Made You Up

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.

The problem lies in getting yourself out of Christmas, because when you come out of it, you have to redefine the lines between reality and imagination.

I hated that.

After New Year’s, a few days before we were due back at school, I asked my mother if I could go to Meijer with her. She gave me a strange look, but didn’t ask why until I packed up a piece of our second attempt at a Black Forest cake.

“Miles works at Meijer. I wanted to see if he was there today.”

Charlie demanded to go with us, and when we got into the supermarket, I held the plate of cake in one hand and steered Charlie toward the produce section with the other while Mom got a cart and went to shop.

I’d been in Meijer plenty of times since I was seven, of course. The deli counter hadn’t changed at all, and the lobster tank was right in the same place. The lobsters still crawled over one another in their desperate search for escape. I propelled Charlie toward the tank, and she watched the lobsters as intently as I used to. The only difference was she never tried to set them free.

Despite the rush of post-holiday shoppers in town, the place was curiously empty. I worried that Miles wasn’t working, but then a door behind the counter swung open and he walked out.

“Hey! You are here!”

Miles froze like a cat caught in a flashlight beam.

“What’re you doing here?” he asked.

I balked. “Shopping, of course. Bit of a rude question to ask a customer, don’t you think?” I passed the piece of cake over the glass case. “I hope you can keep this back there somewhere, or eat it really quick. Just think of it as an extra Christmas present. It’s a Sch . . . Schwarzw. . . .”

Miles laughed. “Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte,” he said. “A Black Forest cake. Did you—?”

“Charlie and I made it,” I said, motioning over my shoulder to where Charlie stood, munching on a black knight.

Miles frowned over my shoulder. For a fleeting moment I wondered if he thought she looked like the seven-year-old me, standing next to the lobster tank with a seven-year-old him, asking for help in freeing the lobsters. Would he remember that, if I asked him?

Part of me was too scared to find out.

“She’s cute at first,” I said, “but trust me, it wears off once she crowns herself the pope and declares the bathroom ‘religious grounds.’”

“She’s done that before?” Miles asked.

“Oh yes. Several times. Last time I tried to take a shower, in fact. You could hear her screaming about blasphemers all the way down the street.”

Miles laughed again—I was almost used to the sound by now. I looked back at Charlie, whose attention had started to wander. “I, uh, came to see if you were here, thought you’d like that cake. . . .” Suddenly there was nothing left to say. I was bothering him, I knew it. And why had I decided to bring him food at work? He plucked the cherry off the cake and stared at me as he chewed. I wished I had put more cherries on that slice. The whole jar of cherries. I could watch him eat a whole jar of cherries.

Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, what was happening to me?

I tugged hard on my hair and turned away, but he said, “Hey, wait, before you go. . .”

I turned back. He rubbed his neck, looking off to the side, and didn’t say anything right away.

“I have another proposition for you,” he said, and at the look on my face, he quickly added, “Not like the last one. This isn’t a job, I swear. There’s, ah, something I wanted to ask you. You said that you couldn’t find anything else about Scarlet and McCoy? My mom went to school with both of them and I figured, if you wanted to . . . uh . . .”