My Christmas Angel

*** AMELIA ***

My interest in Casey Messimer went from professionally appropriate to potentially career breaking in a matter of just a few days.

The appropriate part of my interest started about four months ago when he walked into my classroom. Tall, lean, dark and quiet, Casey was one of those kids who seemed to have everything sorted out. He dressed cleanly, sat near the back of the room, listened attentively, rarely asked questions, and didn't joke around with the other students. When test time came he was somewhere in the B range, smart enough not to be reprimanded, but not so smart as to draw too much attention.

He was on the football team, so I wrote memos for the coach who had to ensure his players were academically sound. "No problems, he's doing fine. B+." I wrote each time.

The only incident of any interest in those four months was the one time I delivered the coach's memo by hand on the way out after school. The sports field was crammed with huge young men in body armor smashing into each other. The coach seemed annoyed at my presence, even though I had brought the memo to him rather than making him go to the office for it.

"Right. Pretty boy is still eligible. Thank Christ for small blessings." He surveyed the student athletes with beady, disdainful eyes.

I looked out over the field and for the first time noticed a lone figure running the outer rim of the track, rather than practicing within it with the other guys. He ran so smoothly it appeared effortless.

"Why doesn't he practice with the others?" I asked.

The coach shrugged. "The kid's a weirdo. His only saving grace is the fact that he can kick like a fucking pro." He leaned forward to spit over his fat belly.

I watched Casey round the turn and then he was coming down the front stretch towards us, his body moving as if it was made to run. His long limbs were taut and muscular under his tight athletic clothes. He ran straight past us but his eyes never even glanced over at me. He gave no outward appearance of comprehension. It was as if he were in a trance.

That was the first indication that perhaps things were not as well as they seemed with this striking man who flew below the radar.

Although it struck me as a little strange that the coach called him a weirdo, I have sixty-eight students who I'm responsible for, so Casey wasn't about to get any extra attention unless he either started failing or performing off the charts. It's unfortunate, but that's just the way it is with public education these days. In fact, I pretty much forgot about the football field incident until midway through December when it was time for parent-teacher interviews.

When no parent showed up to talk about Casey, he went on my list to follow up on. A few days later, when I was calling the numbers given to me by the school secretary I was stunned when I got to Casey's 'parents.'

"This is Amelia Crest, I'm a mathematics teacher from Bay View High School. I'm calling to talk about Casey..." I said.

"Casey? Casey moved out." A tired woman's voice replied.

"I'm sorry?"

"Yeah, he aged out a few weeks ago."

"I'm sorry, I don't understand..."

"The state only pays for them until they're eighteen. Casey turned eighteen a few weeks ago so I told him to leave."

"You told him he had to leave?" I asked, stunned.

The woman sighed. "Yeah, I'm not a charity," she said bluntly. "He knew it was coming." And then she hung up on me.

That was the last of my follow-up calls that night. I lay in my bed and wondered about Casey. I wondered why the state was paying some unfeeling woman to keep him in her house, and where he had gone now that she had told him to leave. I wondered how he was coping.

He was eighteen years old, not a kid anymore but not really an adult either.

When I was eighteen I was still living under my parents' roof and relying on them. Even when I graduated from college and moved out on my own for the first time I took a loan from them that I still had not fully repaid over a year later. On the day I moved, mom and dad came down to the city and drove the rental truck full of my make-shift furniture to my new apartment. After they'd helped me to get everything inside and mom had given me way more decorating advice than I wanted, they took me out to a Thai restaurant and bought me a celebratory dinner.

Casey must not have a mom and dad. The sadness of it was overwhelming.

The next day was a Friday and I decided to go to the school's football game that night. Tessa, my history-teacher friend who had an unnaturally high level of school spirit, was thrilled.

"This is way over-due," she told me.

Of course I refrained from wearing the school colors and felt suitably scrooge-like in the cold metal stands full of proud parents and hormone-fueled teenaged girls.

I actually had little to no interest in the game. I've never really 'gotten' football. To me it is brutish and ugly. I just wanted to observe Casey. I watched him sitting on the bench, hunched under his jacket with his hands stuffed in one of those fleece tubes, looking straight forward. He didn't bump and jostle around the way the other guys did and nobody seemed interested in him. The guy sitting beside him leaned away slightly.

"Have you taught that kid Casey before?" I asked Tessa in a low voice.

"Messimer? Yeah, he took Modern History last year. Quiet kid. Why?"

"He's in my A.P. Calc. class. Did his parents ever show up for parent-teacher interviews?"

"Not that I remember, but there's nothing unusual about that."

Something exciting must have happened on the field because Tessa was standing and cheering and then she forgot about the conversation about Casey.

When the game was over I made the excuse of going up to my classroom before I left so that I would be able to observe Casey without being obvious. I stood at the window of the mailroom, looking over the sports field and watching jubilant athletes reunite with their happy parents and waiting girlfriends. Casey walked into the school gymnasium and about twenty minutes later, when the parking lot was just about deserted, he emerged again, wearing jeans, a puffy coat and a winter hat. I scrambled to get outside before I lost him.

It was freezing outside. The sky was clear and the air was bitingly cold. I hurried to my car and rubbed my hands together while I waited for the heating to start working, then I started in the direction that he had left in. He was almost a mile down the road, walking briskly through the darkness with his hands in his pockets. I pulled over and rolled the passenger window down.

"Casey?" I called out.

He turned and tilted his head in order to look in the window. "Miss Crest?" His voice was low and grainy and it took me by surprise.

"Can I give you a ride somewhere?"

"Ah... No. I prefer to walk."

"It's freezing out. Don't be crazy. Let me drive you home."

He looked away and bit down on his lower lip, letting it slip from beneath his teeth. "No thanks," he replied and then he started walking again.

I pulled forward to keep up with him. "Casey, will you get in the car please? I won't drive you anywhere, I just want to talk to you."

He didn't reply so I leaned over and opened the passenger side door. Now the car was beeping obnoxiously.

Casey looked at me and turned his head to the side at the same time as his eyes narrowed in annoyance.

Somewhere in the pit of my stomach a flame ignited. I knew it was totally inappropriate but I couldn't help but feel attracted to him. He was nothing like what I thought of when I heard the words 'homeless youth.' He was a walking, talking, thinking person who didn't want my pity.

"I'm not going to leave you alone until I get to talk to you," I told him.

He shook his head and sighed, his breath fogging the frigid air, and then he climbed in the car.

Now that I had him there I didn't quite know how to start.

He just looked at me with his steady dark brown eyes and waited.

I used the switch to roll his window up.

His eyebrows rose in question.

"Casey... I know your foster parents asked you to move out."

His face rearranged into an expression of shock and perhaps a little bit of horror. "That's none of your business," he said indignantly.

I didn't know what I was expecting, but not that. "Well, I think it is my business. You're my student and I want to know that you're not in danger. I want to know where you're staying now."

His jaw clenched. "Why do you care?"

"Well..." I was about to launch into my phony speech about how much I care about my students, but I had a feeling that he'd see through it. "I don't know... I don't know why I care, but I do."

His steely expression softened a little.

"If you don't want me to I won't tell anyone else, I just need to know that you're safe."

"I'm a black man without a place to live, that's how safe I am," he said as he looked away.

I was saddened and appalled and excited all at once. "So where are you headed right now?"

"Saint Paul's."

"The homeless shelter?"

He shrugged without looking back at me. "Where else am I supposed to go? They won't have any beds left this late, but they know me there now, they let me sleep on the floor of the rec. room because they know I won't make trouble."

"I have a spare bed," I said without thinking.

He looked back at me with his eyebrows raised. "Wow. Two beds for one person, you're living the life."

"Yeah, well, if you wanted to like, crash on my spare bed tonight that would be fine."

His bemused expression continued.

"I mean... if you want to. I think it would be better than sleeping on the floor."

"You don't think your boyfriend would be upset to find me in your apartment?"

I shook my head. "No boyfriend. Just me."

He nodded slowly. "Maybe. Just for tonight. Tomorrow I'll go to Saint Paul's."

When we got home I showed him the spare room/office in my shoe-box of an apartment and he dropped his athletic bag at the foot of the bed. I made spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, which he tried to pay me for.

"I have a job you know, I might not have a place to live but I make enough money to eat."

"When do you do your school work?"

He froze with his fork half way to his mouth, suddenly realizing his mistake.

I tried not to smile.

"Promise you won't tell?" He asked.

"Okay."

"I speak French. My grandparents were from Gabon and they spoke it to me when I was little. Mr. Ross doesn't know though. I sit at the back and do my homework for other classes during French."

Then I let myself smile. "You do home work for my class during Mr. Ross' French lessons?"

"Ahh... well..."

"It's okay," I reassured him. "I actually quite like the idea." Geoff Ross was one of my least favored colleagues, a man who did not have the ability to admit when he was wrong, or compromise even in small ways.

"His French is terrible."

That comment made me laugh. I liked knowing that Geoff wasn't any good at what he did.

The corners of Casey's mouth turned up and he made a half-smile. "Bonjour, je suis un gran âne nomme Monsieur Ross..." he said in an exaggerated American accent.

I laughed more. "What does that mean."

He shook his head. "Just that he's an ass."

When I continued to laugh Casey seemed to relax and this time he actually smiled normally; A big, beautiful, toothy smile.

"Say something else," I said.

He fixed his dark eyes on me and when he opened his mouth the deep, beautiful sounds that came out were not words so much as they were a type of lullaby. I had no idea what they meant, just that they were stirring that fire in my belly and that it was taking all the will power I had to not reach out and touch him.

"What did that mean?" I asked when he stopped.

There was a pause in which his eyes never wavered from mine, and then he said, "You have some parsley stuck between your teeth."

I brought my hand to my mouth in embarrassment and went to the bathroom, but when I looked in the mirror there was nothing between my teeth.

Out in the kitchen I heard Casey chuckle.

I smiled into the mirror. He was teasing me. First he gets annoyed at me for trying to help him, and then teases me. It was maddeningly sexy. Somewhere in the back of my brain my neurons caught up to what my heart already knew. Casey was just the sort of person I'd been waiting for. Strange, beautiful, complicated, responsible but playful, Casey.

When I went back out into the kitchen he was standing at the sink doing the dishes.

"You don't need to do that," I assured him.

"Yes I do," he replied. "You're not my mother, you don't have to clean up after me."

I sat back down and watched his back as he worked. "Do you have plans for tomorrow?"

He paused for just a moment when I asked, then he continued working. "Yeah. I have to be at work by seven, so I'll be out of here pretty early."

"Where do you work?"

"Fran's Diner on Eighth and Connor. It doesn't pay that well but they work around my schedule."

"When do you get off work?"

"Two-thirty."

"Oh good. Will you help me get a Christmas tree? They're too heavy for me on my own." When he didn't reply I continued, "It just doesn't feel like Christmas without a tree."

He turned and leaned his butt against the sink as he looked at me. Soap suds dripped from the yellow rubber gloves he was wearing onto his shoes. "I need to get to the shelter by four to get a bed."

"Okay, well if we're done by then I'll drop you there, otherwise you can stay here another night... No big deal."

He stared at me for a moment. "You need help?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, I'll help you." He nodded before he turned back to the sink.

*** CASEY ***

I couldn't figure out Miss Crest. Why had she offered for me to stay at her apartment? I mean, it was nice of her and all, but what did she care if I slept on the floor of the shelter or not?

The question haunted me all day as I bussed tables, made toast, poured coffee, and bussed more tables. It was weird, it was almost as if she wanted me to stay. That was not a feeling I was used to.

Miss Crest was an odd teacher. She was young, she couldn't have been more than one or two years out of college, and she had an attitude about her. She didn't take any shit in class, and she wasn't prone to giving out free points on tests. She didn't pretend to like the students the way a lot of teachers did, but she treated everyone with respect and she got respect back.

Two-thirty came before I found any answers and she was waiting outside in her boxy old Volvo for me. Such a strange feeling to have someone waiting just for you.

"Good day?" She asked.

"Ah... yeah I guess so."

"Did anything interesting happen?"

I didn't know how to respond. I wasn't used to people asking questions about my day. "Not really."

She took the highway out of the city and past the suburbs until we were out in the countryside, the snow blanketing the fields and making the red barns look like they belonged in a storybook. The Christmas tree farm was filled with families with little kids who were running around throwing snowballs at each other and playing chase through the trees.

We walked up and down the aisles while Miss Crest hummed and haahed over which was the best tree to get.

"What do you think?" She asked, pointing at a ridiculously large tree.

"Well, it's nice, but unless you're planning on installing it horizontally I don't think it's going to work."

"Really? You think it's too tall?"

"Yeah. Your ceilings are like, 8 feet tall. I'm six foot three, look at how much bigger than me it is." I stood beside the enormous tree to demonstrate my point.

"Huh. You're right... Okay, so we need to look for a Casey-sized tree."

From then on she made me stand beside each tree she was considering. She would tilt her head to the side and bite on her lip as she examined each one and I would watch her and wonder what she was thinking.

When she found one she liked she again asked me what I thought. "Go and stand beside it," I told her. "I need you for scale."

I stepped back and looked at her beside the tree, which was a nice tree but a tree all the same. Miss crest was clearly the more attractive thing to look at. She had her eyebrows raised and an expression of hope on her face. She was wearing a matching set of white winter hat, scarf and mittens that had red snowflakes knitted into the pattern, and a pair of bright red rubber boots over her jeans. She would have looked dorky if she wasn't so beautiful.

I had known for a long time that Miss Crest was good looking, but it wasn't until today that the full force of her beauty hit me. Maybe it was because I wasn't used to looking at her in normal clothes, or maybe it was because I wasn't used to her looking at me as if my opinion was the most important one in the world.

Whatever it was, the way she looked made me feel oddly elated. Her long, dark brown hair was in two braids on either side of her face and her light brown eyes stared at me hopefully, waiting for my response. In the cold air her cheeks and lips had turned a shade of pink that made the rest of her creamy white skin glow.

She made a giggling sound and clapped her mittened hands together when I nodded my approval and it made me smile.

It was actually the perfect size for her apartment. Once we had wrestled it into the tree stand we stood back to admire it.

It was a good tree. My grandma would have been proud.

It was already six, way too late to go to the shelter, so I took a shower and changed out of my work clothes while Miss Crest cooked dinner.

When we were eating she asked about my family. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," she said with a note of uncertainty.

"No, it's okay. I lived with my grandparents, who were great. My Grandma was really sweet and my grandpa was a hard-ass, but he had a soft side too."

I felt a bit shaky talking about them after all this time. Nobody had asked me in ages.

"When I was like, nine or ten he helped me to build a tree house and he showed me how to build a circuit with batteries so I could have a light to read up there after dark. He used to take me to soccer practice and they always came to my games..."

Miss Crest was watching me with a tentative smile on her lips.

"They died in a car crash six years ago."

Her smile vanished at the same time as her forehead crinkled and she leaned over the table and grasped my hand. The gesture was so tender and unexpected that I felt tears in my eyes and quickly blinked them away.

"I have a mom, but she's in prison. I've never lived with her because as soon as she gets out of prison she gets high and does something stupid and gets arrested again. She loves me. I know she loves me, but she just can't get her shit together to act like an adult, so I lived in foster care for the last six years." I didn't elaborate on that. Miss Crest seemed like a capable sort of person but some of the things I'd seen over the years would probably make her spontaneously combust if I told her about them.

"I'm sorry that happened to you," she said as she squeezed my hand, and I could tell that she meant it.

"Casey, can you keep a secret?" She asked later when we were doing the dishes.

"Sure. I don't have anyone to tell even if I wanted to."

"I was wondering if you would mind keeping it a secret that you stayed here this weekend? It's just that I could get in trouble at school for it."

"Yeah, don't worry about it. I don't talk to people that much at school anyway." In fact, I had talked to Miss Crest more in the past day than I had to anyone else over the entire year.

"Okay, thanks... and if you are sure you can keep it a secret, I was wondering if you wanted to stay here for a while?" She kept on washing the dishes and handing them to me to dry as if that was the sort of thing you said every day.