Alina already knows that this Christmas will be bullshit even before they wake up earlier than she ever has, before they pack their clothes into their little plastic suitcases, before they pour the cookies from the second-best bakery in the neighborhood into tupperware to make believe they baked them, before they all slouch down the six flights of stairs in their building and slink down into the subway, before the train doors clunk open and they scramble out into the Midtown haze of buskers screaming holiday songs to tourists, before they lose David for a minute in the Duane Reade and she sees that their mother looks too tired and gray to be scared about anything anymore, before they meet him, this old man who Alina barely remembers, standing dumbstruck right in front of the sign that David stumbles to read aloud as PORT AU-THO-RI-TY BUS STATION.….

To be published in Kozy Krampus in September 2025.