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who’d peaked (not too high) in the eighties, I had a chance to read what Lily had writ en in the journal. I thought even Boomer would like the
Shril y story, although he’d probably feel real y bad for her, when I knew the truth: It was so much cooler to be the weird girl. I was get ing such a
sense of Lily and her twisted, perverse sense of humor, right down to that classic supercalifragiwant. In my mind, she was Lebkuchen Spice
—ironic, Germanic, sexy, and o beat. And, mein Got , the girl could bake a damn ne cookie … to the point that I wanted to answer her What do
you want for Christmas? with a simple More cookies, please!
But no. She warned me not to be a smart-ass, and while that answer was total y sincere, I was afraid she would think I was joking or, worse,
kissing up.
It was a hard question, especial y if I had to bat en down the sarcasm. I mean, there was the beauty pageant answer of world peace, although I’d
probably have to render it in the beauty pageant spel ing of world peas. I could play the boo-hoo orphan card and wish for my whole family to be
together, but that was the last thing I wanted, especial y at this late date.
Soon Col ation was upon us. Parts of it were fu
culture. But the love story was lacking. After al the marginal y feminist Disney heroines of the early to mid-nineties, this heroine was literal y a
blank piece of paper. Granted, she could fold herself into a paper airplane in order to take her stapler boyfriend on a romantic glide around a
magical conference room, and her nal rock-paper-scissors showdown with the hapless janitor showed brio of a sort … but I couldn’t fal for her
the way that Boomer and the stapler and most of the kids and parents in the audience were fal ing for her.
I wondered if what I real y wanted for Christmas was to nd someone who’d be the piece of paper to my stapler. Or, wait, why couldn’t I be the
piece of paper? Maybe it was a stapler I was after. Or the poor mouse pad, who was clearly in love with the stapler but couldn’t get him to give
her a second look. Al I’d managed to date so far was a series of pencil sharpeners, with the exception of So a, who was more like a pleasant
eraser.
I gured the only way for me to real y nd the meaning of my own personal Christmas needs was to leg on over to Madame Tussauds. Because
what bet er barometer could there be than a throng of tourists taking photos of wax statues of public gures?
I knew Boomer would be game for a eld trip, so after the stapler and the piece of paper were safely frolicking over the end credits (to the
dulcet tones of Celine Dion piping “You Supply My Love”), I shanghaied him from the lobby to Forty-second Street.
“Why are there so many people out here?” Boomer asked as we bobbed and weaved roughly forward.
“Christmas shopping,” I explained.
“Already? Isn’t it early to be returning things?”
I real y had no sense of how his mind worked.
The only time I had ever been in Madame Tussauds was the previous year, when three friends and I had tried to col ect the world record for
most suggestive posings with wax statues of B-list celebrities and historical gures. To be honest, it gave me the heebie-jeebies to go down on so
many wax gures—especial y Nicholas Cage, who already gave me the heebie-jeebies in real life. But my friend Mona wanted it to be a part of her
senior project. The guards didn’t seem to mind, as long as there was no physical contact. Which made me expound upon one of my earlier
theories, that Madame Tussaud had been a true madam, and had started her whole operation with a waxwork whorehouse somewhere near Paris,
Texas. Mona loved this theory, but we could nd no proof, and thus it did not transform into true scholarship.
A wax replica of Morgan Freeman was guarding the entrance, and I wondered if this was some kind of cosmic payback—that every time an
actor with a modicum of talent sold his soul to be in a big Hol ywood action picture of no redeeming social value, his sel out visage was struck in
wax and placed outside Madame Tussauds. Or maybe the people at Madame Tussauds gured that everyone loved Morgan Freeman, so who
wouldn’t want to pose with him for a quick snapshot before stepping inside?
Weirdly, the next two wax gures were Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson, con rming my sel out theory, and also making me
wonder whether Madame Tussauds was deliberately keeping al the black statues in the lobby. Very strange. Boomer didn’t seem to notice this.
wonder whether Madame Tussauds was deliberately keeping al the black statues in the lobby. Very strange. Boomer didn’t seem to notice this.
Instead, he was acting as if he were having real celebrity sightings, exclaiming with glee every time he saw someone—“Wow, it’s Hal e Berry!”
I wanted to scream bloody murder over the price of admission—I made a note to tel Lily that the next time she wanted me to fork over twenty-
ve bucks to see a wax statue of Honest Abe, she should slip some cash into the journal to cover my expenses.
Inside, it was a total freak show. When I’d visited before, it had been nearly empty. But clearly the holidays had caused a lot of family-time
desperation, so there were al sorts of crowds around the unlikeliest of gures. I mean, was Uma Thurman real y worth jostling for? Jon Bon Jovi?
To be honest, the whole place depressed me. The wax gures were lifelike, for sure. But, hel , you say wax and I think melt. There’s some kind
of permanence to a real statue. Not here. And not only because of the wax. You had to know that in some corner of this building, there was a
closet ful of discarded statues, the people whose spotlight had come and gone. Like the members of *NSYNC whose initials weren’t JT; or al the
Backstreet Boys and Spice Girls. Were people real y buddying up to the Seinfeld sculpture anymore? Did Keanu Reeves ever stop by his own statue,
just to remember when people cared?
“Look, Miley Cyrus!” Boomer cal ed, and at least a dozen preteen girls fol owed him over to gawk at this poor girl frozen in an awkward (if
lucrative) adolescence. It didn’t even look like Miley Cyrus—there was something a lit le o , so it looked like Miley Cyrus’s backwater cousin Riley,
dressing up and trying to pretend to be Miley. Behind her, the Jonas Brothers were frozen mid-jam. Didn’t they have to know that the Closet of
Forgot en Statues would cal to them someday?
Of course, before I found Honest Abe, I needed to gure out what I wanted for Christmas.
A pony.
An unlimited MetroCard.
A promise that Lily’s uncle Sal would never be al owed to work around children again.
A swank lime-green couch.
A new thinking cap.
It seemed I was incapable of coming up with a serious answer. What I real y wanted for Christmas was for Christmas to go away. Maybe Lily
would understand this … but maybe she wouldn’t. I’d seen even the hardest-edge girls go soft for Santa. I couldn’t fault her for believing, because I
had to imagine it was nice to have that il usion stil intact. Not the belief in Santa, but the believe that a single holiday could usher in goodwil
toward man.
“Dash?”
I looked up, and there was Priya, with at least two younger brothers in tow.
“Hey, Priya.”
“Is this her?” Boomer asked, somehow diverting his at ention long enough from the Jackie Chan display to make it awkward for me.
“No, this is Priya,” I said. “Priya, this is my friend Boomer.”
“I thought you were in Sweden,” Priya said. I couldn’t tel if she was irritated at me or irritated at the way one of her brothers was stretching out