Chapter 7: Rule One

By the next evening I had stopped staring at the four digits.

Ellie had taken my phone and hidden it again.

"You're coming to the market," she said. "You're going to eat something fried and look at lights."

Bayfield's Christmas market ran along three blocks of the main street.

White bulbs hung over the road, and wooden stalls sold wool hats, honey and hot cider.

Ellie had a stall of her own at the end.

It was stacked with cinnamon rolls and spiced loaves under a hand-lettered sign.

People kept stopping to say hello to her by name.

A woman in a purple scarf pressed a paper cup of cider into my hand without asking who I was.

"Any friend of Ellie's," she said, and moved on.

Nobody in this town had ever heard of the cabin.

Nobody had ever asked me for a card.

I stood by the stall and watched the lights swing.

Something in my chest felt different, and it took me a moment to name it.

I was warm.

"Ring toss!" Ellie shouted at the next booth. "Stian's losing to a ten-year-old."

I walked over.

Stian stood in front of a row of bottles with three plastic rings in his big hand.

A very small girl in a pink hat watched him with enormous patience.

"Your technique is bad," the girl told him.

"It's a hard game."

"I did it first try."

"That's luck."

"It's skill," the girl said.

His first ring bounced off a bottle and rolled into the snow.

The second hit the stall post.

I started laughing, and I could not stop.

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