Laci squinted at the screen through her matted dark brown bangs: a televised village covered with snow and holly, surrounded by pine trees and ringing with the stereo sound of a Holly Jolly Christmas. "When I grow up I want to be an elf."

"You don't want to be Santa?" her mom asked.

"No!" She was adamant. "I want to be an elf."

"Santa gets to fly all over the world and see happy children."

"But he doesn't make the toys." Laci pointed at the elves on the TV, singing and dancing while they cobbled together little trains and dolls. "The kids are happy because they have toys. If he didn't have the elves they wouldn't have any toys."

Smart girl, her mom thought, as she cleared the dishes from the dinner table.

. . .

Three years later, as Laci walked to school through the slushy sidewalk, she hummed Holly Jolly Christmas to herself and looked for the lights of decorated trees from inside her neighbors' houses. Christmas was still three weeks away, but every window on the street seemed to have a paper garland or wreath strung up on it. She loved the beautiful, festive decorations. The way the whole world put itself on pause for a month to just be nice to each other and give each other presents. Last night, she had made a bunch of little friendship bracelets with red and green beads for her classmates, but she was saving those for Christmas. (She had tried this last year, too, but nobody had appreciated her homemade presents when their parents gave them PlayStations and Nerf guns. Obviously, the solution was to just make more presents.)

In homeroom, they were learning the story of Saint Nicholas. Apparently he came at night and put candy in your shoes, but she had never seen that before, so it might not be a real story. The teacher had them all take off their shoes and trace them on paper for Saint Nicholas.

Laci meticulously dragged her pencil around her shoe, a sky-blue sneaker, and colored in the outline with blue and purple glitter. She was making art.

"Hey, look!" The voice came from a few desks down. "We have the same shoes!"

She looked up to see a boy with reddish-blond hair and marker stains on his fingers. Sure enough, he had the same color of sneaker as her, with the little white designs on the heels that always reminded her of wings. "But that's a girl's shoe," she said curiously.

"I got it from my big sister," he answered glibly. "She went to the hospital."

"She what?"

"But it's okay because they said she'll be out by New Year's. It's sad she's missing Christmas though. I'm going to give her all my presents."

Laci thought about that. Then she thought about the bracelets taking up space in her backpack, and all the other things she wanted to make for her classmates. And she thought, also, that maybe they would never be happy with little things like arts and crafts, and putting in her effort to seek their approval was pointless. "You don't have to do that," she said. "I can help."

His eyes widened. "You're that girl who gave everyone bracelets last year," he said. "Chase threw his in the trash. But he's not nice."

"No, he's not," she agreed. "What's your name?"

"Cody." He smiled and reached out his hand. "Nice to meet you."

"I'm Laci." She had the feeling that this was going to be the start of a great friendship. And she was right.