Made You Up(58)

“Did you make this?” he said. “Why’s it only in green?”

“Charlie’s on a green binge right now. It was the only color I could find.”

He scanned what I’d written inside the card. Dear Asshole: Thank you for keeping your word and believing me. It was more than I expected. Also, I’m sorry you were inconvenienced by my gluing your locker shut at the beginning of this year. However, I am not sorry that I did it, because it was a lot of fun. Love, Alex.

When he finished reading, he did something so surprising that I almost dropped the Bunsen burner and set the kid across from me on fire.

He laughed.

Our neighbors turned to stare at us, because Miles Richter laughing was one of those things that the Mayans had predicted would signal the end of the world. He wasn’t particularly loud about it, but it was Miles laughing, a sound no mortal had ever heard before.

I liked it.

“I’m definitely keeping this.” Miles went to get his black notebook. He slid the card into it and came back to the lab table, where he continued to be completely oblivious to the staring and happily helped me start the lab.

The club seemed to really enjoy their gifts, even before I explained what the drachmas were. Jetta, who knew Greek, spoke it for the rest of the day. The triplets also wanted to know how much their coins were worth, and if they could pawn them.

“Probably, if you can find the right person,” I said, “but I’ll hunt you down if you do.”

The club had a thing about giving one another gifts. Jetta, who planned on moving back to France someday to become a fashion designer, made everyone scarves. Art handed out amazingly realistic wooden figurines he’d made in shop class. (Mine looked like a long-haired Raggedy Ann doll.) The triplets actually sang a Christmas carol they’d composed themselves. Miles walked into the gym about five minutes after they’d finished, holding a large white box filled with giant cupcakes. Everyone gorged themselves while we watched the basketball practice. I didn’t eat mine; I stacked it on top of the scarf and the figurines in a pile next to my backpack, with the excuse that I’d eat it later. I probably wouldn’t. Not because I didn’t trust Miles. He just wasn’t as attuned to food poisons as I was.

Afterwards, the triplets started singing again, but this time they treated Miles to a nice round of “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch.”

I got one other gift, and at first I wasn’t sure if it was really a gift or a misplaced piece of sidewalk. A fist-sized chunk of rock sat on my desk without any explanation. I couldn’t really blame the person who left it—I’d left one of my drachmas and a card full of apologies on Tucker’s desk—but he could’ve at least explained what kind of message a rock was supposed to send.

But I kept it, partly because I was curious and partly because I’d never been one to throw away gifts.





Chapter Twenty-nine




Christmas at the Ridgemont house was a lot like Christmas everywhere else. It was the only time of year my parents bought a lot of stuff. Most of what we got were things that had gone on sale after Christmas last year. Charlie didn’t notice and I didn’t care, because most of it was clothes anyway, and if they fit, they fit. Our presents appeared beneath the tree, both Charlie’s and mine, with cards from Santa.

Every year on Christmas Eve, Charlie and I made Mom and Dad go out to dinner by themselves, and we made sure they went somewhere they’d actually eat the food and enjoy themselves. It meant my dad was happy and my mother was out of my hair.

At my request, Mom bought the ingredients for a Black Forest cake. Charlie got carried away eating the cherries while the cake was in the oven, but luckily we still had enough to cover the top edge. It looked delicious, and was guaranteed 100 percent poison-and tracer-free, which I was ecstatic about.

Sometimes it felt like I only got happy this way around Christmas. The rest of the year, I wondered if the point of Christmas was just spending money and getting fat and opening gifts. Indulging.

But when Christmas finally comes, and that warm, tingly, mints-and-sweaters-and-fireplace-fires feeling gathers in the bottom of your stomach, and you’re lying on the floor with all the lights off but the ones on the Christmas tree, and listening to the silence of the snow falling outside, you see the point. For that one instance in time, everything is good in the world. It doesn’t matter if everything isn’t actually good. It’s the one time of the year when pretending is enough.