Maya couldn’t decide if picking Sanjay’s name in the game of Secret Santa was a good thing or not. She folded the bit of paper with his name on it and quickly slipped it inside the pocket of her wide-legged jeans before the devil himself walked towards her. “So, who’d you get?” he asked.

“It’s called Secret Santa for a reason,” Maya said, taking a step around him to head back to her seat. Nila was still rattling the cookie box containing the names of all their classmates, stretching it out to each student and asking them to draw one. Sanjay followed his girlfriend.