind was too exhausted to care. With the pin still in her hand. Amity closed her eyes as the screen with the three word email faded into sleep mode on her desk.
‘Merry Christmas, Luz.’