Home for ChristmasBy Mackenzie Lirakis

“Hey. I’m here, I don’t know if I can stay parked

where I am though.”

The answer came from above, “I’m not sure

either, just stay there!”

Zack shut off his phone and looked up towards

the windows of the apartment building he was sitting

in front of, but Charlie was already on his way down

the stairs. Moments later he emerged and Zack gave

him a half handed wave.

“Just throw your shit in the back.”

“I heard it was gonna snow.”

“Nah, it won’t snow.”

“Is my stuff gonna get thrown from the truck?”

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“Nah, it won’t get thrown. Now can I get the

hell of Boston before Christmas Eve please?”

Charlie overcame his bag-damage-phobia and

threw the big duffle bag in the back of Zack’s Toyota

Tacoma. Zack watched through the rearview mirror.

He hadn’t seen Charlie since the middle of summer

break. Zack had come home from his summer

internship for a brief week in the middle of July.

Charlie still looked the same.

“Have you gotten taller?”

“What?” Charlie realized his gullibility, “Just

shut up and drive the car.”

Hempton, New Hampshire was a two hour drive

from Boston. Familiar signs and bridges became

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more and more prevalent with every mile. Zack

chanced a side glance towards Charlie. His entire

torso was turned towards the window, his face

practically welded to the glass. Zack smiled in his

mind. Charlie was just as excited to be driving back

as he was. And probably just as secretly excited to

see Zack as Zack was secretly excited to see him.

“Have you talked to Jasper?”

“Not since the end of the summer. I’m guessing

he’s not going to be too hard to find though. You?”

“I saw him for maybe five minutes the day after

Thanksgiving.”

“Oh yea, how was Thanksgiving this year, I was

in New Jersey.”

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“It was dead man, I was home for two and a half

days and I could have left earlier. No one was

around. Except Jasper, ofcourse.”

“Ofcourse.”

Charlie slid his glasses off his nose and began

cleaning them with his shirt. Zack couldn’t help but

laugh. Charlie was one of those incredible situations

where the kid’s an enormous dork, yet

simultaneously a pretty popular kid in high school

and afterwards. Everyone had liked him.

“Are those Harry Potter’s glasses?”

“ Well, you’re the expert on Harry Potter

apparently, so I guess you’d know .”

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“Harry Potter and the Kid Who Stole His

Glasses, volume 701--- I think a bird just shit on your

duffel bag.”

It didn’t and Charlie knew it, but Zack knew that

a small flare of panic had popped up in Charlie’s

mind.

The ground became increasingly covered in

snow as they grew closer. Hempton was a mere

thirty minutes from the Maine border, and seemingly

a world away from everywhere else. They drove

down main street and the emotion that Zack always

felt when he came home was flooding back into him,

the strange kind of nostalgia, a familiarity paralleled

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with a feeling of not having returned to this world in

a hundred years.

Zack pulled up in front of Charlie’s house at 8

pm.

“You going out tonight?”

“I dunno, I’ll probably give Jasper a call and see

what’s up.”

“Yea, let me know. Thanks for the ride.”

A an hour or two later Zack was getting into his

car for the second time that night and driving into

town. Zack’s finger was on the call button when the

phone went off in his hands. Jasper had beat him to it

by a matter of seconds.

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“Where are you?” Jasper gave demands rather

than greetings when he made calls.

“Who’s this?”

“You’re a dick. Get to the ‘Donkey.”

“On my way there, is Charlie with you?”

“He picked me up. See you.”

And he hung up. Jasper didn’t do goodbyes,

either.

At the very end of Main Street was the Twisted

Donkey. No one knew why it was called that but it

had been there since the dawn of time. It was a tiny

bar that everyone in town was familiar with, a

country version of Cheers.

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The SUV Charlie borrowed from his mother was

parked outside, and as Zack pulled up he saw Jasper

pulling some sort of stunt at the Donkey’s entrance as

Charlie watched.

Zack was two feet away from them when he saw

what Jasper was doing. True to form, he was

hunched over the three foot tall all-weather gray

donkey lawn ornament that stood at the entrance of

the bar as a decoration.

“We’ve been over this man, it’s glued to the

ground. Let it rest.”

Jasper spun around, a little unbalanced, at the

sound of Zack’s voice. He hadn’t shaved recently

but it added to Jasper’s signature air of mischief, and

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did not take away from his ever-present immaturity.

The decrepit and torn Red Sox cap he always wore

was far back on his head at a slant, and he had on his

usual wardrobe of torn up paint-stained jeans and a

dark green Carhartt sweatshirt. Basically Jasper

looked the same.

Jasper had tried before to steal the donkey. Once

senior year of high school, and once last summer.

The first time he discovered that it was attached to

the ground and gave up, the second time he had

forgotten about what he had learned the first time and

had tried to yank it free from the ground for nearly

half an hour.

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“That damned donkey is stuck pretty good,

Zack,” He removed something from his sweatshirt

pocket, grinning his Cheshire cat grin, “But this time

I’ve come prepared.”

What he had in his hand was a very small

carpenter’s saw. It had a black handle and a very dull

looking blade. He held it up as if it were Excalibur

and stumbled slightly backwards again.

“You’re in no condition to be handling sharp

objects.” Charlie half joked.

“You just sit tight and relax Chucky, and I’ll

handle this just fine.” It didn’t really make sense but

Jasper rarely did.

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He sawed away at the four legs of the Twisted

Donkey’s mascot as Zack and Charlie watched.

Miraculously, after seemingly ages, the donkey gave

way and in an instant Jasper was waving it drunkenly

over his head, half sawed off hooves and all. The

saw was tossed aside as Jasper realized that the

unattainable had finally been attained. He let out a

triumphant sort of howl, but cut it short, as he

realized that he was dangerously close to his victim’s

home.

“Now what?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t really think past cutting

the fucking thing loose.” He turned to Zack. “Now

what?”

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“Well I don’t know, what do you want to do,

take it home and snuggle it?”

“Let’s put it in your truck for now.”

Zack took the donkey from him and tossed into

the bed of the Tacoma.

“Be gentle with her!... Someone’s gonna see it in

there and try to steal it.”

“Nah no one will steal it…No one wants to steal

a toy donkey Jasper…Except for you

apparently...Who’s inside?”

“Everyone. Let’s go in…so long as you swear to

me that Donkey won’t get stolen.”

The Twisted Donkey was a bizarre version of a

high school cafeteria. Zack’s high school cafeteria.

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It was brightly lit for a bar, with large wooden tables

all throughout the place. At the middle tables sat all

the people from Hempton Highschool who had

graduated ahead of Zack and never made it out of

town. The proverbial townies. A small sea of Red

Sox Caps and steel-toed timberland boots. They

glared at everyone younger than them, suspicious of

everyone’s drinking legality. Zack and his friends

were finally 21, but he had drank there plenty of

times when he hadn’t been, and there were plenty of

others among the crowd that definitely hadn’t even

hit 20 yet.

In the corner tables sat all the under aged,

nervous yet exhilarated. They had stolen their older

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sister’s IDs or had a roommate in their freshmen

dorms that could work wonders with photo shop and

charged forty bucks per fake. At the bar sat Zack’s

people. All of them twenty-one or twenty-two, they

were the small handful of those remaining from his

graduating high school class. Zack, Charlie and

Jasper joined the rest and began to catch up with old

friends.

It was past two when the last of the crowd was

hustled out of the place by a very tired and annoyed

staff. Zack, Jasper and Charlie were among the

remnants. Charlie got out his keys…he would

always be counted on to limit himself to two beers

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when he knew he could rely on no one else to do the

same.

Zack was stumbling almost as much as Jasper at

this point.

“Coulda getta ride home?”

“Waitta minute, Chuck! The donkey, lemme jus’

grab it b’fore we leave.”

Jasper took the donkey from the truck, which

would be abandoned until morning when Zack could

retrieve it in a sober state.

“We could stay out ya know,” Jasper said as he

crawled into Charlie’s car, “Go to the Quarry?”

“No Jasper,” Charlie and Zack said in unison.

They were used to his constant pestering of urging

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the evening on. Jasper would always be the last to

want to go home.

A little while later Zack and Charlie watched as

he marched up the snowy driveway to his house with

the Donkey tucked under his arm. It seemed to

steady his balance. TO BE CONTINUED…

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