Peter Wiggin was supposed to spend the day at the Greensboro Public Library, working on a term paper, but he had lost interest in the project. It was two days before Christmas, a holiday that always depressed him. “Don’t get me any gifts,” he said to his parents last year. “Put the money into mutual funds and give it to me when I graduate.”

“Christmas drives the American economy,” Father said. “We have to do our part.”

“It’s not up to you what other people do and don’t give you,” said Mother. “Invest your own money and don’t give us gifts.”

“Like that’s possible,” said Peter.

“We don’t like your gifts anyway,” said Valentine, “so you might as well.”

This stung Peter. “There’s nothing wrong with my gifts! You sound like I give you used Band-Aids or something.”

“Your gifts always look like you bought the cheapest things on sale and then decided after you got them home who you’d give them to.”

Which exactly nailed the process Peter went through. “Gee, Valentine,” said Peter. “And everyone calls you the nice one.”

“Can’t you two ever stop bickering?” said Mother wistfully.

“Peace on Earth, good will toward brats,” said Peter.

That was last year. This year, Peter’s investments—anonymous investments, of course, since he was still underage—were doing very well, and he had sold off enough shares to pay for some nice gifts for the family. Nobody was going to say there was anything wrong with this year’s crop. Though he couldn’t spend too much, or Dad would start to get way too curious about where Peter’s money was coming from.

His Christmas shopping was done. He wasn’t going to do a paper on this topic, and he wasn’t ready to start researching another one. There was nothing to do in this miserable town but go home.

Which is why he came into the living room to find Mother crying over—of all things—a Christmas stocking.

“Don’t worry, Mother,” he said. “You’ve been good. It won’t be coal this year.”

She gave him a thin little courtesy laugh and quickly stuffed the stocking back into the box it was stored in. Only then did he realize whose it was.

“Mom,” he said. He couldn’t help the tone of frustration and reproof in his voice. It’s not like Ender was dead. He was just in Battle School.

Mom got up from the chair where she was sitting and headed for the kitchen.

“Mom, he’s fine.”

She turned to him, gazed at him steadily with eyes like fire, though her voice was mild. “Oh—you’ve had a letter from him? A phone call? A secret report from the school administrators that they didn’t provide to Ender’s parents?”

“No,” said Peter, still unable to keep the impatience from his voice.

Mother smiled acidly. “Then you don’t know what you’re talking about, do you?”

Peter resented the contempt in her tone. “And stroking his stocking and crying over it, that’s supposed to make anything better?”

“You really are a piece of work, Peter,” she said, pushing past him.

He followed her into the kitchen. “I bet they hang up stockings for them up in Battle School and fill them with little toy spaceships that make cool shooting noises.”

“I’m sure the Muslim and Hindu students will appreciate getting Christmas stockings,” said Mother.

“Whatever they do for Christmas, Mother, Ender isn’t going to be missing us.”

“Just because you wouldn’t miss us doesn’t mean he doesn’t.”

He rolled his eyes. “Of course I’d miss you.”

Mother said nothing.

“I’m a perfectly normal kid. So’s Ender. He’ll be busy. He’s getting along fine. He’s adapting. People adapt. To anything.”

She turned slowly, reached across and touched his chest, then hooked a finger through the neckline of his shirt and drew him close. “You never adapt,” she whispered, “to losing a child.”

“It’s not like he’s dead,” said Peter.

“It’s exactly like he’s dead,” said Mother. “I will never again see the boy who left here. I’ll never see him at age seven or nine or eleven. I’ll have no memories of him at those ages, only what I can imagine. That’s what the parents of dead children have. So until you actually know something about what you’re talking about, Peter—human feelings, for instance—why don’t you just shut up?”

“Merry Christmas to you too,” said Peter. He left the room.

His own bedroom, when he entered it, felt strange to him. Alien. Bare. There was nothing there that expressed a personality. That had been a conscious decision on his part—anything individual that he put on display would give Valentine an advantage in their endless dueling. But at this moment, with Mother’s accusation of his inhumanity still ringing in his ears, his bedroom looked so sterile that he hated the person who would choose to live in it.

So he wandered back into the living room and reached into the box of Christmas stockings and pulled out the whole stack. Mother had cross-stitched their names and an iconic picture on each stocking. His own was a spaceship. Ender’s stocking had a steam locomotive. But it was Ender in space, the little twit, while Peter was stuck on land with the locomotives.

Peter thrust his hand down into Ender’s stocking and started making it talk like a hand puppet. “I’m Mommy’s bestest boy and I’ve been very very good.”

There was something in the toe of the stocking. Peter reached deeper into the sock, found it, and pulled it out. It was just a five-dollar piece—a nickel, as people had taken to calling them, though it was supposedly ten times the value of that long disused coin.

“So you’ve taken to stealing things out of other people’s stockings?” said Mother from the doorway.

Peter felt as embarrassed as if he had been caught in an actual crime. “The toe was heavy,” he said. “I was seeing what it was.”

“It wasn’t yours, whatever it was,” said Mother cheerily.

“I wasn’t going to keep it,” said Peter. Though of course he would have done exactly that, on the assumption that it had been forgotten and would never be missed.

But that was the stocking she had been holding and weeping over. She knew perfectly well the nickel was there.

“You still put stuff in his stocking every year,” he said, incredulous.

“Santa fills the stockings,” said Mother. “It has nothing to do with me.”

Peter shook his head. “Oh, Mother.”

“It has nothing to do with you,” said Mother. “Mind your business.”

“This is morbid,” said Peter. “Grieving for your hero-boy as if he were dead. He’s fine. He’s not going to die, he’s in the most sterile, oversupervised school in the universe, and after he wins the war he’s going to come home amid cheers and confetti and give you a big hug.”

“Put back the five dollars,” said Mother.

“I will.”

“While I’m watching.”

That stung. “Don’t you trust me, Mother?” asked Peter. He spoke in a sarcastically aggrieved voice, to hide the fact that he really was hurt.

“Not where Ender is concerned,” said Mother. “Or me, for that matter. The coin is Ender’s. It shouldn’t have anybody’s fingerprints on it but his.”

“And Santa’s,” said Peter.

“And Santa’s.”

He dropped the coin down into the sock.

“Now put it away.”

“You realize you’re making it more and more tempting to set this thing on fire,” said Peter.

“And you wonder why I don’t trust you.”

“And you wonder why I’m hostile and untrustworthy.”

“Doesn’t it make you just the tiniest bit uncomfortable that I have to wait until I’m sure you’re not going to be home before I can allow myself to miss my little boy?”

“You can do what you want, Mother, whenever you want. You’re an adult. Adults have all the money and all the freedom.”

“You really are the stupidest smart kid in the world,” said Mother.

“Again, just for reference, please take note of all the reasons I have to feel loved and respected in my own family.”

“I meant that in the nicest, most affectionate way.”

“I’m sure you did, Mommy,” said Peter. He put the stocking into the box.

Mother came over as he was starting to rise out of the chair. She pushed him back down, then reached into the box and took out Ender’s stocking. She reached inside.

Peter took the coin out of his shirt pocket and handed it to her. “Worth a shot, don’t you think?”

“You’re still so envious of your younger brother that you have to covet everything that’s his?”

“It’s a fiver,” said Peter, “and he isn’t going to spend it. I was going to invest it and let it earn him some interest before he gets home in, oh, another six or eight years or whatever.”

Mother bent over and kissed his forehead. “Heaven knows why I still love you.” Then she dropped the coin into the stocking, put the stocking into the box, reached out and slapped Peter’s hand, and then took the box out of the room.

The back of Peter’s hand stung from the slap, but it was where her lips had touched his brow that his skin tingled the most.