On the first day of Christmas break, Sam walked into her apartment building with a smile on her face and a pep in her step. Melanie was coming home from boarding school for the holidays, and the two of them would finally get to decorate the Christmas tree with their mother. And, Sam secretly wished, maybe a Christmas miracle would happen and her dad would come home. Her dad had walked out on her mom once before, but he came back in time for Christmas, and everything had been great for another three years. Maybe this time he would do it again, and she, Melanie, Mom, and Dad could be a family again.

"Mom! Melanie!" Sam called out as she threw open the door. "I'm home!"

No one answered. Sam threw her backpack onto the kitchen table, and she realized that nobody was there. Sam frowned. Melanie was supposed to fly in from her boarding school early that day, and her mom should have brought her home from the airport hours ago.

Sam walked to the fridge, as she always did after school, and found a note taped to the door.

Sam—

Melanie's flight got cancelled. Bad weather in her part of the country. She might not get here until Christmas Eve. Anyway, I brought out the Christmas tree from the closet and put it together. You can decorate it—ornaments are on the couch. Make it pretty! Don't wait for me, I'm out with friends. Met a guy named Antonio—he's Italian! I'll be back around midnight, maybe later.

XOXO

Mom

Sam blinked and reread the letter. She reread it again. And again. Was…was this for real?

Sam sat down at the table and began dissecting the letter, trying to figure out if she was processing this correctly. Okay, first, Melanie wasn't coming home. At least not for another three days, and even then her flight might get cancelled again. This was madness—Sam hadn't seen Melanie on Thanksgiving, and now she might not be there in time for Christmas? She and Melanie might not be close, but they were still twins, and it hurt her to be away from Melanie for so long.

Sam could feel her chest tightening, and deep ache began to form in her heart.

All right, next. Her mother had brought out the Christmas tree and already put it together. Sam distinctly remembered her mother saying that that year they were going to get a real tree. But, Sam realized sadly, her mother was probably drunk when she said it. In addition, her mother said that they would wait to put up the tree until Melanie arrived. Then again, she might have been drunk when she promised that, too.

Sam put down the letter and rubbed her eyes, and she could feel the constriction in her chest become even stronger. She didn't want to read the rest of the letter, but she picked it up nonetheless.

Third: You can decorate it—ornaments are on the couch. Sam's mother was honestly asking her daughter to decorate the Christmas tree by herself. By. Her. Self. That was such an outlandish request that Sam could barely wrap her head around it. Sure, her mother wasn't very family-centric, but decorating the Christmas tree was basically the pinnacle of family togetherness—even the most estranged families would decorate their tree together! God, was her mother drunk when she wrote this letter, too? Sam had said multiple times that she didn't want to decorate the tree until Melanie arrived, and now her mother was asking her to decorate it by herself?

"This is such bullshit," Sam muttered under her breath, shaking her head. Her chest felt so tight that she could barely breathe…

And lastly…the last part was the hardest for Sam to read. Antonio. Who the hell was Antonio? God…was her mother actually going out on a date with some guy that Sam had never even heard of before? This was the first date that her mother was going on since her father left, and it was at the worst possible time. Sam's dad was going to come back in just a few days—if not that very day!—so then their family could be together again and decorate the Christmas tree together and go sledding in the park the day after Christmas and be happy…

The tightness in Sam's chest became too much. She could feel her lungs struggling against the pressure for air, but most of all, she could feel her heart breaking. Her lips were trembling and her eyes were welling up with tears as the words that Sam didn't want to say but knew were finally surfacing.

Her father was not coming back. A Christmas miracle couldn't save her family this time.

Her father was never coming back.

Sam began sobbing, and hot tears poured out of her eyes. She brought her feet up on the chair and wrapped her arms tightly around her knees, her howling filling the empty apartment. She finally saw the truth. She held out hope for months that her father would come back, that her mother would stop drinking, and that Melanie would go to Ridgeway Middle School with her, but those had just been empty dreams. They were the empty dreams of a foolish and naïve twelve year old, and Sam realized that. She had been lucky the last time her father came back, but that was all over now. No matter how much she wished, her family would never be whole again.

Sam was now gasping so hard for air that she couldn't breathe. She had known in the back of her mind that this would happen eventually, but she had been hopeful. So very, very hopeful. And all that hope was for naught.

The crying lasted for a long time. Sam wasn't sure how long. All she knew was that when she was done, she had a pounding headache, felt exhausted, and that there was a hollowness inside her. One could say that after the pressure in her chest broke her heart, everything within it came rushing out in her tears, until finally there was nothing was left.

Sam unwrapped her arms from her legs and put her feet on the floor. She looked around for something to dry her face on, and she saw her mother's favorite scarf hanging on the coat rack. Sam smirked and walked over to the coat rack, picking up the scarf. She wiped off her face in the scarf, tears, phlegm, and all.

Her mother deserved it. She was the reason that her father had left. One might expect Sam to blame herself for her father's leaving, but she didn't. Sam had always been her father's favorite, and her mother had been the one who pushed him away with all her petty arguments and drinking.

Sam walked into the living room and saw the tree leaning against the wall in the corner. The beat-up cardboard box of ornaments was on the couch. Sam crossed her arms, looking around the room. She had put so much effort into keeping the apartment clean and making it look nice for when her father arrived. But now there was no more use for that.

Sam opened the cardboard box and pulled out some of the ornaments. Two baubles, picked up by her mother on sale after Christmas last year. Sam gripped the baubles tightly as anger, sorrow, and hopelessness welled up in her. She was about to decorate the Christmas tree by herself.

This was not how things were supposed to be.

The anger and hopelessness were almost overwhelming, but Sam didn't want to—no, couldn't—cry again. So she did the only thing she could: she threw one bauble at the wall as hard as she could, and threw the next one even harder.

Breathing heavily, Sam looked down at the smashed ornaments. Thin shards, a glittering white on one side and a dull metal gray on the other, now littered the floor. A smile curled over Sam's lips as a feeling of power swelled within her.

She grabbed two more ornaments and hurled them at the wall. One was a plastic angel, always a favorite of Sam's, and its wing broke off as it collided with the wall. The other ornament was a little clay star that Sam had made in preschool, and that broke into multiple pieces.

Sam began laughing, filled with glee as she destroyed these memories of Christmases past, these memories of the family that she no longer had.

"Take that! And that!" Sam cried as she continued to hurl ornament after ornament at the walls around her. "This one's for you, Mom!"

When Sam finally realized that she was out of ornaments, she was quite displeased. She still had so much pent up energy, frustration, anger, and sadness, and she had nothing left to take it out on.

Sam walked into the kitchen and turned over her mother's note. Spending night at Carly's, she wrote. I hope you like the tree—I spent a long time making it look just right. She added a smiley face for good measure. She smirked to herself, imagining her mother's reaction when she walked into the living room.

With that, Sam walked out of the apartment, slamming the door behind her, then began running to Bushwell Plaza. She had to run, if only to get rid of her excessive energy and emotion before she arrived at Carly's.

As Sam ran out the building and down the streets of Seattle, she resolved that she would spend Christmas at Carly's house. Because, honestly, Carly and Spencer were the only family she had.