Free A Fantastic Holiday Season: The Gift of Stories by Kevin J. Anderson Page B

presents to doubters.”
    Jimmy closed his eyes, remembering how delightful it had been on Ceres, flying through the sports chambers with his friends as they played Wall Ball. You had to be good with angles, and you had to learn how hard to throw the ball to get it to carom just right, while not throwing so hard that you flipped yourself completely around. Teams of Wall Ball players could use each others’ inertia to make shots at the goal without spinning out of control. Of course, if the other teams were equally good at working together, they could use their inertia to deflect the ball and make return shots. Players would hang onto each others’ ankles, knees and elbow interlocked, all of them pirouetting as a unit …
    “Did you hear me?” Tessa said, her voice quiet, breaking his reverie.
    Jimmy looked up at her.
    “Okay, so Nick doesn’t bring gifts for doubter,” he said, perhaps a bit harder than he’d wanted.
    “No need to be rude,” she said. “I don’t make up the rules.”
    “That doesn’t matter,” Jimmy said. “Nobody can help me anyway. Here on Mars … they hardly ever let us go outside, and I’m heavy no matter where I go, and always dropping things or bumping into stuff, and our quarters are small and my friends are all far away, and I won’t ever get to see them again.”
    “Maybe you can make … new friends?” Tessa said.
    Jimmy stared at his spork, then plunged it into the turkey on his plate, carved off a hunk of the meat, and stuck the hunk into his mouth.
    When Jimmy didn’t speak further, Tessa’s smile slowly disappeared.
    “Astronaut Nick comes the night of December 24,” she said primly.
    “That’s in … four days?” Jimmy guessed.
    “Two,” she said. “Olympus Mons uses the New Solar Calendar like all the other off-Earth colonies and stations, but I have an app on my desk computer that stays synchronized to the old Earth calendar.”
    “What will he bring you, if you’re right?” Jimmy asked.
    Now it was Tessa’s turn to be circumspect. She poked at her beef strips covered in brown gravy.
    “I’m keeping my wish a secret,” she said. “Supposedly if you keep it secret, there’s a better chance it might come true.”
    “Then how is Astronaut Nick ever supposed to find out what you want?” Jimmy asked, somewhat exasperated. He’d put his spork down and was staring across the table, directly into Tessa’s face. Her red hair fell across her forehead and partially obscured his view.
    “Send him an e-mail,” Tessa said.
    “Astronaut Nick has e-mail?”
    “Of course,” Tessa said, as if it were common knowledge.
    “Did you e-mail him what you want?” Jimmy asked.
    “Not yet. I am trying to figure out how to word it just right. I’m using the school house net to do it. You can do the same.”
    Jimmy thought about it. The whole idea sounded highly improbable. But the earnestness of Tessa’s words, the seriousness of her expression, had him halfway convinced.
    “Can you share that e-mail?” Jimmy asked.
    “Sure!” Tessa said, sitting up and grinning. “After lunch, come over to my desk and I will type it into a message I’ll send to you, and then you can use it to type your own message.”
    “Seems like short notice,” Jimmy said. “I mean, two days. How can he possibly be ready to deliver anything without knowing far enough ahead of time? When my parents moved us from Ceres we knew months in advance that we were coming to live here, and the Olympus Mons people knew months in advance, too.”
    “You just have to trust him,” Tessa said. “Astronaut Nick won’t let you down. If you’ve not been making trouble, and if you believe hard enough, Astronaut Nick will keep his promises.”
    They ate quickly and in silence for the rest of the meal break, Jimmy’s head beginning to spin with the imagined possibilities.

    The following day, Jimmy used all of his recess and lunch period to compose his note to Astronaut Nick. The address Tessa had