A deleted Christmas

Once upon a time, not so long ago, I thought Love You Kill You would take place over Cammie's sophomore year at spy school.

But then my editor (rightly) pointed out that a whole lot of interesting things happened at the beginning of the year, and more at the end of the year, but the story kind of treaded water in the middle.

That's when we made the bold and important decision to change it from the story of her sophomore year to the story of her fall semester (GG2 covers the spring).

That means that we lost a lot of winter scenes...like this one that seems especially appropriate right now.

Enjoy!

Ally

***

The day after fall finals, Bex, Mom and I caught a plane for Omaha and left our spy roots behind (Bex didn’t even pack her brass knuckles.) I missed Josh—a lot—but Bex and I couldn’t even talk about him because Mom was almost always with us, and even when she wasn’t, Grandma and Grandpa Morgan’s house wasn’t exactly soundproofed and I was pretty sure my mom would have better-than-average eavesdropping abilities. So, Bex and I ate a lot of Grandma’s homemade candy, and slept a lot, and tried not to laugh too hard when Mom caught the kitchen on fire while she was trying to learn how to make fudge. (She should really stick to espionage. It is in everyone’s best interest.)

Bex and I shared the sleeper sofa in the basement. On Christmas Eve we were lying there, and I guess neither one of us could sleep because after a long time, I heard her say through the dark, “You’re lucky to have them, Cam.”

It took me a minute to realize who she’d been talking about. Then I remembered the packages that had arrived that day and were waiting for her under my grandparents’ tree. The postmark had been London, but I knew her mom and dad were somewhere in northern Africa—we didn’t know where; we didn’t even know if they were together. It was nice that they’d remembered to send her something, though, and as we lay silently in the dark, I realized that, for spies, sometimes nice has to be good enough.

I rolled over and tried to go sleep, but for the first time maybe ever, I could see why someone like Bex could envy someone like me. She had both of her parents some of the time, but I had one parent most of the time. I understood how it might have seemed like a pretty good deal. I tried not to think about Josh and his stories of a huge tree and homemade bread and a house full of relatives. When I finally drifted off to sleep, I dreamed about what it would be like to have both of your parents all of the time.

When I woke up, it was Christmas.