The fate of the rest of the year was in the old ice cream container.
It didn’t look so important on the outside – Blue Ribbon, vanilla (so boring… boring teacher flavour), cleaned and repurposed into whatever the Year 12 class of Maida Vale Senior High School needed it to be. And today, it held everyone’s names for Secret Santa.
It was my turn. Mr Della stood in front of the desk I shared with Astrid, holding the ice cream container low enough for me to reach, but high enough that I couldn’t peek the names left inside.
The class waited and watched with bated breath. None of them had given anything away when they pulled their own Secret Santa names out.
Mr Della gently shook the container. ‘Come on, Willa.’
I inhaled and reached in. Ripped pieces of paper brushed my fingertips. Would it be possible to feel for a name through the ink alone?
Je – re – my.
Please be Jeremy, please be Jeremy.
I closed my fingers around a piece of paper that felt medium in length. Somewhere behind Eli and Bartholomew. (Seriously, he refuses to go by Bart.)
Here goes nothing.
But please be Jeremy.
I pulled the name out, and no sooner had I lowered it to eye level than Mr Della was already proffering the container to Astrid beside me, the class’s attention moving with it.
I didn’t unfold the paper straight away.
If the name on it said Jeremy, I finally had a chance to talk to him, to redeem myself. A chance to put all the knowledge on him I’d squirreled away over the years to use. Yeah, that sounded creepy to me too. But I could get him a gift so perfect that when I handed it over and he looked at me, he would finally see me, and he’d be all like, ‘Oh hey I’m sorry I laughed at you when you fell off the stage in Year 9 during a performance of Twelfth Night and even though you bravely soldiered on, I still saw you as the theatre klutz with a missing front tooth and blood all over your chin. But now I know you’re actually really cool’ and then we’d kiss and he’d fall in love me too and the rest of my life would be perfect.
I opened the paper.
Tane.
The name was scrawled, Mr Della hastily getting all thirty-three of our names down, but the black letters were clear. They darkened as I stared, the ink seeming to spread across the slip of white, consuming it, seeping towards my fingertips and up my arm, eventually reaching and drowning my heart.
I know you probably think I’m being dramatic, but you don’t get it. First of all, I’m a theatre kid, I’ve got more drama than plasma in my veins. Secondly, Jeremy is so gorgeous and cool and funny. We don’t move in the same social circles so we don’t get a lot of interaction, and even though I got my tooth fixed right after the performance in Year 9, I don’t think he’s ever been able to look past that – I admit, frightful – image and see the real me. An excuse like Secret Santa would have been so perfect. And we’re supposed to give the gifts quietly, find each other at lunch kind of thing (‘Give you a chance to mingle’ and all that Mr Della stuff), and I was going to lure Jeremy into a secluded corner away from his friends and give him my gift.
Again, I heard the creepiness.
If Jeremy just took the chance to know me, saw past what I know can be a bit of an overbearing exterior, I know he’d like me.
But Tane was just… Tane.
One time, he auditioned for our production of Romeo and Juliet. I had already been cast as Juliet (I mean, obviously), and Tane was auditioning for Romeo. We were up on stage and Tane was supposed to start the balcony scene with Romeo’s, ‘But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?’ but the line never came. Instead, Tane took one look at me. Swallowed. Shook his head. Left. Walked right off the stage and out of the drama room. I’ve never seen him participate in anything since. He also never smiled, had this permanent little frown between his eyebrows, and didn’t talk in class unless he was asked a question and more often than not he’d have the right answer. Sometimes I caught him staring at me but he’d never said a word to me in his life.
And now I was supposed to get him a gift.
My heart sank into my stomach and hit the acid swirling in there. Also the toast I had for breakfast. Also the cup of tea. Also the muesli bar I had on the way to school.
I didn’t want to sound nasty or anything, but Tane was one of those kids who just doesn’t want any friends. Like, we’ve tried over the years – mostly at the teacher’s insistence – but apparently brooding under a tree with your headphones in is much more preferable than being friends with me, Astrid, and Georgie.
Sounds fake but okay.
Aside from another black shirt to add to his all-black wardrobe and a human skull to which he can deliver Hamlet-esque soliloquies to, I was at a loss on what I could possibly give him.
‘Remember,’ Mr Della said, returning to the front of the classroom, the ice cream container now empty of names. ‘No more than ten dollars on your gift. And Secret Santa is meant to be secret.’ He gave Astrid a stern look, whose already large brown eyes were wide with innocence. ‘Have your gifts delivered by next Monday.’
The bell rang, signalling the end of the day. As we gathered our things, Astrid leaned over, her voice lowered. ‘So who’d you get?’
‘Tane,’ I whispered back. ‘You?’
‘Yikes. I got Georgie.’
‘Whaaat? How’d you get so lucky?’
‘Born that way, baby.’
Georgie came over to our desk, books gathered in their arms. ‘Who’d you two get?’ they whispered.
‘You,’ Astrid said.
‘Oh, good,’ Georgie said. ‘Can you get me as many red frogs as you can buy for ten dollars?’
‘You got it.’
I groaned. If only it was that easy for me.
‘Why?’ Georgie asked, pinching their blond eyebrows together. ‘Who’d you get?’
‘Tane.’
Georgie snorted. ‘Oof. I’ve got Liv.’
I blinked. Liv was a bigger oof than Tane. She’d teased Georgie endlessly when they came out as nonbinary at the start of Year 10.
‘Please tell me you’re getting her a kick up the backside.’
Astrid grinned wickedly. Her short spiky hair was coming loose from its bobby pins and two pieces were sticking up like devil’s horns. ‘Hey, that’s what I was going to get her.’
We’d barely taken a step out of the classroom when Sam in our year popped up out of nowhere, his round cheeks flushed. He pushed a crushed piece of paper into my hand.
‘Don’t open it here,’ he murmured, then disappeared as suddenly as he’d appeared. The three of us stared at the Sam-shaped void in front of us before Astrid asked, ‘That was weird, right?’
‘That was weird,’ Georgie concurred. ‘What does it say?’
I un-scrunched the paper and smoothed it as best I could. But before we could make out what it said, Mr Della appeared behind us.
‘Let’s move, girls – and Georgie,’ he quickly added.
He’d turned off the classroom lights and was trying to get through to the hallway. I quickly shoved the paper into the pocket of my shorts and we scurried to the lockers. I twirled the combination lock on mine and opened the door.
‘Read it now!’ Astrid hissed.
We bent our heads to read. Scrawled bold words screamed at us: YEAR 12S, DID YOU GET A BAD SECRET SANTA NAME?
Yes, I thought.
MEET BEHIND EARLY CHILDHOOD TOMORROW MORNING AND SWAP.
My heart fluttered. Could this be my chance? Would there possibly be anyone in Year 12 who got Jeremy and would be willing to give him up?
Anyone would be better than Tane.
‘We’re going,’ I declared.
‘Obviously,’ Georgie replied.
‘I’m not swapping but I’m there for the ride,’ Astrid said.
The Early Childhood building was the most logical place for an illegal Saturday morning student meet-up. It was separate to the rest of the school, which meant not having to go through otherwise locked classrooms or offices, and it was bordered on one side by bushland. But Sam’s mum was one of the cleaners and sometimes stole her keys so it really could have happened anywhere.
The room was full – looked like nearly all thirty-three of us were here, cramped among the tiny, coloured plastic chairs and badly-painted Christmas artwork pegged to low-hanging string running across the classroom roof. Seriously – how hard is it to paint a Christmas tree green. Astrid spotted someone she knew and disappeared toward the LEGO table. I glanced at Georgie, wondering where to from here, when Sam climbed onto one of the tables and whistled loudly for attention.
‘Welcome to this gathering,’ he began. ‘This most sacred and holy tradition of Secret Santa relies on chance… until now. Here’s how this morning works. You’ve got a bad name? Someone you don’t know well enough, or someone you hate, even? Today’s a free for all, so go do battle!’
As the noise started up again, I glanced around the room. No Tane. Hopefully this shouldn’t be too awkward.
Then – Jeremy. Leaning against the cubbies with the Kindy kids’ names on them, talking to Helena. God, he was gorgeous. Like a third Hemsworth brother. Or fourth? How many Hemsworths are there actually? Anyway, you know what I mean. Tall, broad-shouldered, light brown hair that was messy in a way that was specifically designed to look messy, those blue kind eyes that really see you when they look at you... That’s what I imagined it’d be like, anyway.
‘Ready to do battle?’ Georgie murmured.
I gave them a serious nod and we bumped fists, then dove into the group. I’d try one of Jeremy’s mates first; they might have already swapped, trying to keep the group together.
I was starting to see Mr Della’s point.
Aarav was no help, and neither was Kieran. Nikolai had Astrid, which I jumped at the chance to swap, but – and I wasn’t surprised – he didn’t want Tane. I huffed. Maybe it would be better to get rid of Tane first, then try and get Jeremy.
I scanned the room. At worst, people disliked Tane. At best, no one knew what he might like or how he might react to a gift. Josie and Margot weren’t interested, and Wade and Lina had already got who they wanted and were going home. This was hopeless. I was going to be stuck with Tane. I wouldn’t get the chance to spend time with Jeremy before we graduated.
‘Hey, Willa.’ Fish appeared beside me. His name wasn’t actually Fish, it was Timothy, but he was the best – and most overly dedicated – swimmer in the school. Could swim fast. Or something. Sports aren’t really my thing. Personally I think too much chlorine had seeped through his ears and into his brain, removing the social filter that should be there.
‘Sup, Fish. Who you got?’
‘Jeremy.’
My blood froze on its journey around my body.
‘You don’t want him?’ I forced the words through my dry mouth, hardly daring to believe my luck.
‘Nah. So who’ve you got? Wanna swap?’
I took a deep breath. ‘Tane.’
A strange medley of emotions flickered over Fish’s face until finally he smiled and held out his hand, where a slip of paper was between his fingers. ‘Yeah all right.’
I eyed him. It couldn’t be this easy, could it? Maybe he’d misheard me. Water in his ears or something. Tentatively, I took the paper from his hand and replaced it with mine.
He gave me another grin. ‘Catch ya, Wills.’
After he’d left, I glanced down at the paper in my hands.
Jeremy.
There it was.
But the success felt dampened. I couldn’t stop thinking of the look on Fish’s face, and I wondered whether I’d done the right thing after all.
By the time I got home, I was already drenched in sweat even from the short walk from school. Perth summers were brutal, especially during Birak, the Noongar season. And being in the hills meant we didn’t get the refreshing sea breeze – just the crazy morning easterlies. The house was cool though, the air-con on since eight a.m., and it smelled like gingerbread. Michael Bublé was crooning Jingle Bells in the background. Jingle Bells is about the least-crooning song of all time but the man still managed it. Mum was in the kitchen, piping gingerbread men, plastic Christmas Tree earrings blinking from her lobes. I know this image sounds very wholesome and cliché, but two things:
1. We took Christmas very seriously in this house.
2. The aesthetic was ruined when it’s this hot and Mum was shooting icing everywhere as she waved a persistent fly away with the piping bag.
‘Bells on bobtails ring, making spirits bright,’ Mum was singing.
What even was a bobtail? I’m guessing they don’t mean the lizard.
I laughed, and Mum glanced up. ‘What’s so funny?’
‘Nothing. Just imagining a dozen blue-tongue lizards with little reindeer antlers pulling a tiny sleigh.’
My little sister Carly shook her head from where she was sprawled on the couch, Nintendo Switch in hand. ‘You are so weird.’
‘It’s a cute image actually,’ Mum said.
‘Better than Six White Boomers,’ I agreed.
‘Or dashing through the bush in a rusty Holden ute.’
I shuddered. ‘Dad still at practice?’
‘Should be home in an hour or so,’ Mum replied without looking up from the tray of gingerbread men.
Dad played violin for the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. Every year they put on this truly spectacular Christmas concert with costumes and a light show and everything.
Carly finally paused her game to look at me. ‘So did you manage to get Jeremy?’
‘I did.’ I waved the piece of paper with his name on it triumphantly in the air.
‘You’re not really going to make him a vision board are you?’
I lowered my arm. ‘Yeah. Why not?’
Carly shook her head and lifted the Switch again. ‘It’s a bad idea.’
‘What? Why?’
Carly was two years younger than me but had always acted older. She was the one who snuck out to parties while I stayed at home learning lines. For some reason, getting drunk off your face on the weekend made you cool and wise. (It didn’t – and she was only playing Animal Crossing on the Switch, by the way.)
‘It’s just lame.’
‘Well I don’t care what you think.’
Carly didn’t reply, which left my childish retort hanging in the air between us. I stalked to my room and dumped my bag at the end of my bed. I pinned the piece of paper with Jeremy’s name on it on the corkboard above my desk and got to work.
The Secret Santa presents slowly started to appear as the week went on. I didn’t see anyone give a gift to someone they didn’t already know – I guessed Sam’s underground operation had been successful. Georgie had ended up swapping Liv for Helena and had already given her some beaded earrings that Georgie made themselves. I’d forgotten all about Fish having Tane until Thursday.
At lunch, while Astrid, Georgie and I were sitting in the hallway where the brick wall was cold and the concrete floor colder, offering a bit of relief from the heat of the day, Fish and his group of swimmer mates were messing around, Fish being shoved in one direction, where Tane was sitting at a bench under a shade cloth by himself, eating a sandwich.
As soon as I saw Fish swagger towards him, a bad feeling started in my stomach.
‘Hey Crowdy,’ he drawled.
Tane’s shoulders hunched up to his ears but he didn’t turn.
‘Want your Secret Santa pressie or what?’
With obvious reluctance, Tane lowered his shoulders and turned around. Fish was holding out a box, board-game shaped, covered in a thin layer of clear plastic. I couldn’t see what it was from this distance, but the box was black with some pretty sinister red writing along the side. The boys had already started sniggering behind Fish. The other students eating their lunch in the area had stopped to watch.
‘It’s an exorcism kit,’ Fish said loudly. ‘It’s got herbs and holy water and crucifix and shit. Now you can get rid of your demons or whatever it is that makes you the way you are.’
His mates burst into laughter, and some of the other students chuckled as well.
I grimaced. I’m so sorry, Tane.
I wished there was some way to make Tane understand. How badly I wanted this, how important it was that I had Jeremy’s name. It was going to be worth it.
I waited until after school on Friday to give Jeremy his present, that way he was free to ask me to hang out later or on the weekend. If I gave it to him in the morning or at recess, we’d have the whole day of awkward eye contact and anticipation but unable to act on it.
See, you’ve gotta think of these things.
I extricated his gift from my locker and straightened it with a flourish. It was a work of art. A3 red card – red’s his favourite colour – covered in pictures of sporting heroes like Tim Cahill and Scott Chipperfield (yeah, I don’t know who they are either, I just googled) and a few photos of a guitar because he started learning this year. It’s a vision board for when he starts uni next year. I’ve got one myself. It had lines from some of my favourite plays and photos of some of Australia’s best theatre performers in action. I looked at it above my desk and it inspires me every day. Highly recommend. Carly doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
I approached him by the lockers as he was throwing his gym bag over his shoulder, soccer ball tucked under his arm. He smelled strongly of deodorant, that kind that’s more chemical than perfume. It turned my stomach a bit, but I’d learn to love it.
Jeremy glanced at me out of the corner of his eye as I hovered, awaiting his full attention. He closed his locker and turned to me, making his light brown hair flop gorgeously over his brow. ‘What’s up?’
‘I’m your Secret Santa,’ I declared, and handed him the board.
Jeremy took it stared at it for a long moment. Oh my God, I thought, he’s speechless, he loves it that much!
He tilted his head one way, then the other. ‘Um… Thanks. What…’ He squinted. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s a vision board,’ I said. ‘To, like, inspire you.’
‘Cool.’ His voice sounded a bit flat, but I got it. The board was a lot to take in. ‘Cheers.’ He gave me a tight smile before walking away.
Well, that was a bit anticlimactic. Maybe he felt a bit awkward; some people were like that when they received gifts. He’d catch me when he’d finished soccer and I finished drama at the same time and ask me out. I just had to let the gift settle in, give him a chance to really study all the detail I’d included – there’s tiny inspirational quotes around the border. It would all work out fine. It would work out fine, right?
After drama, I found the vision board in the bin.
‘I told you he wasn’t worth it.’
I sniffed loudly, my voice thick. ‘No you didn’t.’
‘Well,’ Astrid amended. ‘I should have.’
We were squeezed into one toilet stall. I was sitting on the toilet – seat down, obviously. It hadn’t taken long for Astrid and Georgie to find me. They said they’d heard my wailing from the other side of the school where they’d been in an after-school exam prep class. Georgie had their red frogs from Astrid. They brandished the bag at me but I shook my head, my cheeks hot and wet.
‘You don’t want someone like that, anyway,’ Georgie said. They were rubbing my back with their other hand, soothing circles along my spine. ‘You need someone artistic. Someone into theatre.’
‘Yeah, you’ll meet someone at WAAPA. A cool person, worthy of your equal coolness.’
‘Thanks,’ I said thickly. ‘I love you, lads.’
‘We love you too.’
After I cleaned up my face in the bathroom sink, we left to get our bags from our lockers. I saw Tane by his, a small black case in his hands. Flute? No – clarinet. I didn’t know he was part of music class. They didn’t normally meet the same time I had drama. They must be trying to squeeze in extra practice before the Christmas concert.
‘Give me two secs,’ I said to Georgie and Astrid, before jogging over to Tane.
He started at my footsteps but kept his gaze on the inside of his locker. It was so neat and clean, not at all like my mess of books and scrap paper.
I leaned against the next locker so I could kind of see his face. His eyes were lowered, avoiding mine. I’d never noticed how long his eyelashes were. He had pretty eyes, I had to give him that. It was just something I forgot because I never saw them for long before his gaze darted away. ‘I just wanted to check you were okay.’
Tane shrugged. ‘I’m used to it.’
‘I also wanted to say I’m really sorry.’
‘Like I said. Used to it.’
‘No, I mean…’ I took a deep breath. ‘I had you for Secret Santa. Originally. But I swapped you for Jeremy.’
He finally looked at me then. ‘Oh.’
‘Yeah.’
His lips were kind of pinched together and he glanced away again. There was a beat of silence that neeearly stretched into awkwardness as I tried to figure out what his expression was when he asked, ‘So how did it go?’
I blew out a breath. ‘Pretty bad actually.’
The corner of Tane’s mouth twitched upward, but not with humour – in an acknowledging, disappointed but not surprised kind of way, like he knew. But the pinched expression was gone.
‘I’m sorry,’ Tane said. ‘I know how much you liked him.’
I cringed. ‘You did?’ Had it been that obvious?
Tane shrugged again. My cheeks heated with the humiliation of it, of being having a witness to my pathetic crush.
I pushed off from the locker. ‘Well… see you round.’
‘Wait, Willa.’
I turned back, surprised. I don’t think I’d ever heard him call me by my name before. In fact, this was officially the longest conversation we’d ever had, the first time he hadn’t practically run from a room the moment I stepped in. Tane reached into his bag and pulled out a square package, wrapped in brown paper and tied with red and green twine. There was even a plastic sprig of holly under the knot, bless him. He held it out to me.
‘What’s this?’ I asked, taking it.
‘Your gift. I’m your Secret Santa.’
Oh. Oh.
I unwrapped it. Tane was shuffling his feet. Maybe I shouldn’t open it in front of him. Nah, I was too curious for that. Besides, I’m an actor. If I didn’t like whatever he’d given me, I could just pretend I did.
I didn’t have to pretend.
Beneath the wrapping was a thick book: a collection of Shakespeare plays. You know the one – behind a glass cabinet in the bookshop, all golden and intricate. I turned it over in my hands. The paper edges had been painted. Romeo wooed Juliet on her balcony; one of my favourite scenes, as unoriginal as that makes me. But the depiction was elegant and traditional, and fit perfectly along the edge, the scene stretching to all three sides, the top and bottom pages of the book making up a beautiful moonlit rose garden.
‘Wow. It’s beautiful,’ I said, though that hardly begun to cover it. ‘Where did you get it?’
‘Mum was about to take a bunch of books to Good Sammys. I already had the paints at home.’
‘Wait, you did this yourself?’
Tane shrugged.
‘Tane, this is really good. It’s… It’s gorgeous.’
Another shrug.
‘But…’ I thought back to our audition, to the discomfort on his face all those years ago. ‘You –’
‘I was so nervous,’ Tane said quickly. To be honest, he looked nervous as hell right then, too. ‘I really wanted to be Romeo. I really wanted to b-be your Romeo. But I couldn’t. I was too scared.’
My stomach swooped with the reality of what was happening right now. ‘Do you… do you like me?’
Mottled red had already begun creeping up his neck to colour his ears and cheeks.
Oh my God, he did.
The realisation flicked a switch in my brain. His nerves at being around me, catching him staring… I’d been doing no less to Jeremy.
I think I finally saw Tane. Instead of the broody listening of music, I saw the new compositions to learn on his clarinet. Instead of the indifference to hanging out with the other Year 12s, I saw the shyness.
Jeremy would never have seen me.
‘You like classical music, right?’
Tane glanced down at his clarinet case. ‘Yeah.’
‘My dad plays for WASO. He’s part of their Christmas performance next week, playing carols and songs from Love Actually and stuff. He gets free tickets for friends and family… if you want to come with us?’
Tane blinked in surprise, then his face brightened. Actually brightened. I don’t think I’d seen this much emotion from him, like, ever. Then it diminished slightly as he fixed his attention on his scuffed black shoes. ‘Are – are you sure? I… I’ve always wanted to go but we could never afford it.’
‘Of course I’m sure.’
‘And… could my mum come? She’s been… She’s been sick lately. But she loves music as much as me.’
My heart twinged; I didn’t know that. ‘The more the merrier!’
He still wasn’t looking at me. ‘Is this like… a date?’
‘Um… with both our mothers there, probably not.’
His ears reddened again. ‘Oh. Yeah. Right.’
What the heck, it’s Christmas.
‘But maybe over the holidays we could go out?’
Tane looked up and smiled. It made my stomach flutter. We swapped numbers, and as I bounded back to where Astrid and Georgie were still waiting for me, my heart felt twice its normal size.
‘What was that all about?’ Astrid asked as I reached them.
I held up the book. ‘Secret Santa.’
Astrid looked over my shoulder. ‘I have never seen Tane smile like that before. How the heck did you thank him for the book?’
I grinned.
‘Smiling suits him,’ Georgie said, before holding their lolly bag out to me. ‘Want a red frog?’
‘No, thanks,’ I said. ‘I’m kind of in the mood for vanilla ice-cream.’
Thank you for reading! A special shout out to my LoveOzYA writing group for providing such helpful feedback. If you’re looking for more #LoveOzYA Christmas stories, I recommend Sugarcoated by Sarah Epstein and Ghosted by Melanie Pickering. And hey, if Aussie YA Christmas stories are your thing, please consider leaving a comment or letting me know you enjoyed The Great Secret Santa Swap, and become complicit in my cunning plan to bring a diverse collection of them to your bookshelf…
Great story Bianca, I had to struggle against zipping to the end of the story to find out how it ended I was that focussed on the characters. (I tend to read the end of about 10% of novels before I get to the half way mark.) Glad I didn't! Its a good Christmas story, and I'm glad you gave it a strong Perth (Australian) context.
Such a fun, sweet and enjoyable story, Bianca! I was secretly gunning for Tane all along 💕
(And cheers for the shout-out! 🥰)