Page 14

“Your house shines in our windows,” Marcus spoke up.

“Okay,” Momma said. “That’s enough. We’ll check the settings. Thank you.” Momma took Mom’s hand and led her away. The Morenos didn’t follow.

Fiona gave me wide eyes.

“Welcome to our world,” I said under my breath. I knew she’d seen minor interactions before, but this was next level.

Mom took a few huffing breaths as she walked. After half a block of silence, she said, “We’re reinstating our no-contact policy with the Morenos.”

“When did we un-instate it?” Marcus asked.

“What does reinstate mean?” Harris said.

“It means,” Momma said, “they are bullies. And we don’t need to talk to bullies. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Mom said.

“Hear, hear,” Marcus chimed in.

“Okay.” Harris gave an enthusiastic nod.

Mom glanced over at me and Fiona.

“Never talked to them before; don’t need to now,” Fiona said, as if she was a member of our family and needed to adhere to our policies. She kind of was.

“Yeah, of course,” I responded when Mom’s eyes didn’t leave me. “Can you fill me in on Mrs. O’Leary’s rules for the contest?”

I wasn’t trying to change the subject. But I did have a pit in my stomach thinking about how I had already broken the rule my moms had set. Sure, they’d just set it, but I always knew how they’d feel about me talking to Ryan. How they’d feel about us coming to some sort of truce. That’s what we’d done, right? We hadn’t used that word, but he and I had both kind of agreed that this was our parents’ fight. It really wasn’t, though, I realized. This was my family, and what hurt them, hurt me.

“Where did you disappear to anyway?” Momma asked. “During the announcement.”

“There was a long line for the bathroom,” I said, not a lie.

Fiona lowered her brows at me but kept her mouth shut.

“There weren’t really any rules for the competition,” Momma said. “Mrs. O’Leary was just letting us know about the dates. Voting starts December first and ends Christmas Eve.”

“And apparently,” Mom said, obviously thinking about the question Mr. Moreno had asked, “the Morenos are going to go even bigger. Change things up.”

“Is there a prize for the winner?” I asked.

“A trophy,” Marcus said. “A really cool one, actually. A bronze Santa climbing down a chimney. The reigning champions get to keep it till next year.”

“That bronze Santa will be ours,” I said.

On December first, my moms, my brothers, and I stood on the sidewalk in front of our house. The sun was about to go down, and our neighborhood was officially going to “open” for visitors.

My mom was holding a remote control that would make our yard come to life. The snow globe still looked good, even with the pieced-together plastic. And then there were all the little homemade touches throughout the yard, things people would sometimes get out of their cars to get a close-up look at, which always made me happy to see—the Christmas mice peering into the snow globe, the larger-than-life lollipops flanking our front door, the nutcracker and ballerina dancing by our hedges. It was a mismatch of things, but that’s what made it interesting. All the nostalgic feelings fluttered in my chest as I remembered the times we’d spent together making this yard what it was.

“Ready?” Momma said with a bright smile.

“Ready!” Harris said.

She pushed the button. The yard glowed a warm yellow and green and red. Unlike the landing strip next door, it was soft and inviting.

“It looks so good!” I said. Then my eyes drifted to the QR code sign that was set up between our house and the Morenos’.

But was it good enough?