“What if that is his best behavior?” asked Darcy, coming up behind them. She couldn’t decide whether she was grateful for the interruption of her moment with Logan or frustrated.

“Then I’ve got my work cut out for me,” he said.

“You didn’t tell anybody, did you?” Back on Saddle Mountain the next day, Charlie and André were making a snow fort.

“Only Santa Claus,” said André. “And only in the letter I wrote. A real letter, not an email. You?”

“Same.”

“Yeah, but I saw you talking to Santa today. You must have said something,” André accused.

“I did. The guy in the Santa hut is my dad’s friend Adam. They think I don’t know that, but I do. I had to say something because they expect it. So I said I wanted a snowboard, even though that’s not what I really want.”

“Cool.”

“Cool.”

They had a stare-down. “So, are we gonna tell each other?”

“Better not.”

“Okay.” The snow was perfect for packing, just sticky enough but not too heavy. “Hey, I think my dad’s going to have a girlfriend,” he said. “I think it’s gonna be Darcy.” He’d already gone over this in his mind. Now he wanted to tell somebody, and André was the perfect choice. A best friend.

“She’s cool.”

“Yeah. Does your mom have a boyfriend?”

André added another chunk of snow to the wall. “Nope. Sometimes my dad used to come around, but... He’s not very nice to her.”

“That blows.”

“Yeah.”

Charlie felt bad for André. Charlie himself had a dad and a stepdad and they were both awesome. He looked over at André and frowned. “Wait a second. We can tell each other our Santa wishes. We can take the best-friend oath, and then we can tell each other.”

André hesitated, staring down at the snow-covered ground. Then he said, “Okay, but the oath is unbreakable, right?”

Charlie thought about things that broke. Bicycle chains. Thin ice. Christmas bulbs. His parents’ marriage. Promises. Sometimes it seemed as if everything was breakable.

Not a friendship, though. Not when you were best friends.

“Right,” he said. “Let’s go inside the fort to make sure nobody hears.”

They crawled through the opening and settled into the icy darkness. Charlie pulled out his flashlight and stuck it in the middle with the beam shining up, lending an eerie bluish glow to the interior of the fort. It felt as if they were the only two kids in the world.

“Okay, do we solemnly swear to keep everything we say and hear a total secret? Forever?”

“I do.”

“Me, too.”

“A dog,” said Charlie. “That’s what I want for Christmas. A dog.”

André’s eyes lit up and a grin broke across his face. “Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh man. That is so rad.”