I let the minutes pass, but by thinking about them, I make them pass slowly. This is not my house, and I am caught in the knowledge that it never will be. I half expect Lana to come back out, to tell me to go home. Why are you still here? she’d ask, and the only answer I could give would be her brother’s name.

I know he wanted me here, but why did it have to be like this? I want him to introduce me as his boyfriend. I want to be sitting at the dinner table, making jokes with Riley that Lana can’t help but laugh at too. I want them to see me holding his hand. I want to be holding his hand. I want him to love me when I’m naughty and when I’m nice. I want. I want. I want.

I am worried about being in love, because it involves asking so much. I am worried that my life will never fit into his. That I will never know him. That he will never know me. That we get to hear the stories, but never get to hear the full truth.

“Enough,” I say to myself. I need to say it out loud, because I need to really hear it.

I listen for Riley. I listen for Lana. I hope they’re not listening for Santa, or for me.

I make it down the hall. I make it past their doors. Connor’s room is in sight.

It’s only when I am standing in front of it, only when I am about to let myself inside, that I sense there’s someone else in the hall with me. I turn around and see her standing in her doorway—Connor’s mother. Her eyes are nearly closed, her hair limp. She’s wearing a Tennessee Williams nightgown that makes me feel sad and awkward to see it. It hangs lifeless on her body, worn too often, too long. I should not be seeing her like this, the deep dark haze of it.

I want to be as much of a ghost to her as she is to me. But there can be no hiding. I am about to explain. I am about to tell her the whole thing. But she stops me by speaking first.

“Where have you been?” she asks.

I suddenly feel I could never explain enough. I could never give the right answer.

“I’m not here,” I say.

She nods, understanding this. I think there will be more, but there isn’t any more. She turns back to her room and closes the door behind her.

I know I should not have seen this. Even if she forgets, I will know. And for a moment, I find myself feeling sorry for Santa. I can only imagine what he sees in his trespasses. But, of course, those would all be people he doesn’t really know. I have to imagine it’s less sad with strangers.

I am not going to tell Connor any of this. I am just going to say hello and say good night. I sneak into his room and close the door with as little sound as possible. I want him to have been awake the whole time, wishing me well. I want him to greet me the moment the coast is clear. But all that welcomes me is the sound of his sleeping. There is enough light coming in from the window that the room is a blue-dark shadow. I can see him there in his bed. I can see the rise and fall of his breathing. His phone is on the ground, fallen from his hand. I know it was there in case I needed him.

I have never seen him sleeping before. I have never seen him like this, enfolded in an unthreatening somewhere else. My heart is drawn, almost involuntarily, toward him. I see him asleep and feel I could love him for a very long time.

But here I am, standing outside of it. Even as I love him, I feel self-conscious. I am the interruption. I am the piece that’s not a dream. I am here because I climbed through the chimney instead of knocking on the door.

I take off my hat and unstick my beard. I take off my boots and move them aside. I unfasten my stomach and let it fall to the floor. I pull the red curtain from around my body, pull it over my head. I shed the pants, feel the cold air on my legs. I do this all quietly. It’s only as I am folding Santa’s clothes into a safe red square that I hear Connor say my name.

It should be enough as I step over to him and see the welcome in his eyes. It should be enough to see his hair pointing in all different directions, and the fact that there are cowboys on his pajama pants and he is telling me he can’t believe he fell asleep. It should be enough that he is beckoning me now—it should be enough to join him in the bed, blanket pulled aside. It should be enough to feel his hand on my shoulder, his lips lightly on my lips. But something is not right. I still feel that, in some way, I should not be here.

“I’m an imposter,” I whisper.

“Yes,” he whispers back. “But you’re the right imposter.”

Without my Santa suit, I am shivering. Without my Santa suit, I am just me, and I am in his house after midnight on Christmas Day. Without my Santa suit, I am real, and I want this to be reality. I want this to be the way things are, or at least how they will be.

Connor feels me shiver. Without a word, he wraps the blanket around us. Our home within his home. Our world within this world.

Outside, there may be reindeer that fly across the moon. Outside, there may be questions with the wrong answers and lies that are better to tell. Outside, it may be cold. But I am here. I am here, and he is here, and everything I need to know is that I will hold him and he will hold me until I am warm again, until I know I belong.

Fairmont’s second annual Krampuslauf felt a little bit like a parade and a lot like a zombie crawl, except instead of the undead, we were dressed up like Saint Nick’s creepy buddy, the Krampus. Fairmont wasn’t a place where we’d usually spend the afternoon. It was full of overpriced boutiques, overpriced coffee, and Mossley Academy, which was full of overpriced assholes.

Everything wrong with Fairmont was exemplified in the Krampuslauf. It was for charity and came with free hot chocolate. They had turned the whole thing into something completely against the true spirit of Krampusnacht, which ought to be about scaring the living shit out of people, running around with torches and whips, screaming in the faces of crying children so they’d be good for goodness sake. Not hot chocolate. Not charity. The Fairmont Krampuslauf was exactly the kind of thing that rich people like Roth did. They took something awesome and sanitized it until it became something godawful.

Despite how Roth thought all Penny’s friends were ignorant, scum-sucking dirtbags because we went to an overcrowded public high school, I was smart enough to research Krampus. He’s an interesting guy, the son of Hel in Norse mythology. Older than the devil, too, so if they seem alike, it’s because the devil bit Krampus’s style. I bet Roth doesn’t know any of that. I bet Roth just likes him because he looks cool.

I had hoped Penny would realize me and her and definitely Wren didn’t belong, and then we could go home or maybe do some holiday shopping at the good mall, since we’d driven all the way over. But, of course, Penny didn’t. She craned her neck, looking for Roth and his other girlfriend, the one who was rich and went to Mossley Academy and who Penny didn’t want to believe actually existed.

“This is a perfect chance to find out,” she’d said when she’d explained to me about the flyer she’d seen in Roth’s room, with the date circled in Sharpie. “We’ll be in disguise.”

That part was fun. We made horns out of papier-mâché—ripping up old newspapers and mixing them with flour and water. The resulting gluey slop had stuck in our hair, clumped on our clothes, and made six sweet-looking horns.

Penny’s were the sharp, spiky kind that stuck up from the forehead. Wren’s were the curved kind that formed part of a spiral, like a ram. And mine were the kind that shot straight back over my head. We painted them silver, tipped with red, and raided our closets for demonic clothes. I found my grandmother’s weird old shaggy fur cape. Wren has some crazy spiked shoes that don’t have heels and look like hooves. And Penny has a red thrift-store Venetian mask with a long, phallic nose to keep Roth from recognizing her. I thought we looked pretty damn festive.