Jingle Boy Read Online Free PDF Page A

was all going to be okay. Maybe this had happened for a reason. I had Sarah now. I no longer needed my hat to make Christmas perfect.
    I was just starting to feel a bit better when I caught a flash of red out of the corner of my eye. When I got a closer look, my jaw dropped.
    “Ugh! That is just wrong!” Holly said, grimacing.
    Apparently Santa had decided to take a break after making his last sale. He was standing next to the glass doors to the parking lot making out with . . . no . . . practically
mauling
some girl right around the corner from K•B. If any of the kids pouring out of there saw him, they could be traumatized for life.
This
was the guy who was supposed to train me to be the universal symbol of Christmas itself? I was about to walk up to him and give that sorry excuse for a Saint Nick a piece of my mind when the couple shifted and I got a good look at Santa’s conquest.
    “Oh my God,” Holly said.
    My knees went out from under me as all of my daydreams flashed before my eyes in a sickening Technicolor whirl. Sarah and I making snow angels, Sarah and I singing carols, Sarah and I opening gifts by the fire.
    Sarah with her lipstick smeared by some scraggly loser in a cheap Santa suit. No, wait, that was reality.
    “Paul? Are you okay?” Holly said. I saw a flash of tongue between Sarah and Santa and my stomach lurched. “Okay, that’s enough. Turn around. Don’t look.”
    But I couldn’t make myself move. Instead I closed my eyes, said a little prayer to the mercy gods, and opened them again, but the nightmare hadn’t disappeared. It was all too true. My girlfriend was being publicly groped . . . by jolly old Saint Nick.
    The next few minutes passed in a blur. Sarah suddenly opened her eyes, saw me, and managed to push Scooby or whatever the heck his name was away from her. I think I said something. Her name, maybe. Maybe just the word
what.
She looked down at the floor for a second, clearly ashamed, but when she looked up again, her whole beautiful face had hardened with resolve.
    “I’m sorry you had to find out this way, Paul,” she said, her voice light and sweet and not sorry at all. “I’m with Scooby now.”
    “
This
is your boyfriend?” Santa said, his bushy white eyebrows lifting. “Dude, no wonder you came after some Scooby lovin’.”
    I felt like I was melting inside my several layers of clothing. “Sarah, how long . . . ?”
    She took a few steps over to me and laid her hands on my chest. “We got involved too fast,” she said, her big blue eyes seeming to mock me. “I just moved here. I need to see what’s out there. And besides, Scooby’s older. He has a car. He has a career. He’s going to be a famous rapper.”
    At that point Scooby came up next to her and slipped his arm around her back, lifting his fake-whiskered chin. Sarah smiled up at him.
    “He bought me this coat to celebrate his CD release,” Sarah said, drawing the soft red wool more closely around her. “Isn’t that so sweet?”
    This wasn’t happening. She wasn’t actually breaking my heart in the middle of a mall and expecting me to be happy for her, was she? Didn’t I mean anything to her? Didn’t she know how much I cared?
    “Come on, Paul,” Holly said, stepping in front of me so that I had to stop staring pathetically at Santa and his new Mrs. Claus. “Come on, let’s get the hell out of here. You don’t need this Barbie, anyway.”
    I turned slowly, my head pounding so hard it felt like my skull was expanding. Scooby laughed behind me and it made me feel about three feet tall. A few hours ago I’d entered this mall with the most amazing girlfriend in the world and about a thousand expectations for the perfect Christmas to come.
    I was leaving it hopeless, penniless, and girlfriend-less. And I knew exactly why.
    I’d lost my Santa hat.
    Christmas was falling apart before my eyes.

I’M GETTIN’ NUTTIN’ FOR CHRISTMAS . . .
    “ARE YOU CATATONIC?” HOLLY ASKED.
    I wasn’t exactly