Still a Work in Progress (14 page)

I wish
his
door was the one that got wrapped.

“What did you guys get?” I ask, to change the subject.

“Bag of Hershey’s Kisses,” Sam says.

Ryan holds up a gift bag that looks kind of wrinkled and reused. “Homemade chocolate-chip cookies. Want one?”

I reach in for a cookie and take a bite. Stale. I glance at Sam. “Useless,” I tell him.

“What?” he asks innocently.

“Never mind. Hey, help me find a gift, quick. I forgot to bring something.”

“You can have my cookies,” Ryan says.

“Hey!” Sam yells, all offended.

“C’mon,” I tell Ryan. “Let’s look in the Community Room.”

“Why don’t you just get something from Ms. Cliff’s emergency bag?”

“Because then Sadie will know I forgot.”

“How?”

“All the gifts in that bag are lame. She’ll know.”

We scour the Community Room for anything that could be a present, but there’s nothing. I wish I had time to make something in the art room.

“I found something!” Ryan says. He runs over to the counter where the microwave and toaster are. I follow. There’s a bowl beside the microwave filled with fruit. Ryan holds up a banana that is mostly brown and gross.

“I don’t think so,” I say.

“Hmm. How about this?” He holds up a tiny piece of fruit that looks like an orange.

“What is that?” I ask.

“It’s a clementine! They’re really good. Here.” He hands it over.

It’s kind of squishy, like it’s been sitting there for a while.

“It seems kinda old. What if it’s rotten inside?”

“You’re making it very hard to help you,” he tells me.

“Fine.” I turn the clementine over in my hands. “I’ve got it!” I get a Sharpie out of my bag and make a face on the peel. I work really hard at it, using the grooves in the fruit to make dimples and other facial features.

“Wow,” Ryan says. “You’re really good! Is that . . . supposed to be Sadie?”

I make a few final touches and hold it out to him for closer inspection.

“You’re a real artist, Noah! The real deal!”

I smile.

“It’s so good, I bet she won’t even be offended that all you got her was an inedible piece of fruit.”

I ignore that. “Will you put it in her locker for me?” Ms. Cliff doesn’t allow locks on lockers, because she believes in community trust or something like that.

“You got it.”

He puts the fruit in his bag, and we go back to our lockers.

“Did you find something?” Sam asks when he sees us. He says it in this sort of sarcastic way, like what could we have possibly found that would be better than his stale cookies.

Ryan opens his bag and carefully shows Sam the Sadie-faced clementine so no one else can see. Then he sneaks over and puts it in her locker.

“You’re giving her school fruit?” he asks. “Wow, Noah. That is really low. Fruit is bad enough. But
school
fruit. Sheesh.”

“It’s art!” Ryan says.

Sam shakes his head.

“It’s better than stale cookies,” I say.

“They weren’t stale!”

The morning bell goes off, so we head to class. I keep looking for Sadie as we walk down the hall. I wonder if she’ll be able to tell I made a portrait of her, or if she’ll just think she got a gross piece of fruit. But mostly I think about how Ryan called it art . . . and me the real deal.

In language arts, Mr. Marshall seems very excited to talk about our next book assignment,
A Separate Peace.
I’m so glad to be moving on from
Lord of the Flies.
He hands out copies to all of us and then notes our names and the number on our books on a sheet of paper. He reads the first chapter to us, and already I can tell this book is going to be about friendship gone wrong. These are the kinds of books I really don’t like. I never understand why the characters make such obvious, horrible mistakes. It seems so unrealistic. Also, I never understand why characters in books are so over-the-top jealous of one another. Enough to do really awful things. I can’t imagine that in real life. I can’t imagine being so jealous of someone, especially a so-called friend, that I would want something bad to happen. But it seems to be a pretty common theme.

All day long I try to overhear Sadie talking about my gift, but she never seems to say a word. Maybe she hates it. Maybe she knows it was a last-minute gift. Maybe she’s offended. Or maybe she just doesn’t care.

“Did you hear anything?” I finally ask Ryan.

“What would I hear?”

“You know, Sadie telling someone about her present.”

“No. Maybe she threw it out. Maybe it smelled. It was pretty old.”

“It didn’t smell,” I say.

Sam comes over and asks what’s up. “Oh, I saw it on the Tank’s desk,” he says.

“What was it on the Tank’s desk for?” I ask.

He shrugs. “It looked like he got it as a gift.”

“What? Do you think she regifted it?”

“That would be the lamest regift in history,” Ryan says. “No offense.”

“Thanks a lot. It’s still better than stale cookies.”

“They weren’t stale!” Sam yells.

“There should be a rule about regifting,” I say.

“Put it in the Complaint Box,” Ryan suggests.

“It’s the
Suggestion
Box,” Sam corrects, pushing his glasses up his nose.

“Never mind,” I say. “It doesn’t matter.” But for some reason, it
does
matter. But I don’t want to explore why with these two. I just can’t help wondering if maybe Ryan was wrong. Maybe I’m not a real artist after all.

The last day of school before winter break, everyone walks around with winter break perma-grin. We bring our final Secret Santa gifts to Community Meeting, where we put them under a tiny fake tree on a table with a bunch of other December holiday decorations so it looks like we’re celebrating more than just Christmas.

Curly has found a package with ribbons that she’s started to play with. She’s wearing a little Santa vest. It’s red with white trim. Someone got her a Santa hat with a beard made just for cats, but no one could get close enough to put it on her.

“I guess we better start handing out these presents before Curly opens them all for us!” Ms. Cliff says.

All the teachers put on Santa hats and hand out the gifts.

I’m pretty sure Ms. Cliff got me, because every day I’ve been getting art supplies, like nice pencils and erasers and things like that. It would also explain the embarrassing Snoopy Christmas decorations on my locker door.

Once we get our presents, we all tear into them at the same time. I’m not sure if I’m more excited to see what mine is or to see how Sadie reacts when she opens the gift I made for her.

I keep glancing over, but there’s so much paper flying through the air and people in the way that I can’t see.

I open my own present, which doesn’t say who it’s from on the outside like it’s supposed to. It’s a really nice sketchbook with thick white paper. I flip through the pages and find a card.

For Noah, from Ryan. Merry Hanukkarismas. You know what I mean.

“You?” I say to him, completely shocked. “I thought you got Max! You had his card!”

“I found it on the floor. Tricked you pretty good, huh?”

“Thanks!” I say. “You’re, like, the best Secret Santa ever!”

He smiles. “Draw me something sometime, OK?”

“Sure!”

Ryan opens his present from Sam. It’s a black sock with a picture of an emu glued on it. “Wow,” he says to Sam. “You really went all out.”

“It’s an emu/emo Christmas stocking!” Sam says excitedly. “Get it?”

“You know I don’t celebrate Christmas, right?”

“Just look inside.”

Ryan reaches in and pulls out a gift card to his favorite comics store. “I forgive you now,” he says. “Thanks!”

“Where’s Noah?” Ms. Cliff calls from the other side of the room. She’s standing next to Sadie and some of her friends. She holds up my present. “Look what Noah Morin made for Sadie, everyone. Noah, this is beautiful!”

My cheeks burn.

“Thank you, Noah,” Sadie calls from across the room. Then she blows me a kiss.

Ryan stiffens beside me like someone just insulted him.

“Way to go, Noah!” Sam says.

Everyone starts talking again like nothing happened.

“Overachiever,” Ryan mumbles.

“What?” I say.

“Never mind.” He picks up his emu/emo stocking and sulks off.

Even though I’m really embarrassed, I’m also proud that Ms. Cliff and Sadie like my present. It’s a drawing of Sadie sitting in one of the beanbags, holding Curly. I remember seeing them like that one time, and it just seemed like a really nice moment for both of them.

“Hey, Noah,” the Tank says when we’re helping to clean up the wrapping paper and things. “That’s a really beautiful portrait you made for Sadie.”

“Thanks.”

“I mean it. What a thoughtful gift. I had no idea you were so talented!” He pats me on the back. “Have a great break, OK? Do something fun.”

“I’ll try.” I feel kind of weird, getting attention for a change. As people walk past, they say nice things to me about the drawing. It’s like all of a sudden they see me differently. Like suddenly I’m worth paying a little more attention to. It feels weird. And maybe a little good.

Ryan spends the rest of the day ignoring me, and Sam spends it telling me I really need to get up the nerve to ask Sadie out. But just when I think maybe I should, I see her and Tate kissing under a fake sprig of mistletoe he holds above their heads.

Never mind.

It’s a relief to go home.

Christmas Eve is my favorite night of the year. My parents always let Emma and me open one present. When we were little, the presents were usually some fun toy that we could secretly play with during the candlelight service at church. Nothing big, but something special. As we’ve gotten older, they give us sort of lame things, like pajamas with a Christmas theme. But even though they’re silly, we put them on and decorate cookies and stay up late, pretending we still believe in Santa Claus. We also go to the evening service at church because my mom loves singing all the old Christmas hymns, and how they turn out the lights and sing “Silent Night” as everyone lights tiny candles they hand out at the beginning of the service.

We’re all ready to go except Emma, who is taking forever in the bathroom. My parents pace the hall in their nice Christmas Eve clothes while I fidget with my tie because I hate how it feels to have my shirt buttoned up against my neck.

“Emma, for the tenth time, you need to hurry up! We’re going to be late!” my mom says.

I catch my dad making a sort of cringed expression. The longer she takes, the more on edge they seem to get. This whole scene feels familiar in the worst way.

My mom reaches for my dad’s hand as they stand outside the bathroom door. The Captain paces the hall nervously and whines.

But Emma doesn’t come out.

We wait five more minutes. Then ten. She doesn’t respond.

“Emma,” my dad says. I can hear the impatience and worry battling inside his voice. “I’m going to give you one more minute, and then I’m going to bang this door down if I have to.”

My mom leans against the wall and looks up at the ceiling. I wonder if I got that from her. I wonder if she’s saying a prayer. I wonder if she’s wishing we went to church more, to improve her chances of having her prayer come true. I know what she’s praying for, so I add my own to it to improve our chances.

Please, God. Please don’t let her be sick again.

My dad jiggles the door handle one more time.

My mom seems to sink into the wall.

I walk over to them and knock on the door myself.

“Emma? It’s me. If they go away, will you open up?”

I motion for my mom and dad to step away. I hear the faucet turn on, then off again. The toilet flushes. Everything is in the wrong order. I press the side of my face against the door.

“Can you hear me?” I ask.

The sound of bare feet on tile comes closer to the door. The door jiggles a little, and I know she’s pressing her head against it on the other side.

“Emma?”

She jiggles the doorknob in response.

“Will you come out?”

She scratches her fingers along the door, like a cat.

I turn toward my parents.
Go away,
I mouth.

They nod and go to their bedroom.

“They’re gone,” I say quietly. “Now, open up.”

I hear a click and know she’s unlocked the door. Slowly it moves inward, and I slip inside.

Her hair is wet and smells like puke, even from a few feet away.

She’s wearing only a T-shirt and leggings. I feel my own stomach heave when I see her: the true shape of her that she’s been hiding under her sweaters for months.

“I’m sorry,” she says, looking at the floor. “I didn’t want to eat so much for dinner, but I knew it would make Mom and Dad happy to see me do it. Only, I . . . it made me feel so sick. I — couldn’t keep it down. I couldn’t —”

“Emma,” I say, “why did this happen again? Why didn’t you try to stop it?” All these feelings I’ve been trying to hold back start to rise in my stomach, then my chest. All the worry I kept buried there is like a tidal wave rising inside me, waiting to explode out of my mouth, but I don’t know if it will be in the form of crying or yelling. How could she do this again? Why?