Without a word, Mom packed up the tree and stuffed it back in the closet. The next day, Karen saw it poking out of a dumpster around the other side of the building.

Which is how Christmas came to be something out there. At school, in stores, on billboards. In the past.

Or on TV.

It was the Bradys' turn now. Little Cindy was asking a department store Santa to cure her mother's laryngitis so she could sing a solo at their church Christmas service. That's what had brought up the whole Santa Claus thing in the first place.

"Stupid kid," Karen had snorted. And then she'd said it, blasphemed. And Ronnie had flipped out.

"There is a Santa Claus!" he howled from the floor.

His voice quavered, as if he might cry, but Karen knew it wasn't the tumble off the couch that had hurt him. Their apartment may have been tiny, but the musty, mustard-colored s.h.a.g covering the floor was as thick and soft as a dirty old sponge.

No, she'd hurt him, and she wasn't even sure why. His faith in Santa had been irritating her, rubbing on her nerves like sandpaper, for weeks. She was a big kid-almost ten-and she knew she should let Ronnie have his little kid dreams. Yet another part of her longed to shake him awake.

She kept her eyes on the Bradys.

"Santa's fake," she said.

"He's real!"

"No, he's not."

"How do you know?"

"I just do."

"But how do you know?"

"I just do."

"Prove it!"

Karen finally tore her gaze away from the screen.

"You want me to? Really?"

Her brother blinked at her. It was up to him now.

If he insisted on this, she'd have to go through with it, right? That's what big sisters are for-helping little kids learn. And if a lesson stung a little, well, that wouldn't be her fault, would it?

Ronnie nodded reluctantly.

"Alright," Karen said.

She walked over to the TV and switched it off. The reruns would come around again one day. That's why they call them "reruns." But this moment with her brother-it would come only once.

"Follow me."

She headed for the bedroom Mom had been sharing with Cousin Rick the past few months. The door was closed. The door was always closed now.

"Where are you going?"

Karen looked back at her brother. "Where does it look like I'm going?"

"But . . . we can't go in there."

"Why not? Mom's at the Tiger tonight. She won't be home for hours. And you know how it is when he's supposed to be watching us. He'll probably show up five minutes before Mom and pretend he was here all day."

"But if he catches us . . . you remember what he said."

Karen did remember. The tone of Rick's voice, anyway. If he ever found them messing with his things, he'd have to do something . . . ugly. Karen had understood that much even if some of the words were new to her.

"He won't catch us," she said. "We'll only be in there a minute."

She turned and opened the bedroom door. The room beyond was messy, dark. Adult.

She stepped inside.

The bed-that was the place to start. Karen got down on her hands and knees and pushed away the crumpled clothes and cigarette packs so she could take a look underneath. The shades were drawn down over the windows, yet just enough silver-gray light glowed around the edges to see by.

There wasn't much to see, though. Just more clutter.

A single shoe. Dad's aluminum softball bat, the one Mom kept around "for protection." An old People magazine. A torn wrapper with the word "Trojan" printed on it.

It suddenly occurred to Karen that she might not find what she was looking for. The thought scared her.

"What's down there?"

Karen looked over her shoulder. Her brother stood in the doorway, half-in half-out of the room.

"Nothing."

She stood and started toward the closet. To reach it, she had to step around a pile of dirty clothes as high as her waist.

The apartment had never been like this when Dad was alive. But after Mom had to start working two jobs-days at the Lawn Devil plant, evenings tending bar at the Toy Tiger Lounge-things changed.

And then Uncle/Cousin Rick showed up, and things didn't just change some more. They fell apart.

He appeared overnight, like Christmas presents or Easter eggs. One morning, Karen and Ronnie stumbled bleary-eyed from the tiny bedroom they shared and there he was. A complete stranger eating their Boo Berry at the kitchen table.

"Hey," he'd said through a mouthful of cereal. "Your mom's still asleep."

After another half-hearted bite-and a full minute of awkward silence-Rick dropped his spoon and stood up.

"I don't see how you can eat this c.r.a.p," he mumbled, and he stomped past the still-gaping kids and disappeared into their mother's bedroom, closing the door behind him.

He'd left the bowl, still filled with milk and soggy blue blobs, sitting on the table. That was The Rick System for dining and dishwashing: Dirty bowls, plates, cups and silverware were left out, encrusted with food, until there was nothing left to eat with. And when you reached that point, you got all your food from KFC and White Castle and ate it straight out of the box.

Cleaning (never), sleeping (late), bathing (when people noticed the smell)-soon it was all on The Rick System. Mom was on The Rick System. And it was making her seem less like Mom every day.

Dad used to warn Karen about "bad influences" at school, but she never really knew what he meant until she saw the effect Cousin Rick had on her mother. If there really were a Santa Claus, she knew what she'd ask him for. Not that the fat man would do it.

Santa gave bad people a lump of coal. He didn't drop them down abandoned mine shafts.

"What are you looking for?" Ronnie asked as Karen stepped up to the closet Mom and Rick now shared.

"You'll see."

But Karen wasn't sure he would. What if there was nothing to see? Could Cousin Rick have changed Mom that much?

She pushed aside one of the closet's sliding doors and got her answer.

"Come here," she said.

She turned to her brother and grinned.

Ronnie moved into the room slowly, cautiously, as if the floor was littered with land mines instead of dirty laundry. But then he saw what had put the smile on his sister's face, and he ran the rest of the way to the closet, plowing through heaps of wrinkled clothes as he went.

"The Death Star! The Death Star! The Death Star!"

Ronnie reached out for the box, ready to tear the heavy cardboard apart with his bare hands to get at the treasure pictured in color on the side: a Star Wars Death Star playset, the very thing he'd asked Santa for in the letter Mom helped him write two weeks before.

Ronnie stopped.

The very thing...and here it was in Mom's closet next to a Nerf football and a Shaun Ca.s.sidy alb.u.m and a Nancy Drew book and a bunch of plastic-wrapped socks and underwear.

Two tubes of brightly colored wrapping paper were propped up in the corner.

Karen watched her brother's face as he put it all together. Wonderment gave way to puzzlement gave way to disappointment.

And then finally: contentment.

No, there was no Santa Claus. But yes, there would be a Christmas . . . because their mother still loved them.

Ronnie dropped to his knees before the Death Star looking as reverent and awestruck as a shepherd in the manger.

"Last year, it was all under the bed." Karen knelt next to her brother and picked up the Shaun Ca.s.sidy LP-obviously a gift for her even though it was Leif Garrett she truly loved. "I found it by accident. Mom was getting rid of Dad's clothes and junk, and I . . . I guess I was looking for something I could keep."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

Karen shrugged. "You were too little. And you were still all sad about Dad."

"I'm still all sad about Dad."

Ronnie leaned in closer to the Death Star and started picking at the packing tape that sealed it in its box.

"Hey!" his sister barked, making him flinch. "You can't open it, dummy! We're not even supposed to be in here."

"But I wanna play with it," Ronnie whined.

"You can play with it after Christmas," Karen said, unconsciously imitating the flat tone and clipped diction of an exasperated adult. "And don't forget to look surprised when you unwrap it."

"But-"

"Do you want Rick to know we've been in here?"

"But-"

"Cuz he'll figure it out."

"But-"

"And then he'll be do it, I swear. What he said he would."

Ronnie nodded glumly . . . then reached out for the box again.

"But I wanna play with it."

Karen sighed. Fear didn't always work with Ronnie, and logic was no help whatsoever. What she needed now was a distraction.

"Hey, you know what?" she said. "I bet there's more presents in here. Maybe even something cooler than your Star Wars thing."

Ronnie looked at her skeptically, for what could be cooler than a Death Star playset? But he said, "Really?"

"Sure." Karen pointed into the darkness that swallowed the rest of the closet. "Back in there. Get out of the way and we can look."

"Well . . . ." Ronnie slowly dragged himself away from the toys. "Alright."

Karen stood and pulled the sliding doors toward her, revealing the other half of the closet-Cousin Rick's half, to judge by the leisure suits hanging there. Not that Karen had ever seen Rick in a suit. He favored loose, broad-collared polyester shirts and tight, white slacks. He used to be some kind of salesman, Mom had explained once, but now he'd "gone freelance," so he could dress however he wanted. Later, the kids asked him what his job was, but he just grinned and said, "Your Uncle Ricky's a desperado." He said it like it was a joke, but Karen and Ronnie didn't get it. When they didn't crack a smile, Rick told them to buzz off and mind their own bee's wax.

Karen didn't think there'd be any presents mixed in with his stuff. But she made a show of looking anyway, sliding aside suits and digging through the ta.s.seled loafers and stinky sneakers heaped up on the floor. Another minute or so and she'd contrive some reason for them to get out of there. Maybe a false alarm of the "Do you hear footsteps?" variety. Anything to get her brother away from the Death Star before he could open it up and totally give them away.

"Hey," Ronnie said. "What's that?"

He pointed at a dingy Purdue University sweatshirt at the back of the closet. Unlike the rest of the clothes spread around on the floor, it didn't look like it had been dropped and forgotten the second it was stripped off. It was actually spread out with something resembling care.

Just below the Purdue logo-a barrel-chested, mean-eyed man gripping a sledgehammer-the sweatshirt bulged as if straining to cover a big pot belly.

There was something under there. Something hidden in a half-a.s.sed way that seemed oh-so-very Rick.

"Go on," Ronnie said. "Look."

The little man on the sweatshirt glared at Karen hatefully. He had more muscles than Rick, that was for sure, but the look of surly contempt on his cartoon face-that was the same.

It should've served as a warning, a reminder that they hadn't actually "messed with" any of Rick's stuff yet. That it wasn't too late. Karen knew that.

And still she flipped the little man off and whipped the sweatshirt aside.