Dear Christmas: ******** you.
Christmas was a weird holiday in the Caffrey household. Mostly because when your dad was a reverend everyone was expecting him to be at church and on call for any and everything that came up that they could possibly need to talk about, not to mention the two services on Christmas day and the four on Christmas Eve. Good for him, Evie thought, but ******** everyone. She wanted her dad to herself, at least for the holiday, but she couldn’t even have breakfast this morning with him without waking up at 4am to get started, and even then, they didn’t get to have much of a conversation before someone called his cellphone, asking if he could come in to offer some counsel on a turn their divorce was taking.
The fact that her dad was always off helping other people before her usually ranged from a point of pride to a slight annoyance in the back of her brain, but today, she was pissed. It was Christmas! And, yes, other holidays were like this too, but this one was particularly rage inducing. Evelyn Caffrey found herself being a bit clingier to her dad and sister after that battle on the field. She legitimately thought she was going to die, and she had never wanted to tell her dad her secret any harder than she had before.
Not that she would. While she did entertain notions of her dad being like one of those badass priests in comic books harboring justified fugitives of society under the guise of the house of the lord. Except her dad would not be a bad a** comic book priest. He would flip his s**t about how she’s crazy and dangerous and then he would write her encouraging notes, make her cookies, and ship her off to her bitchy aunt’s house.
She busied herself with her own project. She needed to get more stuff for the food drive and preferably get a head start before she gussied up and went to pretend to be interested in her dad’s sermon. She had some clothes and cans to donate, some weird guy who ran a diner gave her pie filling, but she hardly thought that counted as food and honestly debated putting it in her box of stuff to haul over.
She wasn’t done today by a long shot, though. She was going to stand there next to the treats in the church lobby and guilt everyone. Everyone! It wasn’t like she hadn’t been spamming them with flyers warning them. And besides, were they really going to deny Charles Caffrey’s daughter?
At least she had something to distract her from the fact that her dad was totally AWOL for the sake of other people, that she almost died at a Christmas concert at the hands of a jaguar lady youma and really shouldn’t think about that, and Dana was being especially annoying about not getting to open presents until later after dinner, and how everyone she could possibly talk to was busy or mad about their family or their presents, or commercialism or something. She would put her energy into something useful. She was on a mission. The day was on.
Over the course of all these adventures, she belatedly noticed she had a text message from Ellie. An hour late, she quickly texted back, with a stubborn frown on her face, “No! Can’t you get any more?”
It was minutes after that reply that she realized she hadn’t been on Feliks’ case nearly as much and sent him a message as well. “How much stuff do you have for the food drive?” And started impatiently waiting for responses.
But about ten minutes later, she jumped al ittle and sent Ellie and Feliks a follow up “Oh, and Merry Christmas.”
She forgot other people actually had fun on these days. But seriously, <********> Christmas.
Christmas was a weird holiday in the Caffrey household. Mostly because when your dad was a reverend everyone was expecting him to be at church and on call for any and everything that came up that they could possibly need to talk about, not to mention the two services on Christmas day and the four on Christmas Eve. Good for him, Evie thought, but ******** everyone. She wanted her dad to herself, at least for the holiday, but she couldn’t even have breakfast this morning with him without waking up at 4am to get started, and even then, they didn’t get to have much of a conversation before someone called his cellphone, asking if he could come in to offer some counsel on a turn their divorce was taking.
The fact that her dad was always off helping other people before her usually ranged from a point of pride to a slight annoyance in the back of her brain, but today, she was pissed. It was Christmas! And, yes, other holidays were like this too, but this one was particularly rage inducing. Evelyn Caffrey found herself being a bit clingier to her dad and sister after that battle on the field. She legitimately thought she was going to die, and she had never wanted to tell her dad her secret any harder than she had before.
Not that she would. While she did entertain notions of her dad being like one of those badass priests in comic books harboring justified fugitives of society under the guise of the house of the lord. Except her dad would not be a bad a** comic book priest. He would flip his s**t about how she’s crazy and dangerous and then he would write her encouraging notes, make her cookies, and ship her off to her bitchy aunt’s house.
She busied herself with her own project. She needed to get more stuff for the food drive and preferably get a head start before she gussied up and went to pretend to be interested in her dad’s sermon. She had some clothes and cans to donate, some weird guy who ran a diner gave her pie filling, but she hardly thought that counted as food and honestly debated putting it in her box of stuff to haul over.
She wasn’t done today by a long shot, though. She was going to stand there next to the treats in the church lobby and guilt everyone. Everyone! It wasn’t like she hadn’t been spamming them with flyers warning them. And besides, were they really going to deny Charles Caffrey’s daughter?
At least she had something to distract her from the fact that her dad was totally AWOL for the sake of other people, that she almost died at a Christmas concert at the hands of a jaguar lady youma and really shouldn’t think about that, and Dana was being especially annoying about not getting to open presents until later after dinner, and how everyone she could possibly talk to was busy or mad about their family or their presents, or commercialism or something. She would put her energy into something useful. She was on a mission. The day was on.
Over the course of all these adventures, she belatedly noticed she had a text message from Ellie. An hour late, she quickly texted back, with a stubborn frown on her face, “No! Can’t you get any more?”
It was minutes after that reply that she realized she hadn’t been on Feliks’ case nearly as much and sent him a message as well. “How much stuff do you have for the food drive?” And started impatiently waiting for responses.
But about ten minutes later, she jumped al ittle and sent Ellie and Feliks a follow up “Oh, and Merry Christmas.”
She forgot other people actually had fun on these days. But seriously, <********> Christmas.
