13 Gifts

  By popular demand, Jake and Emily come back out and do their whole number all over again. Behind me, Aunt Bethany weeps openly. She must have used up a whole memory card with all the pictures I heard her taking throughout the play.

  Ray bounds out on the stage when they’re through. “Good on ya, everyone!” he says, slipping back into Aussie. “Bonza job today!” He gestures for the whole cast to go back on stage to take their bows. The audience stands and claps and yells Woo-hoo and takes pictures. Another new emotion fills me — pride. But not pride in myself, pride in people that I care about for being so amazing. I close my eyes, waiting for whatever’s supposed to happen to me to happen. I don’t know what I’m expecting, a voice to come down from heaven? A telegram revealing some big secret?

  Jake’s manager whisks him off the stage pretty quickly, but the applause continues for everyone else. When everyone’s convinced that Jake isn’t coming back out, the clapping peters out, and the room starts to clear. The rest of the cast runs off the stage to wherever their families are waiting. Emily gives me a high five, and runs into her parents’ arms. A tall, thin man in a black T-shirt and jeans heads toward us. I don’t think he’s from around here. I saw him talking to Jake’s manager before. He walks up and introduces himself as a Broadway producer from New York City. “You should try out for my new show,” he tells Emily. “You could have a future on the stage.”

  Emily smiles and says, “Thanks, but my future’s going to be solving the world’s greatest mysteries through math.”

  “Are you sure, Em?” Aunt Bethany asks.

  Emily nods. “It was really fun, but this was Grandma’s dream, not mine. Except for the Jake part, which was totally mine!”

  The producer shrugs and says, “Well, if you change your mind, here’s my card.” I’m sure he’s not used to people turning him down.

  The two other Emilys pull my Emily away, and I drift to the edge of the crowd. Even with all the excitement of the play still rushing through me, an emptiness is rushing in with it. Like, the opposite of what it should feel like when your soul attaches to your body. Was I a fool to believe Angelina when she told me all the stuff that would happen if I did the play?

  I watch Rory and Amanda and David find their families, and wish for the first time that my parents could have been here. I know it’s impossible, but at least it would make this hollow feeling a little less painful.

  I try to keep busy by gathering up the stuff I left in the cabinets behind the ticket table. All the money (which, thankfully, is still there in the gym bag) and the cane and bottle. I figure I’ll give the money to Ray to figure out what to do with. I spot Angelina still in her seat and head over to her first. I don’t have a plan of what to say, so I’m hoping something comes to me before I get there.

  Nope. Nothing. I sit down next to her and wait for her to speak.

  “Ah, my cane!” she says, plucking it right from my hand. “This is yours?”

  She nods. “I must have left it somewhere the other day.”

  “The other day? It’s been in the diner for thirty-five years!”

  “That long?” she says, shaking her head. “Time really flies.”

  “I’m confused. If it wasn’t a prop in the play, but it was on your list, doesn’t that mean that I wrote down the right list after all? You said since I completed the wrong list, I had to put on the play in order to repay my debt. Not to mention the whole thing about finding out why I’m in Willow Falls. Whatever that means.”

  “You kids, always talking in circles. What is it that you’re asking?”

  “Was this the right list after all?”

  She shrugs. “What does it matter?”

  I throw up my arms in exasperation. “It matters! I mean, the whole play —”

  “Wasn’t it wonderful?” she asks, beaming. “Consider your debt repaid!”

  “But I still don’t understand! Why did I have to put on the play in the first place?”

  She shrugs. “It’s one of my favorites.” Then she taps the end of the cane on the floor and starts singing “If I Were a Rich Man.”

  I know there are people milling all around us, laughing and talking, but all I can focus on is Angelina, like we’re in our own little pocket of the world.

  Speaking slowly, I say, “So you’re telling me I did all this because you wanted to see the play and didn’t get a chance to thirty-five years ago? That’s it? You said something special would happen for me afterward, but nothing did. Nothing.” If I were in a cartoon, steam would be coming out of my ears.

  “Nothing happened?” she repeats calmly. Pointing at Emily, she says, “You got that girl to do what she loves in a way that surpassed her wildest dreams. And the boy, the movie star, he got a chance to prove he’s more than just a pretty face.” She points to Bettie. “She always felt hidden in her mother’s shadow. You gave her a chance to shine.” Then she points the cane at Bucky, who is shaking hands with the Broadway producer. “That man stopped playing the violin the night your grandmother bowed out of the play. And look at him tonight. He’s radiant!”

  She points to Ray. “There’s enough money to start up the theatre group again. They’re going to need a director, and who do you think they’ll ask? You got a whole community to come together to celebrate the theatre — something that hasn’t happened in thirty-five years. And your friend over there?” She points to David, who is tossing his hat in the air and trying to catch it on his head. “Did you see his face during his first song? He’s not confused about tradition anymore. He knows exactly what his role is when he stands up there tomorrow for his bar mitzvah. You did all that for everyone, and more. You — the girl who only wanted to sit on the sidelines.”

  “How … how do you know all this about everyone?”

  “Oh, I get around,” she says, her birthmark wiggling.

  I look around the room at my friends. Big Joe is twirling Mrs. Grayson around the stage and she’s giggling like a teenager. Angelina is right about everything she said, except for the last part. I look down at my hands. “But you know I didn’t do any of this for them. I did it all because you told me there was something I needed to know that I could only find out after putting on this play. I never stopped to think what anyone else needed, or wanted, at all. I can’t take any of the credit.”

  She laughs. “Of course you can! Are you so self-centered that you think the universe cares what your motivations are? If a wealthy businessman donates ten million dollars to build a new hospital, would it matter if he only did it to get a building named after him? Not to the people inside it. If everyone waited to do something good until they had purely unselfish motivations, no good would ever get done in the world. The point is to do it anyway. To do it at all.”

  The point is to do it at all. I’d never really done anything big before today. “I never thought of it that way.”

  “And soon enough,” she adds, “it will be easier to see what people need, and how to help them. Only the rarest of young people have that gift from birth.”

  I think about Rory, and how she’s always one step ahead of everyone else. “I don’t think I’d be very good at it,” I admit.

  She shrugs. “It won’t happen overnight. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

  The crowd is thinning now. It’s mostly cast and crew and their families. A few older women are setting up card games, and a group of moms are giving their kids snacks, and chatting. I turn back to Angelina. “So I guess all that stuff about me finding out why I’m here in Willow Falls was just to get me to put on the play?”

  She doesn’t reply.

  “Angelina?”

  She just twirls her cane, the duck’s head twisting toward me, then away, toward, then away. I have to grit my teeth to keep from yelling in frustration as my earlier anger creeps back in. Rory was wrong this time. Angelina doesn’t always come through in the end. I grab the gym bag full of money, and the purple bottle. “Here,” I say, holding out the bottle as I stand up. “This mus
t be yours, too. There was no place for it in the play.”

  She shakes her head. “It’s not mine.”

  “Why was it on the list, then?”

  “It’s for you,” she says.

  “Me? What am I supposed to do with it?”

  She shrugs. “If you don’t want it, why don’t you give it back to the person you got it from? She’s right over there.”

  She gestures with the tip of the cane toward the group of women with their toddlers. She’s right. The woman is here.

  “Fine, I will.” I stomp off toward the woman, then force myself to calm down. It’s not like it’s her fault that Angelina is once again not being straight with me.

  I tap her on the shoulder. “Excuse me? I’m sorry to bother you.”

  “You’re the girl with the bracelet,” she says. “You don’t want to trade back, do you? I don’t have the bracelet anymore, and I’m not bringing that bottle back into my house.”

  I lower the bottle to my side. “Oh. Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure. I only have bad memories associated with it.”

  I open my mouth to say okay, but something stops me. I don’t know whether it’s because the conversation with Angelina is still fresh in my mind, or whether I really care, or whether her last word stretched out a tiny bit too long indicating she has more to say, but I ask, “Why?”

  She immediately asks one of the other moms to watch her daughter, then pulls me onto one of the couches. I’m already wondering if this was a mistake. Ray said he’d take me to the mall to get a gift for David. Then later, Rory, Emily, and Amanda said they’re planning a girls-only night for my birthday. But I’m sitting here now, so I might as well listen.

  “No one asked me about that bottle for twenty-five years,” she says. “Until the day you rang my bell. I was so eager to get rid of it that I didn’t tell you anything. I’ve felt a little guilty about that ever since. The owner of the bottle should know its story.”

  “I should?”

  She nods. “What do you know about the bottle already?” I turn the jar around in my hands. “Um, it’s small. And purple. It’s pretty?”

  “That’s it?” she asks.

  I nod, wondering what else I’m possibly supposed to know. Was it forged in a volcano on Venus?

  She glances back at the group of kids and moms, and then leans close. “I haven’t told anyone about this, ever.” She takes a deep breath. “Okay, here goes. When I was in eighth grade, so around your age, I had a crush on this boy. I knew my best friend liked him, too. The eighth-grade dance at Apple Grove was coming up and everyone was going to be there. I thought that would be my night. We would dance, he would pledge his undying love, that sort of thing.”

  I nod, wondering when we get to the part about the bottle.

  “I was always pretty fortunate in the boy department, and kind of suspected that he liked me. But I didn’t want to take any chances. My grandmother — may she rest in peace — knew this old woman on the other side of town who specialized in, shall we say, unusual things. My grandmother brought me to her house, and I told the woman my problem. I know this is going to sound crazy, but she sold me a love potion. In that very bottle.”

  Well! I wasn’t expecting that! I look down at the bottle again, as though seeing it for the first time.

  The woman rushes on. “It cost me all the money I’d saved over thirteen years, but all I’d need to do is get the boy to drink it, look into my eyes, and he’d love me forever. Somehow, though, and I still don’t know how, I lost it. One day it was in my desk drawer, and the next day it was gone. I searched everywhere. My grandmother offered to give me the money to buy another batch, but the old lady refused to sell it to me. She said she never made the same potion twice.”

  As interesting as her story is, I can’t help noticing my friends glancing over at us. Ray even points to his watch, but what can I do? I turn back to the woman.

  “Anyway, I went to the dance, determined that I’d still find a way to get the boy to like me. But when I got there, my best friend was dancing with him. And there, on the table beside them, was the little glass bottle, empty.”

  “Wow,” I say, looking down at the bottle again. Talk about your middle school drama!

  “I took the bottle and left the dance. From that day on, Molly and James were inseparable. She and I never spoke about it. In fact, we never spoke from that day on at all.”

  My head springs up. “Did you say Molly and James?”

  She nods. “They had this storybook romance. Wound up getting married, having a kid, the whole thing. I couldn’t stop thinking how it should have been me. How she robbed me of my life.”

  A roaring sound fills my head. “You … you must really hate her.”

  “I did. For a long time.” She looks over at her daughter, who is currently demonstrating to Rory’s brother, Sawyer, how she can touch her nose with her tongue. “But seriously,” she says with a laugh, “who marries the guy she dates at thirteen? I look back at it now, and I’m sure James wouldn’t have been the great love of my life. I got married in my late twenties, and had Sara four years ago. If that potion had worked, she wouldn’t be on this planet. How could I hate Molly after that? More than losing the guy, though, it was the loss of my best friend that was the hardest to accept.” She shakes her head, like trying to shake the memory loose. “So, when I saw that someone was interested in the bottle, I realized I was ready to let go of it, and the bitterness that it represented. Thank you for that.”

  The hand holding the bottle starts to shake, and I have to cover it with my other one. That doesn’t help to stop the shaking.

  “Are you all right?” she asks. “You look a little green.”

  The roaring sound keeps getting louder, threatening to drown out our conversation. “Just out of curiosity,” I ask, my voice shaking as much as my hands, “the old woman who sold you the potion, did she have a birthmark on her cheek? Shaped like a duck?”

  “Yes, how did you know that?”

  “A lucky guess,” I tell her. I stand up, gripping the bottle so tightly the bottom digs into my palm. “Thank you for telling me your story.”

  “Thank you for listening. It felt good to get it out.” She touches my arm lightly, and I watch as she goes behind her daughter and gives her a squeeze.

  By this point, all the extra chairs have been put away, and the tables and couches have been returned to their usual spots. Angelina is nowhere to be seen. I spot Ray taking down the last of the sets and hand him the gym bag. “You should stay and celebrate,” I tell him. I focus on keeping the rising hysteria out of my voice so he doesn’t question me.

  Before he can reply, I run out of the community center. The GONE FISHING sign is up on both the antique store and the historical society, which does not surprise me. I take off toward Emily’s house, trying to outrun the emotions that threaten to unravel me. Anger, hurt, betrayal, shock. They keep hitting me, one after the other. My mother, the one who never does anything wrong, the one who always says how important it is to have friends, this is the woman who did such a terrible thing to her own best friend? Not to mention tricking her own husband into falling in love with her? Poor Dad! My heart aches for him. All these years he’s been so smitten, and it wasn’t even his choice! Maybe he would have picked the other woman if he’d been allowed to decide. It explains why he’s always put her on such a pedestal, always looking at her as though he’s the luckiest man in the world to have her.

  I feel sick. It’s like my whole life is different from what I thought it was. I wish I could just call Mom and confront her with this, but it could take days for the message to reach her.

  I’m totally not giving her my new iPod!

  It feels like I’ve been running forever. By the time the house comes into view, I’m ready to pass out. I’m halfway up the lawn before I notice the shapes of two people sitting on the porch steps. One very tall, one short.

  My parents.

  Chapter Twenty-three br />
  “Surprise!” Dad yells.

  “Happy birthday!” Mom shouts.

  They jump up and throw their arms around me and I’m too stunned to do anything other than stand there, panting from the run. “What … what are you doing here?” I manage to choke out.

  Dad laughs. “Aunt Bethany told us about how you were really running this whole play. We wanted to show up and surprise you, but we missed it by twenty minutes. So we figured we’d wait for you here rather than disrupt the activities.”

  “But how?”

  “The lemurs were very accommodating in the mating department,” Mom says, still holding on to me. “We finished the study earlier than expected.”

  She finally pulls away. “Let me see you. You look so grown-up!” Her eyes fill with tears.

  “And so colorful!” Dad says.

  I look down at my white shorts and blue top, courtesy of Aunt Bethany.

  “Why don’t we go sit down?” Mom suggests, stroking my hair like she used to when I was little. “You seem a bit shell-shocked.”

  Hand shaking, I pull the glass bottle out of my pocket and hold it up to her. It takes a few seconds to register, but then her very tanned skin drains of all color. She physically backs away from it.

  “What’s that?” Dad asks, taking it from me. “It’s pretty. Did someone give it to you as a birthday gift?”