“The Salvation Army does a thing where kids write out what they’d like to get for Christmas and then people pick their names and buy them the presents.”

“Just like that?” he asked, holding the paper and pen and suddenly feeling suspicious that Mom had signed them up for some kind of scam.

“You have to show proof that you—well, that you—”

“Have nothing?”

“That you’re in need,” Mom said. He was standing in the living room and she was ten feet away in the kitchen, cleaning dishes at the sink.

“So I can write anything?”

“Well, not anything,” she said, glancing at him. “Just write a realistic list, things you’d want me to get you.”

“You never used to get me the things I asked for.”

“Why are you being so difficult today?”

Maybe because I just got socked in the nose, Mom.

“Okay, fine.”

Mom didn’t seem in the mood to talk. So he decided to take a shower and fill out this list.

Sure, I’ll write up a list. And we’ll just see if I get anything on it.

Thomas wasn’t thinking about Christmas. He was still thinking about this guy named Vic, wondering what the first day back at school on Monday would bring.

Golden Ticket

All Kevin needed now was to find Wonka’s Golden Ticket.

Ah, if only life could be that easy. God, you have a golden ticket to spare somewhere here in this shopping mall?

It was sarcasm, of course. Because he wasn’t that bright-eyed kid he used to see mirrored in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the one with Gene Wilder. And because he couldn’t quite ask God for much of anything. In the long race to try to build his design and marketing firm known as Precision, God had been put in the backseat. Like everybody else. Including Jenny.

The movie had been on last night, and Kevin had watched and remembered. He felt so different from that kid who first saw it. Kevin had grown up in the Greenville area with plenty of family and friends. So when his father lost his job at the pharmaceutical company he’d worked at for over fifteen years, forcing hard times, Kevin had never truly felt the full impact as a ten-year-old. His father shifted from job to job, trying to find steady work and never quite landing back on his feet. But Kevin didn’t see his youth as miserable or heartbreaking. He looked at it sorta like Charlie viewed his life in Willy Wonka, making the most out of the present and dreaming of a better future.

Somewhere along the way, Kevin’s dream had been made reality. Perhaps that was what he feared the most, suddenly becoming a living replica of his father, who never found his footing again in life. He and Mom still lived in that small house in Greer, which he and Jenny visited often. The last thing Kevin wanted to do was show up one day and tell them that he’d lost his company, that this venture had turned out to be not such a grand adventure after all.