Preface - Christmas Then
Piper's POV
By the time I was twelve, Christmas was the only thing that ever stayed.
Foster homes changed. Caseworkers came and went. Bedrooms shifted from one narrow bed to another, from one set of chipped posters to a different cracked window. But every December, Hollyridge filled the square with lights.
I learned the map of this town through extension cords and garland.
That year, I was living above the bakery with Mrs. Daley. She smelled like sugar and tired feet and never said no when I asked to stay late in the square as long as I wore my hat.
“If you catch pneumonia, I’m not explaining that paperwork,” she’d say, shoving a knit cap onto my head. “Be back by nine, Piper. I mean it.”
I always said yes. I never meant it. Not really.
The lights were worth any lecture.
“Hand me the other end,” Lena called.
She was on the ladder, one boot on the second rung from the top, stretching a strand of warm white bulbs across the arch closest to the tree. Her red ponytail swung from side to side as she worked. She was seventeen and fearless and, in my opinion, the most glamorous person in the world.
I passed her the cord and tried to ignore how high up she was. “You know Sheriff Miller said not to lean that far.”
“Sheriff Miller says a lot of things,” she said. “Relax, Pip. I have great balance.”
“That’s not how gravity works.”
She laughed, bright as the bulbs in her hands. “You’re such an old lady.”
“I’m practical,” I said.
I knew all about gravity. I’d seen what happened when it won. Boxes dropped down stairs, plates slipped from hands, people fell out of lives without warning. One day, you had parents. The next day, you had a social worker and a plastic bag with your clothes in it.
So I liked things that stayed where you put them. Lights. Hooks. Timers. Plans.
“Okay,” Lena said. “How does it look?”
She climbed down and stood beside me, both of us facing the arch. The strand of bulbs framed the walkway in a soft curve. The tree rose behind it, still dark, a huge shadow waiting for its turn. Fake snow drifted around the base of the display, catching in the cuffs of my jeans.
“It looks perfect,” I said.
“Obviously,” she said, and bumped my shoulder with hers. “Come on. We have to finish the candy canes, and then I have to pretend to listen when Hank tells me about crowd control.”
“He’s the sheriff,” I said.
“He’s a control freak who hates joy.”
I snorted and picked up one of the oversized plastic candy canes. We hammered the bases into the weighted stands on either side of the arch, lining them up so the stripes matched on both sides. Lena loved symmetry. I loved seeing the pattern click into place.
By the time we finished, the square was almost full. Parents and kids and teenagers in clumps, everyone in too many layers, breath puffing in little clouds. The bakery had a line out the door for cocoa. Someone’s speaker played tinny music until the official sound system took over.
“Your girl looks good this year,” Mrs. Daley called as she passed with a tray. “Nice lines.”
I grinned. “Lena did most of it.”
Lena threw an arm around my shoulders. “Piper did all the boring parts. Planning, math, not electrocuting us. I did the pretty.”
“That’s teamwork,” Mrs. Daley said, and pushed a paper cup into my hands. “You drink that before it gets cold, or I’ll make you scrub the cocoa urn.”
I cupped the warmth and watched the square fill.
Every year, Hollyridge looked like a postcard for three weeks. People came from other towns to see it. We needed them. The money they spent here kept the doors open in January. Everyone said it like a joke. Hollyridge runs on Christmas. Ha ha.
I knew it was true.
Sheriff Miller climbed the small platform by the control box in a puff of breath and bravado. His uniform looked newer that year, his hair darker. He cleared his throat into the microphone and the test music cut.
“Alright, folks,” he boomed. “You ready to light this town up?”
The crowd roared back. Kids screamed yes. Somewhere, a baby started crying. The usual symphony.
Lena leaned closer. “You ready, Pip?”
“Ready,” I said, even though my heart felt like it was trying to claw out.
The control handle was as long as my forearm. I’d been helping with setups since I was old enough to coil cords without tangling them, but this was the first year Miller had agreed to let me flip the main switch.
“Just a formality,” he’d said earlier when I signed the permission slip. “We checked everything twice. You do the honors, you get all the applause. That’s how it works.”
It sounded simple when he said it.
Now, standing by the box with Lena at my side and half the town watching, it didn’t feel simple at all.
“Piper Quinn,” Miller said into the microphone. “Our very own Christmas elf is gonna hit the switch this year. She’s been out here since Halloween, making sure none of you trip over her cords and sue the town.”
The crowd laughed. My face got hot.
Lena bumped my shoulder again. “Take a bow.”
I rolled my eyes, but I stepped up to the handle. My gloves creaked when I wrapped my fingers around it.
Miller started the countdown. “Three, two, one.”
I pulled.
There was a tiny instant where nothing happened, like the whole square inhaled.
Then light rushed up the tree in spirals, across the buildings, around the arches. Bulbs flashed in patterns I’d drawn in the margins of my math homework. The star at the top of the pole flared to life, then steadied into a soft, steady glow.
For one long moment, it worked. Exactly how it was supposed to.
People gasped. A kid near the front yelled, “Whoa,” so loud that everyone laughed. I saw Mrs. Daley wipe at her eyes like a crazy person. I saw my social worker, off to the side, nod once like she was checking something off a list.
Someone put a hand on my shoulder. Lena.
“See?” she said in my ear. “Perfect. You did it.”
I let myself believe her.
The hum of the square settled into background noise. The music swelled, all bells and strings. Snow started again, thin flakes drifting through the light. It hit the wires and melted into nothing.
Something shifted above us.
I didn’t hear it first. I felt it. A wrongness in the air, like stepping on a stair that isn’t there.
The arch closest to the tree trembled.
I looked up.
One of the metal bases had inched sideways on the slick ground. The weight of the extra lights had pulled the top, only a little, but enough to drag the whole thing off balance.
“Lena,” I said. “The arch.”
She followed my gaze. Her smile disappeared.
“Stay here,” she said.
She moved before I could answer, launching herself off the platform and onto the ground. She hit hard, boots slipping on the fake snow, but she caught herself and sprinted toward the arch.
I jumped down after her. The cocoa sloshed out of my cup and onto the pavement, dark across white. People in the crowd were still looking up, but the excitement in their faces was starting to falter.
The arch tilted another inch.
“Kill the power,” Lena shouted over her shoulder. “Piper, the box.”
Right. Switch. I spun back to the control handle and grabbed it again. My fingers slipped on the metal. I yanked it down as hard as I could.
The lights cut. The music choked off mid-chorus. The square dropped into a strange gray hush, like the moment after a dream.
It should’ve been enough.
The momentum had already started.
The arch went.
It fell in a slow, horrible curve, metal scraping on concrete, wires jerking free. Kids screamed as parents grabbed for them. One of the candy canes snapped at the base and skidded across the ground.
I took a step forward without thinking, drawn toward it. Toward the center. Toward where the worst of the weight would hit.
Lena slammed into me from the side.
Her hands hit my shoulders like a car. She shoved. I flew backward and hit the ground so hard that my teeth clacked. The breath went out of me in a useless gasp.
The arch crashed down where I’d been standing.
The sound was a mix of metal and glass and something soft. A type of crunch I never wanted to hear again.
My ears rang. My vision narrowed. For a second I couldn’t feel my body at all, just the cold of the pavement under my palms and the shock buzzing under my skin.
“Lena?” I croaked.
The arch lay in a twisted heap, half on the fake snow, half on the real concrete. One side of the frame had punched into the ground. Bulbs lay everywhere, some intact, some broken, wires tangled like pulled intestines.
And under it, pinned where I’d been, was Lena.
Her legs stuck out at an angle that made my stomach turn. Her arm was thrown out toward me, fingers curled like she’d been reaching even as the metal came down. The rest of her was under the frame.
People shouted. Someone ran for the EMTs. Somewhere, Mrs. Daley sobbed my name.
I crawled forward on hands and knees. My head rang. My lungs burned.
“Piper, stop,” Sheriff Miller shouted. “You can’t move that. You’ll make it worse.”
“I was standing there,” I said. My voice sounded far away, like someone else’s. “I was right there.”
He caught my shoulders and hauled me back as two firefighters grabbed the edge of the frame and started to lift. Everything moved too slow and too fast at the same time. My heart pounded in my throat.
Lena’s face came into view.
Her eyes were open, fixed on the dark shape of the tree above us. There was a smear of blood on her cheek and a string of cracked bulbs across her chest like a necklace.
“Hey,” I whispered. “You saved me.”
She didn’t answer.
Later, everyone would decide it was an accident. Old equipment. Hidden rust. A once-in-a-lifetime thing. Tragic, yes, but not anyone’s fault.
They’d tell me I did everything right. That I cut the power fast. That if I hadn’t listened to Lena about the wiring, more people might’ve been standing under that arch.
They’d say I should be proud of the part I played in preventing something worse.
They didn’t see what I saw when I closed my eyes. My hands on the switch. Lena’s hands on my shoulders. Her body under the frame where mine should’ve been.
The first time the lights went wrong, everyone called it an accident.
I knew better.
Christmas had taken something from me and left me with a square full of ghosts.
Years later, when I stood in the same place with the lights under my control and people said I’d saved Hollyridge Christmas, I still remembered the feel of Lena’s shove and the sound the arch made when it landed.
I remembered that I was supposed to be the one under it.
