Free Jingle Boy by Kieran Scott Page B

harboring some kind of weird dork fetish.
    But no. That wasn’t possible. Sarah was amazing. She was perfect. She loved my Jeep obsession and wore my sweater to bed and smelled like peppermint and didn’t mind publicly cuddling at the movies. This wasn’t the type of girl who wasted her time on dorks. Scooby had brainwashed her somehow. She never would have hooked up with him otherwise. She clearly had no idea what she’d gotten herself into. And the idea that Scooby was pulling one over on the love of my life only made me hate him more. I couldn’t let him get away with it. But the question was, what was I going to do now?
    “You look like death,” Holly said when I got into her car.
    “Thanks,” I replied, balling my jacket and sweater up in my lap. I popped the seat back until I was horizontal and closed my eyes.
    “What happened to you in there?” Holly asked as she peeled out.
    “I can’t believe I’m about to say this, and to you of all people, but I think I hate Christmas.”
    Holly hit the brakes and my eyes flew open, my hands flinging out instinctively to brace myself for the impending crash. But when I sat up, there was nothing. No cars. No pedestrians. Slowly I looked up at Holly. She had a look of maniacal glee on her face not unlike the one the Grinch sports after he comes up with the idea to steal Christmas from the Whos.
    Slamming on the gas again, Holly swung into a handicapped spot and put the car in park. “Are you serious, or are you just experiencing a momentary lapse of Paulness?” she asked as she twisted herself around and started digging for something in her canvas bag in the backseat.
    “Oh, I’m serious,” I told her. “You know what’s been going through my head all day? Three words:
Santa must
die.
I swear, Holly, I really think I’m losing touch here.”
    “You’re not losing touch, you’re just . . . seeing things in a new light,” Holly said, flopping down in her seat again, now clutching a piece of wrinkled paper. “In the real light of day,” she added. She handed over the paper and watched me expectantly.
    It wasn’t without reservations that I unfolded the page to read its contents. Holly was acting hyper and weird, even for her. But I have to admit, I was curious.
    “The Anti-Christmas Underground?” I read from across the top of the page. The letters were big and black and two Santa feet were sticking out from under the
d
as if he’d been flattened like the Wicked Witch of the West. “Where did you get this?” I asked.
    “From Rudy Snow,” Holly said, biting her bottom lip in excitement. “Look! They have weekly meetings, but I’ve never gotten up the guts to go. Now you can go with me!”
    “Wait a second, wait a second,” I said. “Rudy Snow? The new kid with the obvious hyperactivity disorder?” This guy started school with us at the beginning of the year and proceeded to earn a rep for singing out loud during exams, shouting out answers before the teacher was finished asking them, and spontaneously break dancing in the cafeteria. Of course, he did always have a smile on his face, so maybe he actually knew something the rest of us didn’t.
    “He’s really nice,” Holly told me. “Look, he came up to me after history because he saw me doodling a Christmas tree with a big X over it, and that’s when he gave me this flyer. He and his friends have this Web site,
Ihatechristmas.com. I checked it out during computer tech and it was totally cool.”
    I looked at Holly’s elated expression and realized, for the first time, exactly how deep her distaste for Christmas actually ran. I mean, I always knew she hated the season—that every year she just couldn’t wait to get December over with and move on. But here she was, willing to join a militant anti-Christmas organization. The girl was
serious.
Maybe even obsessed.
    “The Anti-Christmas Underground?” I repeated, scanning the page. Aside from a meeting time and place, the notice said that