A Whole Day Until Thanksgiving
A Holiday Story
Susie could hardly believe that she had to wait a whole day until Thanksgiving. School had been out since Friday and she had already read all of the books she’d planned to read over break. Her little brother hadn’t, but he was only seven.
They’d moved recently. Back in September. It felt like ages ago. September was ages ago. Susie had only been eight in September and now she was nine. Her parents hadn’t finished unpacking all of the stuff from their old house, and there were still a few boxes that hadn’t been opened. There was one box that was taller than her father, and it was filled with something soft. Susie guessed it was clothes. She used to climb on top of it and dance until her brother, James, tried to climb on top of it and fell off and her parents said if she ever climbed on top of it again Santa wouldn’t give her a single present for Christmas that year. After that, she wouldn’t even go in the same room as the box.
But then, on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, her mother told her that she and Susie’s father had unpacked the box.
“It’s free if you want to play with it until we have to leave it at the side of the road.”
Between Susie and her brother, there was much rejoicing at this announcement. Susie was almost old enough to suspect that her parents considered it a fair trade: Susie and James would play with the box until it was broken down enough to fit into the recycling bin. They got a free toy. It kept them occupied for a little while, and when they were done their parents wouldn’t have to go to the trouble of breaking down the box.
Susie couldn’t wait to play with the box.
When you’re a kid, there’s nothing more exciting than an empty box. You can go inside the box. If you’re small, you can even stand on one end of the box and it will sag, but it will take your weight. When there’s a box to play with, other toys are forgotten. Especially if it’s a big box. This one was long and rectangular. James could go in one end of it and Susie could go in the other end and they could meet in the middle and their parents couldn’t see either of them. This amused them to no end, until Susie realized that James was talking so loudly that he’d given away their location. If she’d thought about it for longer, she probably would have realized that their mother and father had figured it out on their own.
Susie enlisted James’s help in turning the box into a fort. He wasn’t much help, because he didn’t do what she said, but Susie couldn’t build the fort by herself and she didn’t have anyone else to play with. Eventually, James got hungry and wandered off to find their mother and ask for something to eat. By this time, there were several holes in the box, but one side had partially detached and formed into a doorway. There were also several scribblings in blue pen on the side of the box, because James had said some dragons would make the fort more easily defended and he’d only had a blue pen. Susie couldn’t see any dragons, just a mass of ink, but she decided if their mother asked she’d say they were blue turkeys for Thanksgiving.
“No, James, can’t you see I’m on a video call? Besides, you just ate lunch two hours ago. Go ask your father. He’s not doing anything right now.”
Susie decided maybe now wasn’t the best time to tell her mother about the blue turkeys. She tried in vain to add a moat around the fort but eventually wandered off. Later, she heard her father asking her brother why the rug was wet. James told her father that they’d been making a fort and Susie had poured water on the rug to make a moat. Susie hid for the rest of the afternoon, but when she reemerged she found her brother pouring a glass of water on the cardboard box itself. This didn’t even make sense to her, but it seemed to make complete sense to him, so she left him to it. The box was out on the side of the road by dinner.
When it was time for bed, Susie informed her mother that she was staying up late tonight. Her mother informed her that that was fine, but that she’d have to check into a hotel. When Susie found out that hotel rooms cost even more than twenty dollars, she decided that nine pm wasn’t so bad of a bedtime after all. Her brother still had to go to bed at eight-thirty, so at least she had a whole half hour to play.