They chanced upon it one fragile day in December, the boy with the odd-looking coat and the girl with the nervous smile. It was a day of premonition – sullen and overcast skies, an ice-edged feel to the wind, the promise of snow hitting their noses and ankles with sharp, red stings. Uneasiness hung in the air, pressed down on the clouds, and stretched long, gloomy fingers at the two figures far below.

The “it” – the Christmas tree – had been biding its time in the discount lot for far too long. It was narrow-limbed and tall, with a straining point that would have to bend sideways to fit along the ceiling of the owner’s apartment. Dying, running out of second chances for that season, it had caused the girl to stop. She stood calf-deep in a pool of snow to examine it.

“Kennan,” she said to the boy, “that one.”

“It looks like a waif,” he said. “Couldn’t you have picked one that was alive?”

She ran her finger along the prickling, greenish-blue limb of the tree. Even though it was her first time finding and choosing the Christmas tree, she had plenty experience in making decisions. Most of these decisions ended badly. This one, however, would not. So when she spoke, it was with assurance, and for a split-second she lost that nervous smile.

“No, this is the tree. I’m certain.” And then, at his disbelieving scowl: “Absolutely certain.”

The first slice of the axe had sent a tremor through the tree that ran deep to the bone. Another chop and it was teetering, then it shuffled sideways with the mustered bravado of an ousted corps dancer, and fell onto the frozen ground. The girl hopped from one leg to the next in the cold, hands stuffed in her pockets, the bright, tremulous fixtures of her mask back in place; Kennan groaned as he leaned down to pick up the tree, hoisting it on his broad shoulder as effortlessly as he had all those months ago; triumphant after being crowned the regional champion of his weight class, hopeful, in love, and still blessedly naïve.

Eighteen had opened his eyes, though; it had opened hers as well. For the first time in four years he saw in her what she had seen her entire life – there wasn’t much about to love, and even less to bide a future on.   

The trip back to the farm was short. Processing shook the tree head to toe, rattled its old branches until needles showered to the ground. The girl stood within sight, one arm wrapped around her stomach, watching as workers bound the tree and evened the jagged stump. At the threshold of that December afternoon, her thoughts were a muted roar, pirouetting in wide, frantic loops through her mind.

This should have been a joyous thing: one year, together, free from societal and familial and personal expectations. Nothing to separate them except for their own differences. But that gap, those differences, had been steadily widening.

Kennan. He was getting coffee. These days caffeine made his eyes shake back and forth, instructed his arms to pull back, swing forward, retreat at the last moment. He had always been unstable. That was what had made him successful as an athlete: his ability to channel that reckless energy and barely subdued, anxious strength. It had never scared her, this instability. Yet now – watching the worn-down tree that had been overlooked for so long, bowing into submission– she realized for the first time that it should.