I worked my way past the Candy Shoppe and Ice Cream Parlor and Barbie Gallery, upstairs past all the boy toys of guns and Lego warlands, through the mazes of people and products, until I finally landed in the Collation corner. “Please,” I said to the salesclerk. “Is there a Muppet workshop here?”

“Hardly,” she spat. “That’s in April.” She said this with all the contempt of Well, duh, who doesn’t know that?

“Sorry!” I said. I hoped someone’s parents sent her to Fiji next Christmas.

I was about to give up and leave the store, my belief in the Moleskine defeated, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and saw a girl who looked college age, dressed like Hermione Potter. I assumed she was a store employee.

“Are you the girl looking for the Muppet workshop?” she asked.

“I am?” I said. Don’t know why I said it like a question, other than I wasn’t sure I wanted Hermione knowing my business. I’ve always resented Hermione, because I wanted to be her so badly and she never seemed to appreciate as much as I thought she should that she got to be her. She got to live at Hogwarts and be friends with Harry and kiss Ron, which was supposed to happen to me.

“Come with me,” Hermione demanded. Since it would be dumb not to do what a smarty like Hermione instructed, I let her guide me to the farthest, darkest corner of the store, where the stuff no one cared about anymore, like Silly Putty and Boggle games, was. She stopped us at a giant rack of stuffed giraffes and tapped on the wall behind the animals. Suddenly the wall opened, because it was in fact a door camouflaged by the giraffes (giraffe-o-flaged?–must OED that term).

I followed Hermione inside to a small closet-like room where a worktable with Muppet heads and parts (eyes, noses, glasses, shirts, hair, etc.) was set up. A teenage boy who looked like a human Chihuahua—excitably compact yet larger than life—sat at a card table, apparently waiting for me.

“You’re HER!” he said, pointing to me. “You don’t look at all like I expected even if I didn’t really imagine how you’d look!” His voice even sounded like a Chihuahua’s, quivery and hyperactive at the same time, but somehow endearing.

My mother always taught me it was impolite to point.

Since she was in Fiji on her own covert mission and wouldn’t be here to scold, I pointed back at the boy. “I’m ME!” I said.

Hermione shushed us. “Please lower your voices and be discreet! I can only let you have the room for fifteen minutes.” She inspected me suspiciously. “You don’t smoke, do you?”

“Of course not!” I said.

“Don’t try anything. Think of this closet as an airline lavatory. Go about your business, but know that smoke detectors and other devices are monitoring.”

The boy said, “Terrorist alert! Terrorist alert!”

“Shut up, Boomer,” Hermione said. “Don’t scare her.”

“You don’t know me well enough to call me Boomer,” Boomer (apparently) said. “My name’s John.”

“My instructions said Boomer, Boomer,” said Hermione.

“Boomer,” I interrupted. “Why am I here?”

“Do you have a notebook to return to someone?” he asked.

“I might. What’s his name?” I asked.

“Forbidden information!” Boomer said.

“Really?” I sighed.

“Really!” he said.

I looked to Hermione, hoping to invoke some girl power solidarity. She shook her head at me. “Nuh-uh,” she said. “Not getting it out of me.”

“Then what’s the point of all this?” I asked.

“It’s the Make Your Own Muppet point!” Boomer said. “Designed just for you. Your special friend. Arranged this for you.”

My day had been seriously suck so far, and despite the seemingly good intentions, I wasn’t sure I felt like playing. I’ve never desired a cigarette in my life, but suddenly I wanted to light one up, if only to set off the alarm that might get me out of this situation.

There was too much not to think about. I was tired from not thinking about it all. I wanted to go home and ignore my brother and watch Meet Me in St. Louis and cry when sweet little Margaret O’Brien bashes the snowman to bits (best part). I wanted to not think about Fiji or Florida or anything—or anyone—else. If “Boomer” wouldn’t reveal Snarl’s name or probably anything else about him, what was the point of my being here?

As if he knew I might need a morale boost, Boomer handed me a box of Sno-Caps. My favorite movie candy. “Your friend,” Boomer said. “He sent this for you. As a deposit on a later gift. Potentially.”

Okay okay okay, I’d play. (Snarl sent me candy! Oh, how I might love him!)

I sat down at the worktable. I decided to make a Muppet that looked like how I imagined Snarl looked. I chose a blue head and body, some black fur styled like an early Beatles hairdo, some Buddy Holly black glasses (not unlike my own), and a purple bowling shirt. I glued on a pink Grover nose shaped like a fuzzy golf ball. Then I cut some red felt to shape the lips like a snarl, and placed that onto the mouth position.

I remembered when I was ten—not too long ago, now that I thought about it—and loved going to the American Girl store beauty parlor to get my doll’s hair fixed up, and how one time I asked the store manager if I could possibly design my own American Girl. I’d already figured my girl out—LaShonda Jones, a twelve-year-old roller boogie champion from Skokie, Illinois, circa 1978. I knew her history and what clothes she’d wear and everything. But when I asked the store manager if they would help me create LaShonda right there inside the American Girl palace, the manager looked at me with such an expression of sacrilege you’d have thought I was a junior revolutionary politely asking if I might blow up Mattel, Hasbro, Disney, and Milton Bradley headquarters at the same time.

Even if his name was classified information, I wanted to hug Snarl. He’d inadvertently made one of my secret dreams come true—allowing me to build my own doll while in a toy mecca headquarters.

“Do you play soccer?” Hermione asked me while she folded away the clothes I didn’t use for my Muppet. Her folding was so expert I wondered if she was a store employee on loan from the Gap.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Thought so,” she said. “I’m a freshman at college now, but last year, when I was a senior, I think my high school played yours. I remember you because your team’s not that great, but you’re such a power goalie it didn’t matter much that the rest of your team seemed more interested in touching up their lip gloss than playing, because you were so determined not to let the other side score. You’re a captain, right? So was I.”

I was about to ask Hermione what school she played for when she dropped this one on me: “You’re different than Sofia. But maybe more interesting-looking. Is that your school uniform shirt you’re wearing underneath that reindeer cardigan? Weird. Sofia wears the most gorgeous clothes. From Spain. Do you speak Catalan?”

“No.”

I said no in Catalan, but since the word sounds the same in English, Hermione didn’t notice.

I was starting to wonder what language they spoke in Fiji.

“Time’s up!” Hermione said.

I held up the Muppet. “I christen thee Snarly,” I told it. I handed Snarly over to the guy named Boomer. “Please give this to He of the Unknowable Name.” I also handed over the red Moleskine. “This too. And don’t read the notebook, Boomer. It’s personal.”

“I won’t!” Boomer promised.

“I think he will,” Hermione murmured.

I had so many questions.

Why can’t I know his name?

What does he look like?

Who the heck is Sofia and why does she speak Catalan?

What am I even doing here?

I figured I would get answers in the notebook, if Snarl decided to continue our game.

Since Grandpa wasn’t here this year to take me to my favorite Christmas sight—the way way waaaayyyyy over-the-top decorated houses in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, which this time every year were lit up to such an extreme that the neighborhood was probably visible from space—I figured the least Snarl could do would be to show up himself and tell me about the experience. I’d already dared him to in the notebook, leaving him a street name in Dyker Heights and these words: The Nutcracker House.

I realized I wanted to add something to the instructions I’d written in the notebook, so I tried to take it back from Boomer.

“Hey!” he said, trying to block me from my own Moleskine. “That’s mine.”

“It’s not yours,” Hermione said. “You’re just the messenger, Boomer.”

Soccer captains look out for one another.

“I just want to add something,” I told Boomer. I gently tried to extract the notebook from Boomer’s grip, but he wasn’t letting go. “I’ll give it back. Promise.”

“Promise?” he said.

“I just said ‘Promise’!” I said.

Hermione said, “She said ‘Promise’!”

“Promise?” Boomer repeated.

I was starting to see how John got his name.

Hermione snatched the notebook from Boomer’s grip and handed it over to me. “Hurry, before he freaks. This is a lot of responsibility for him.”

Quickly, after the words The Nutcracker House, I added a line to the instructions:

Do bring Snarly Muppet. Or don’t.

seven

–Dash–

December 24th/December 25th

Boomer refused to tell me a thing.

“Was she tall?”

He shook his head.

“So she was short?”

“No—I’m not telling you.”

“Pretty?”

“Not telling.”

“Hellaciously homely?”

“I wouldn’t tell you even if I knew what that meant.”

“Was her blond hair blocking her eyes?”

“No—wait, you’re trying to trick me, aren’t you? I’m not saying anything except that she wanted me to give this to you.”

Along with the notebook, there was … a Muppet?

“It looks like Animal and Miss Piggy had sex,” I said. “And this was the spawn.”

“My eyes!” Boomer cried. “My eyes! I can’t stop seeing it now that you’ve said it!”

I looked at the clock.

“You should probably get home before they start serving dinner,” I said.

“Will your mom and Giovanni be home soon?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Christmas hug!” he called out. And immediately I was enmeshed in what could only be called a Christmas hug.

I knew this was supposed to raise the temperature of my cockles. But nothing associated with the culture of Christmas could really do that for me. Not in a humbug sense—I still hugged Boomer like I meant every last squeeze. But mostly I was ready to have the apartment to myself again.

“So I’ll see you the day after Christmas for that party, right?” Boomer asked. “Is that the twenty-seventh?”

“The twenty-sixth.”

“I should write it down.”

He grabbed a pen off the table by our door and wrote THE 26TH on his arm.

“Don’t you have to write down what’s on the twenty-sixth?” I asked.

“Oh, no. I’ll remember that. It’s your girlfriend’s party!”

I could have corrected him, but I knew I’d only have to do it again later.

Once Boomer was safely out of the building, I luxuriated in the silence. It was Christmas Eve, and I had nowhere to be. I kicked off my shoes. Then I kicked off my pants. Amused by this, I took off my shirt. And my underwear. I walked from room to room, naked as the day I was born, only without the blood and amniotic fluid. It was strange—I’d been home alone plenty of times before, but I’d never walked around naked. It was a little chilly, but it was also kind of fun. I waved to the neighbors. I had some yogurt. I put on my mom’s copy of the Mamma Mia soundtrack and spun around a little. I did some light dusting.