Callie and Mindy were back in Tim's apartment. After all the time they'd spent there back in November, it seemed like the most casual gathering place for the three of them. And there was one more holiday left to celebrate. But there wasn't much that they felt like celebrating, or saying to one another. Tim had given his apologies to Callie days ago. So instead, they just sat together by the TV, letting the tail end of the 11 o'clock news fill the silence in the room.
"And now," said the man on the screen, "we've got the final weather report of the year for you. I think we can safely say that this has been the worst year ever, am I right? And I'm not talking about the turmoil in the Middle East here, folks." He laughed at his own joke. "I mean, look at this. We have not gotten a single inch of snowfall in the whole tri-state area since February. We had a totally green Christmas, as you'll recall - or, I guess it was mostly brown. And I'm afraid it's going to stay that way for the rest of the year." He cracked another smile. "Because we've got a cold precipitation front coming in that's going to start hitting us right after midnight. I guess even the snow wants nothing to do with a year like this, huh? But seriously, folks, from all of us at Channel 8, a very happy New Year to you and yours."
The camera cut away after that. The famous ball drop in Times Square had happened an hour ago, so when midnight Central Time was about to roll around, the TV crews had to settle for some little local party that was taking place downtown. The view panned across a small crowd with a few changed people scattered in it, most noticeably a guy who looked like a giant lightbulb. It was strange for Tim to think that just a week ago, he'd been trying to get an invitation to that party. He could barely remember now what was going through his head when he wanted to be on TV in his current form. It actually felt like a good thing that they'd turned him down. The urge had left him just as quickly as it came. He was glad to be standing here in his living room. He was done going out to try to please people.
They started counting down from 10. Tim glanced over at Mindy and Callie sitting there on his couch. For a second or two, he wanted to start shouting out the numbers along with the people on TV. But the two people right next to him sat stone-faced, just waiting for this - all of this - to be over. So he stopped himself. "Three, two, one..." The lightbulb-man screwed himself into some contraption that was sitting underneath him and started to glow brightly. "Happy New Year!"
Soon after, both Mindy and Callie said their goodbyes and went home. Mindy actually had work in the morning, even on a holiday, and both of them were more than ready to go crawl in bed. When he was alone again, Tim looked around at the dark and quiet room, the TV whining softly as it powered down making the only sound he could hear. So this was a new year. Nothing felt different. But then he hobbled over to the window and took a look outside. What he could see from his window was mostly dark, but a few streetlights and the occasional firework popping off in the distance provided just enough illumination to see it. Snow was falling. Sure, it was only a light dusting right now, but it was starting to collect.
Tim watched, totally enraptured, as the white blanket grew thicker on the ground, every surface of the surrounding buildings, and the branches of the trees. He didn't stop watching until the sky started to turn purple with a hint of the approaching dawn (since he had found he didn't really need to sleep in this form anyway), the growing light revealing more and more white in previously concealed places. He felt like a kid again, and this time it was in a good way. He was almost tempted to think that this had been the one missing element to his former plan, the piece that would have made all those people hear him out: a white Christmas. But he knew better than that by now. He couldn't expect other people, even others who were changed, to understand where he was coming from - that much, he had taken to heart. In his soul, if not always in his apartment, he was alone...
But the sight of the falling snow still excited him, even if he didn't know what he was supposed to do with that excitement. It pulled him out of the hazy funk he had been in for the past week, as the days between Christmas and New Year's zipped by even faster than they normally did. And for the first time since that Christmas morning, it got him thinking...