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Unwrapped Presents

Author: Ali Parker
last update Last Updated: 2024-10-29 19:42:56

Lanie

“Ring it, Lanie,” Mom encouraged me.

Reaching forward, I rang the doorbell of the house half a block away from my parents’. The rest of the caroling group—mostly friends and neighbors of my mom’s, and none of them under fifty—bustled in excitement.

Footsteps sounded on the other side of the door, and then it opened, a white-haired man looking at us all in surprise.

“One, two,” Mom called out, and all six of us burst into a rendition of Jingle Bells. I mumbled along, hunching down in my jacket and wishing this was all over.

I just wanted to go back to my apartment, back to the bathrobe I’d lived in since school got out, and back to all the depression I’d been allowing myself to wallow in.

“Sing,” Mom hissed between her teeth, knocking her shoulder against mine.

I forced a smile and picked up the tune. The white-haired man was nodding and smiling, enjoying the show enough for the whole neighborhood.

“See?” Mom said to me after we wrapped up our three songs and were carefully stepp
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