Then again, those people also hadn’t flown here because of a high school student hoping to impress her new classmates with her charming hometown, only to find dilapidated storefronts and a twenty-five-foot wooden Santa sign that lost its head about two years ago after being used for target practice so many times it finally broke off in a spring storm.

No one ever found the head, which was disconcerting. It didn’t seem easy to hide.

I looked back at Arthur.

“How would this work?” I asked.

“Well, according to this website of lies you altered to pre-sent to everyone in school as some sort of middle-American Christmas Shangri-la—”

“Move on, Arthur.”

“—this town affords a multitude of opportunities for visitors to partake in Christmas-related excursions and experiences. Like”—he swiped his phone screen—“building a snowman.”

I frowned, looking around at the flat, freezing landscape covered by dead, yellowed grass and not a lot else.

“There’s no snow.”

“Find some.” He swiped again. “A sleigh ride.”

“Again, no snow.”

“Then you shouldn’t have put that on there.” Another swipe. “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire.”

Lord. Why had I added that? Oh, right. The song had started playing over the all-holiday satellite radio station when I was manipulating the website back in mid-November. Now I had to somehow locate chestnuts in under a week. What the hell were chestnuts, anyhow? Were they like hazelnuts? Would Arthur be able to tell the difference? Knowing him, he probably would.

Maybe Amazon had some.

Another swipe.

“Reindeer.”

I frowned. “Reindeer?”

“Reindeer.”

He showed me a photo of a reindeer staring back at me with the caption Feed reindeer corn to actual reindeer!

And that was when I remembered I was eating “reindeer corn” (basically Halloween candy corn, except with red and green instead of orange and yellow) at the time of my great deception and apparently got inspired.

Lovely.

Problem was, reindeer weren’t exactly indigenous to Oklahoma, and while I didn’t know much about them, I was pretty sure they didn’t eat candy corn. Not that I’d ever find out.

“Ah,” he said, his eyes lighting up. “An important one: a tour of magical Christmas lights.”

Thank God, something I could do! Not here in Christmas, but in Chickasha, a nearby town that had an awesome lights festival—and, not coincidentally, where I had borrowed the photo from for Christmas’s web page.

“Done,” I said with confidence.

His eyes narrowed in doubt, but he continued. “I also want to go to a party.”

“That’s not on the website.”

“Nonetheless, I’m quite sure a town this size hasn’t much else for its teenagers to do other than congregate and drink, particularly over Christmas break, and you seem to have enough social skills to have at least one friend here—”

“Thanks?”