13 Gifts (4 page)

“Um, why do you have a poster of him over your bed?”

She grins. “I’m hoping some of his genius will seep into me while I’m sleeping! I’m trying to figure out one of the Millennium Prize Problems. They’ve stumped the greatest mathematical minds in history, but I think I’m getting close. The winner gets a million dollars!”

“Wow.” But what really surprises me is that she doesn’t seem the least bit embarrassed by revealing such a geeky thing.

She leans over and pats Euclid’s cheek lovingly. I take a deep breath and make my way across the room, avoiding placing my feet directly on anything breakable. I push aside a winter coat that likely hadn’t been worn in the four months since winter ended and sit down on the edge of the bed.

“Hey, sorry about the whole squealing thing before,” Emily says, down to white leggings and a T-shirt now. “I’m not really a squealer. It’s just that I promised Mom I’d be more enthusiastic about things other than trying to prove the underlying structure of the universe through mathematical equations.” Without pausing to take a breath, she says, “It’s just that math is so amazing. It’s like this huge puzzle, only you don’t know what pieces to look for so you keep trying all these different ones and suddenly one fits!” She looks over her shoulder at her posters with obvious admiration. “Like Einstein said, ‘As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.’”

I have only a passing acquaintance with what she just said,
but clearly I won’t have to worry about my little cousin eating glue sticks anymore. “Um, you’re interested in fencing, right? So it’s not all about math.”

She glances at the open door then leans closer. “Fencing’s okay. I’m just doing it to prove I can be as well-rounded as the next kid at my school. Anyway, I wanted to thank you. Since you’re here now, I don’t have to go to camp this summer.” She shudders. “I hate camp.”

“You shouldn’t say ‘hate,’ ” I tell her, surprised — and kind of annoyed — that Mom’s words come so easily.

She laughs. “You sounded just like my babysitter Rory when you said that. Okay, I
strongly dislike
being told I have to swim in a cold lake infested with all sorts of bacteria and fungi, and forge lifelong friendships with my bunkmates only to turn on them when color war starts.”

It occurs to me that my cousin talks a lot. “You have a boy babysitter?”

She tosses all her fencing garb into the middle of the floor. I watch the helmet roll off and thump against the dresser. “Why would you think I have a boy babysitter?”

“Isn’t Rory a boy’s name?”

“Not in this case.”

“Oh.” And that’s where the conversation peters out. My mind drifts to the meager contents of my suitcase, and how there’s barely space in this bedroom for the few things I brought with me.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Emily says, tossing her fencing medal over a bedpost stacked high with them.
None, I notice, better than fifth place. Maybe she should stick to math.

“You’re thinking I’m a little old for a babysitter,” she says.

Actually, I had been thinking about how silly my Jake Harrison poster would look next to Emily’s white-haired geniuses. Not that Jake isn’t smart. I hear he gets straight A’s from all his on-set tutors.

“I’m at that awkward age,” Emily explains, even though I didn’t ask. “Too young to stay home alone, too old to need someone to watch me. Anyway, Rory’s more like a friend. She’s in seventh grade, same as you.”

I want to tell her that officially, I’m not in seventh grade anymore, having been kicked to the curb by an oversensitive principal. But I’m not sure what mom told Aunt Bethany, so I keep quiet and Emily keeps talking.

“I’m sure you’ll like Rory a lot. She’s funny without trying to be. And she’s kind of klutzy, too. We know you’ll want to socialize with your peer group while you’re here, so Mom planned a party for you to meet everyone.”

I don’t think I’ve heard anyone other than my mother use the words
peer group.
Well, maybe the school social workers. But I’ve never heard an eleven-year-old who sounds as grown up as she does or who talks as
much
as she does. The words
party
and
for me
are enough to make me want to crawl under the blanket (if I could find it) and sleep for two months. “You really don’t have to plan anything for me, I don’t really like —”

Aunt Bethany walks in as I’m about to say
parties.
“All unpacked?” she asks.

A little knot forms in my stomach. It’s probably homesickness, but since I’ve never been away from home before, I can’t be totally sure. “I’m about to start,” I reply, kneeling down next to my suitcase and knocking over a stack of CDs in the process.

Aunt Bethany frowns. “Emily! I told you to clean up this room before Tara arrived!”

“But, Mom, I thought I had longer and then —”

My aunt holds up her hand. “Just clean it now.”

“Fine,” Emily grumbles and begins tossing things from her bed to the floor.

“When Tara’s unpacked, the two of you can come down for dinner.” She shuts the door behind her.

“Sorry you have to clean your room because of me,” I tell her, not really sorry at all because frankly, all the stuff everywhere is giving me a headache.

Emily sighs. “It’s okay. I have a geometry test next week and haven’t been able to find my protractor for a month.” She starts yanking things off her bed and shoving them underneath, where they are likely to remain until she goes off to college. I’m about to tell her that I don’t think that’s what her mom meant by cleaning up, but I’m the guest here and it’s none of my business.

Everything in my suitcase is jumbled from when I went through it at the train station. The bag Mom packed with her jewelry has made its way to the top of the pile. I set it aside so I can bring it down to dinner. Jake’s poster is still on the bottom, folded in a way that would keep his face crease-free.

“What’s this?” Emily asks, picking up the little red pouch with the bracelets I “borrowed” from Mom in it. Before I can stop her, she opens it and shakes out the contents into her hand.

“Two of the same?” she asks, lifting one up to admire it. “You bought us friendship bracelets!” She slips one right over her wrist without even needing to unclasp it. Then she hands the other one to me. I hold it between my fingers, unsure what to do next.

“Want me to help you put it on?”

When I don’t answer, she plucks it from my hand and attaches it around my wrist. I’ve never had friendship bracelets with anyone. I hope it doesn’t come with some level of responsibility that I can’t possibly live up to. I have to admit, it fits perfectly. I wonder why my mom never wore it. Emily is twisting her arm side to side, admiring hers, too. How am I going to get it back from her at the end of the summer? How do I get myself into these situations?

“And what’s this?” she asks.

In a flash, Emily lifts Grandma’s hatbox out of my suitcase. I reach for it and grab on to the bottom part. Unfortunately, she’s gripping the top so tightly that when I pull on the bottom the whole thing opens up and my letters go flying out. I scramble around to pick them up before she can get too close a look. I only brought them in the first place because it would have been like leaving my diary at home. I’m sure Julie the Pen Pal has forgotten all about me after I didn’t answer her first letter. Or her tenth. That’s when they stopped coming.

“Wow, what are all those? Letters from friends?”

When I don’t answer, she says, “You must be really popular.”

“It’s not really like that.” I stick the last letter back in the box and hold out my hand for the top.

She holds on to it a second longer than necessary. “My mom has some old hatboxes like this. They were Grandma Emilia’s.”

“This was hers, too.” I wedge the top back on. “My mom said she had a whole collection.”

Emily nods. “Grandma was a really famous actress, you know. At least in Willow Falls.” She stares at the hatbox, almost longingly, then says, “Everyone tells me I look just like her. Does anyone tell you that?”

I look up to see if she’s serious. If people thought we both looked like our grandmother, that would mean we looked like each other, too, which we totally don’t. Instead of pointing that out to her, though, I shake my head. “I’ve never met anyone who knew her, since we’ve never lived here.”

“Right!” she says. “Duh. I wasn’t thinking. Why’d your parents move from Willow Falls anyway?”

I shrug. “I never asked and they never said.”

Her eyes soften as pity pools inside them.

“My mom likes to move a lot,” I explain. “I guess she just got tired of living here. But don’t feel too sorry for me. I’ve lived in plenty of small towns in the middle of nowhere. I’m sure they’re just like Willow Falls.”

She shakes her head. “Not like Willow Falls. This town is …” She trails off, searching for the right word. Finally she finds it.
“Special.”

“Sure, whatever you say.” I stare down at the jumbled contents of my suitcase. I know it’s silly to be jealous of someone because they actually like where they live, but I can’t help it.

“Hey,” Emily says, “I’d be bummed, too, if my parents were somewhere really cool where no kids are allowed, but we’ll have fun here, I promise.”

I wonder if that lie originated from my mother or from Aunt Bethany, but I’m glad to know that Emily doesn’t know the real reason I’m here. “Thanks,” I mutter.

She returns to throwing her piles of stuff onto other piles of stuff. After a minute of silence, she says, “I emptied out the bottom drawer of the dresser for your things. Will that be enough space?”

I nod.

“Maybe you should unpack later, though. I forgot my mom wanted us to come down for dinner. She gets super-cranky when she’s hungry.”

I zip up my suitcase, not in the mood to unpack anyway. “My mom gets like that, too,” I tell her, glad to be talking about something other than the “specialness” of Willow Falls.

“It’s kind of weird,” she says as she opens the door, “how they’re sisters, but hardly ever see each other. I always figured if I had a sister we’d be best friends.”

I shake my head. “I always figured if I had a sister we’d hate each other.”

She grins and marches into the hall. “You shouldn’t say ‘hate.’ “

I smile at the back of her head, and the tightness in my chest loosens just the littlest bit.

Chapter Five

 

Instead of heading downstairs for dinner, Emily
leads me past the stairs to the opposite end of the hall. She stops in front of the last door, where big black letters tell us to KEEP OUT. Ignoring the warning, she opens the door and marches right in. I hesitate. I hadn’t planned on breaking any rules within my first hour of arrival.

Emily yanks me inside and shuts the door behind us. It’s dark. It’s also colder than in the rest of the house. I shiver. She flips on the light and my eyes instantly widen.

Long wooden shelves cover all four walls, from floor to ceiling. As far as I can tell, the stuff on the shelves is a mixture of toys, action figures, old-fashioned candy and chocolates with labels in other languages, comic books, bobbleheads, baseballs and footballs and soccer balls with autographs scribbled on them, and cookie jars covered in a thin layer of Bubble Wrap. Other than the balls, which are in plastic containers, everything else is still in its original packaging. A long, rectangular table sits in the center of the room with a single computer, a printer, and enough packing supplies to keep a small post office afloat for a year.

Emily trails her hand along one of the spotless shelves. “Pretty wild, right?”

“What is this place?” I whisper.

She laughs. “Why are you whispering?”

“The sign on the door?” I point out, voice still low. “I figure that means we don’t want to get caught.”

“Dad doesn’t mind if I come in here. As long as I don’t touch anything.”

My eyes scan a row of Star Trek toys. “I thought your dad was an inventor.”

“He is. But not everything is as big a seller as the Sand-Free Beach Towel or the Odor-Absorbing Sock Monkey. So a few years ago he started buying and selling collectibles. Mostly buying.” She gestures to a shelf full of neatly stacked comic books. Each one is tucked inside a plastic slipcover. “He has two or three of each of these. He doesn’t like giving anything up.”

An astronaut Barbie Doll with the words L
IMITED
E
DITION
sprawled across the box stares down at me from the top shelf. “Don’t you ever want to play with any of this stuff?”

Emily shakes her head. “I’m too busy. Between school and fencing and trying to solve my math theorem, I don’t have much time for toys anymore.”

In the bright light I can see gray smudges under both her eyes. I wonder if she stays up very late reading those thick books of hers. “Um, maybe we should go down for dinner? I know my mom always gets really mad if whatever she made gets cold.”

“It’s not really like that here,” Emily says, opening the door. “You’ll see.”

It seems like at least
one
of the many closed doors we pass on the way back down the hall should be a spare bedroom. It also seems like the smell of food should be in the air. But even when we reach the bottom of the stairs, the only thing I smell is lemon-scented furniture polish.

The pile of delivery menus on the kitchen table explains a lot. I see Chinese food, Japanese, Thai, Mexican, Italian, and a place for deli sandwiches. Who knew Willow Falls was so multicultural? Aunt Bethany walks in from the adjoining laundry room with a stack of towels. “I ordered pizza. It’ll be here in a few minutes.”

“We can wait on the porch for it, if you want,” Emily offers.

Aunt Bethany hands her the money. “Don’t forget the change. Last time you gave him a ten-dollar tip!”

“C’mon, let’s go out the back way.” Emily leads me through the laundry room and out the back door. She steps onto a large patio with a barbeque grill and table at one end, and a large vinyl shed at the other. Most of the rest of the backyard is taken up by the huge hole where the pool is supposed to be.

“My mother told me you like to ride bikes,” Emily says. She makes no mention of the gaping pit of dirt, earth, and rocks with the hastily constructed plastic barrier around the edges that doesn’t look imposing enough to keep even a chipmunk away.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that Mom told them stuff about me, but I am, a little. “At home I used to ride every night after dinner.” I don’t tell her how hard it’s going to be not riding.
I already miss feeling the wind on my cheeks, that sense of freedom, of using my muscles and feeling strong.

She opens the latch on the shed and the door swings open easily, letting out a musty smell. “You can use mine while you’re here. I never use it.”

My heart leaps. “Really? That’d be great!” Then my eyes land on the bike. It’s pink. Like bubblegum pink. Knotted tassels hang limply from the handlebars, a white wicker basket secured between them. Stickers of Clifford the Big Red Dog cover the banana seat. One gear, no hand brakes.

“I know it looks small,” Emily says, “but if you raise the seat you’ll be able to use it.”

My thank-you comes out a bit forced, but Emily doesn’t seem to notice.

“You can go for a ride right now, if you want, while I wait for the pizza guy.”

I eye the bike, which looks like something I would have ridden when I was seven. “Um, that’s okay. I’ll just wait with you.”

“No!” she says, so forcefully that I take a step back.

She seems just as surprised herself, because she quickly adds, “I mean, it’s fine, I can do it myself.”

“Okay. I’ll, um, go unpack.”

“Okay,” she says, visibly relieved that I’m not going to follow her. She shuts and latches the shed.

I watch until she disappears around the side of the house. Have I worn out my welcome already? Maybe I should have made a bigger deal over the bike. I’m tempted to climb down into the hole and hide out there until the summer is over. I peer
over the edge and am sorry to see that the mixture of dirt, tree roots, and slabs of wood doesn’t look very inviting.

So I push open the laundry room door, only to hear a male’s voice say, “Oomph!” and a second later, the sound of glass shattering on the tiled floor. I peek in to see Ray staring down at the remains of something green.

“I’m so sorry! I didn’t see you. I hope that wasn’t a really expensive … bowl? Vase? Glass frog?”

“Bowl,” he says cheerily. “No worries. It wasn’t exy. Only cost a few quid. And that one was just for practice anyway.”

“Practice for what?”

“I’m a glassblower,” he says, thumping his chest. “ ’Tis a noble profession.”

“A glassblower? I thought you worked here, for the St. Claires.”

“I am a wearer of many hats.”

I’d expected Aunt Bethany to come running when she heard the crash, but now I can hear her on the phone somewhere else in the house. “Guess we should clean this up.”

“Too right!” Ray grabs a dustpan from the shelf above the huge washing machine. He carefully picks out the larger shards and sets them aside, then starts sweeping up the smaller pieces into the bin. I stand there, feeling useless. He ducks into the kitchen to dump the bin into the trash and comes back with one of those ziplock freezer bags. He instructs me to hold it open while he puts the larger pieces inside. When we’re done he says, “I’ll go over the floor in here one more time with the mop, make sure I didn’t miss anything. You can throw that out under the sink.”

I nod and head over to the sink, where I slide out the garbage can. I’m about to drop the bag in, but something about the way the glass catches the light from the window makes me feel a little dizzy. I stare down at the bag, at the jagged, beautiful shards, and am reminded of how the sun had transformed the leaves into shimmering glass outside the train station.

I don’t know why, but I can’t throw it out. I close the cabinet and without turning to see if Ray is watching, I take the bag and run upstairs. I hide the bag of glass inside Grandma’s hatbox, then close the suitcase back up, still unable to unpack.

Suddenly I’m overwhelmed with exhaustion. The long, strange day has finally caught up with me. I start to move everything from the bed, carefully at first, but then just sweep it off with my arm. I climb on top of the pale yellow blanket and close my eyes. I’m sure Emily will come get me when dinner comes.

In the haze of half sleep, I imagine I can hear the glass tinkling inside the bag, trying to fit itself back together. But of course that’s impossible. You can’t unshatter a bowl any more than you can unsteal a goat.