But I see that the market, extraordinarily, has grown right along with me into adulthood.

Every building on Bettie Boulevard has sized up to accommodate a grown-up or two, ceiling pushed skyward a few extra feet. Teller City Market bears a wreath on the door. A model train whistles as it chugs around its tracks within the display window of Frontier Hardware. The bicycles are now red pickup trucks with chopped trees sticking out the backs, boughs still thick with snow. There are soft Christmas lights strung from every surface, arching rooftop to rooftop over the cobblestone street, which has acquired a dusting of white fluff.

Near the end of the lane, a familiar shape is busy etching frost onto the glass door of the Blue Moose Café, perfecting each frozen snowflake by hand. His back is turned to me as he hums, lost in his work.

“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas down here,” I observe, sliding my hands into my pockets.

Hall jumps. Whirls. “Ahh! Bettie!” It’s like I’ve caught him with an adult magazine. He fidgets, the apples of his cheeks glowing.

“So. This is where all the stuff from upstairs went, hm?”

“You weren’t supposed to see it.”

“Why, is it a surprise?”

His jaw tightens, an unspoken no. Interesting. I step forward, ignoring his obvious distress at my presence. “Grandpa’s going to have a cow.”

“He won’t know. It doesn’t look like this when I’m not here . . . I change it all back whenever I go upstairs.”

“When did you start sneaking down here to change the village?”

“Three thirty this morning. I’ve been up and down all day.”

I watch him shrewdly. “Why?”

He lifts a shoulder, then lets it drop.

“You can tell me.”

“I’d rather not.”

Very interesting.

“Oh, no,” he moans, dread-filled gaze locking on a spot above my head.

“What?” I begin to look up, but he grabs my hand, tugging me toward him.

“Look at that!” he shouts, pointing at the flower shop. There are poinsettias painted where tulips once were, waving ever so slightly in a breeze. I hear dim voices of pretend customers deep in the shop, which is still flat, painted on the wall.

“Wow, you added an audio feature? Nice touch.”

I turn back to Hall, who’s gone red in the face.

“What’s going on with you?” I squint up above my head, but nothing’s there. “Are you okay?”

He sits down on the curb and lets his face fall into his hands. “Urnngghhhh.” Keeping one hand over his face, he jerkily waves the other in the direction of the schoolhouse, silencing the Christmas music from it.

“I am melancholy,” he confesses, conjuring a thesaurus. He leafs through its pages. “And simultaneously famished, which I am learning makes any emotion worse in conjunction.”

I sit down on the curb beside him, smoothing my dress over my knees.

“And then there’s this.” He whips out a graph from nowhere, so large that I have to lean back to view it in full. It looks like a stock chart, a jagged mountain landscape in red marker. Beneath the peaks and valleys are names.