13 Gifts Read online

  I grab the comic from my suitcase and run down the hall. My ears are locked in on even the smallest sound. I push open the Collectibles Room and make a beeline for the comics. I drop The Fantastic Four into one of the folders and push the bin back on the shelf. Twenty seconds later I’m back in the bedroom. Thirty seconds after that, Emily walks in and catches me dancing around the room.

  “At least someone’s in a good mood,” she says, tossing her book bag on the bed. It falls onto the floor and she steps right over it.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I ask, still too euphoric to stop smiling.

  “I got a ninety-nine on my math final,” she says, a hollow sound to her voice.

  “That’s great!”

  She glares at me. “I missed a really easy question, which makes it even worse.”

  “You’re upset because you got a ninety-nine?”

  She sighs. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand. No offense.”

  “None taken.” Sort of. “Hey, not to change the subject, but why didn’t you tell me Jake Harrison made a movie in Willow Falls? And about him and Rory?”

  “Oh, I didn’t? Yeah, he filmed a movie here and he and Rory are friends.”

  “Yeah, thanks, got that now.”

  She kicks her book bag and says, “Want to go for a walk? I’m not really allowed to wander by myself yet.”

  “Sure,” I reply, surprised. Every other day after school she’s had one activity or another. We haven’t actually left the house together since my arrival.

  “Where do you want to go?” I ask as we head out the front door.

  “Let’s just walk through the neighborhood,” she says.

  We walk for a while through the streets, mostly in areas I haven’t explored on the bike before. Emily is quiet for most of the time but perks up when we turn into an area with some smaller houses. She chatters about school and the other Emilys, and about how much fun the beach will be, and how she’s going to miss Ray when his visa’s up and he goes back to Australia at the end of the summer. She slows down as we approach a house with a teenage boy washing a dog out front. She keeps glancing over at him shyly, while pretending not to be. The boy is a bit plump, with a baseball cap pushed half over his eyes. The dog shakes some water off his coat and the boy tilts his head back to avoid being splashed in the face. He catches sight of us.

  Emily tries to speed up, but he’s already calling out to her. “Hey,” he says, “aren’t you the kid who lives in that big house? The one who always orders two large pizzas with extra cheese on ’em?”

  She nods.

  “Thought so,” he says. “I never forget the good tippers.”

  She smiles and grabs me. “Okay, bye!” she calls out as she hurries me past the house.

  “See ya,” he replies, going back to his dog washing.

  Clearly we didn’t just wander onto this street by accident. My little cousin knew exactly where she was headed. When we’re out of earshot I say, “He’s a little old for you, don’t you think?”

  “It’s not like that,” she says, turning around to make sure he definitely can’t hear us. “He’s the head of the high school math team.”

  I can’t help laughing. “You have a math crush?”

  She sighs. “I guess so. Don’t tell Mom, though. She’ll never let me pay for the pizza again.”

  “My lips are sealed.” Then I realize something. “Hey, is that why you wouldn’t let me wait for the pizza guy with you?”

  She blushes and nods. “Sorry about that.”

  My phone rings as I tell her not to worry about it. I pull it out of my pocket. It’s David calling. My heart speeds up a little and I glance at Emily. She’s smiling. “You should answer that.”

  Now it’s my turn to blush as I walk a few steps away.

  “A lady wrote about the little purple bottle!” David tells me without even a hello. “She says she’s not a hundred percent sure it’s the one we’re looking for, though.”

  “Is it two ounces? Does it have a silver stopper?”

  “She didn’t say. But she told me we can go over there to check it out.”

  “Great. When?”

  “That’s the thing,” he says, “she’s leaving later tonight on vacation for a week! So we need to get there in the next hour or so.”

  “Where does she live?”

  He rustles some papers, then says, “12 Tanglewood Trail. It’s about a half mile from our houses. I can’t leave, though. I have a live webcam session with the rabbi in a few minutes.”

  “I’ll take this one,” I tell him.

  “You’re sure?” he says.

  “Yup. Good luck with the rabbi.”

  “Okay, good luck to you, too. Let me know how it goes.” We hang up. Emily grins and says, “A little old for you, don’t you think?”

  “No, he’s exactly my —” I catch myself before I get myself in any deeper. Emily is sneaky indeed. “So you DO like him!”

  “I do not!” I say, doing a quick check that David isn’t still on the other end.

  “You do!”

  “I don’t, but it doesn’t really matter because he likes Rory.”

  “Maybe he used to,” she admits. “But that was before Jake. Trust me, David and Rory are just good friends.”

  Desperate to talk about something else, I ask if she knows where Tanglewood Trail is. She points down the street. “It’s about four blocks that way. Why?”

  “David asked me to pick something up for him.”

  “Okay,” she says. “Let me text Mom and tell her we’ll be back a little late.”

  A response arrives half a block later. “Mom says we’re having pizza again tonight, so let’s not take too long, okay? She doesn’t tip as well as me. I don’t want him not to come back!”

  As we speed walk through the neighborhood, I ask Emily if she knows what the story is with David’s father. I’m not used to thinking about other people’s lives. But recently, they’ve become a lot harder to ignore.

  She shakes her head. “I don’t know too much. I was only in first grade when the Goldbergs moved here, so I didn’t really catch too much of what went on. I think maybe he got really sick or something.” “Did he … is he …”

  “I think he’s alive,” she says. “But maybe in some special place? Like a hospital or something? I really don’t know.”

  I feel a rush of sympathy for David. What must that be like for him? I wonder if he was ever going to tell me.

  Emily stops walking. “Here we are. Tanglewood Trail.”

  “Already?”

  She nods. We walk a few houses down until I find number 12. I’m tempted to ask Emily to wait outside, but it’s not really our neighborhood anymore and she’s still only eleven. “When we get in there, just act cool, okay? Let me do all the talking.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” she replies, saluting me.

  I push open the small white gate in front of the walkway and lead her up to the front door. The bushes and flowers on either side of the door are kept up really nice. The screen door is closed, but the front door is wide open. I’m not sure what to do. “Knock, knock!” Emily says loudly.

  I shush her, but a woman’s voice inside calls out, “Come on in. I’m just zipping up my suitcase.”

  I go first, and when I’m sure everything’s okay, I motion for Emily to follow. We find the woman sitting on the floor on top of a blue hardback suitcase. She’s putting all her weight on it in an attempt to get the zipper to shut.

  “Um, we’re here about the glass bottle?” I ask.

  “Here, give me a hand, will ya?” she scoots over and lets go of the zipper. “I’ll push, you zip.”

  I do as she says, and the suitcase closes.

  “Thanks,” she says, blowing a piece of her long dark hair away from her face. She’s very pretty, probably around my parents’ age. The sight of oversized LEGOs and picture books scattered on the floor tells me there are little kids around somewhere. “So you’re looking for the p
urple bottle?”

  “Yes. My friend said you had it?”

  She stands up and grabs a little white bag from the table. “Here,” she says, handing it to me. “I’m not sure it’s the exact one you’re looking for, but it seemed to fit the description.”

  I carefully pull the bottle out of the bag. It fits in the palm of my hand. I mentally check off the requirements. It could definitely be two ounces, but I’m not good with measurements. It’s glass. It’s purple. It has a silver stopper. “It sure looks right to me,” I announce. “What can I offer you for it?”

  She’s sitting on the next suitcase, trying unsuccessfully to close it. I kneel down and zip again while she pushes. “You can just have it,” she says, as the zipper slowly makes its way around the side. “I don’t have any good memories attached to that thing.”

  “Are you sure? I mean, I can pay you something, or barter. Like I could water your flowers while you’re on vacation or something? You know, if it doesn’t rain?”

  “Wait a sec,” she says, and reaches for my arm. “Okay, I’ll barter with you. I’ll give you the bottle for your bracelet.”

  I see Emily immediately grab her own wrist, and her own bracelet. I hesitate. Our friendship bracelets have actually started to mean something to me. “I … I don’t know. It’s not valuable or anything.”

  “That’s all right,” she says. “There’s just something about it.”

  “Here,” Emily says, slipping hers off her wrist. “Take mine.” She rests it in the woman’s palm. “We’ve gotta go, though, Tara. Pizza waits for no man.”

  “Your name’s Sara?” the woman says. “So’s my daughter’s.”

  I shake my head. “It’s Tara, with a T.”

  “Oh. Close, though.”

  I want to tell her No it’s not close, it’s a totally different name, but really, what would be the point? She tucks the bracelet into her pocket and we quickly finish zipping the suitcase. Emily is already waiting outside, tapping her foot.

  “Thank you for the bottle,” I say.

  “Thank your friend for the bracelet,” she replies.

  I’m about to tell her Emily is my cousin, but I realize that she’s both. So I just say, “I will.”

  “Mommy!” a little voice calls out. “The dog is eating my Play-Doh!”

  The woman gives me a quick smile then closes the door.

  I try to keep up with Emily as she jogs toward home and her pizza-delivering math crush. “You didn’t have to give that lady your friendship bracelet,” I tell her. “Maybe she would have taken me up on the flower watering.”

  “That’s okay,” she says. “I don’t need a bracelet to know we’re friends.”

  I smile. “Me, neither.”

  At eleven the next morning, David and I walk up the steps of Willow’s Church. “This is going to be weird,” David says. I was thinking the same thing. Just the two of us? We’ve never done anything alone before. Then he says, “I’ve never been in a church before. And I’ve only been in a temple once or twice.”

  Okay, so he wasn’t talking about us at all. It’s a good thing I’m walking a step ahead and he can’t see my face.

  The inside of the church is larger than it looked from outside. Stained-glass windows line both sides, with rows of pews that go straight across. The only people we see are a few women talking about a bake sale. “Are you here for the youth ministry meeting?” one of them asks us. “It doesn’t start until noon.”

  We shake our heads. David has retreated into quiet mode, so I say, “Actually, we wanted to speak to someone about a Bible?”

  “The minister is in his office,” she says, pointing to a hallway off to the side. “I’m sure he’d be happy to talk to you.”

  “Thanks,” I tell her. David doesn’t move, so I have to push him down the hall. “He won’t bite, I promise.”

  “You don’t know that,” he mutters.

  The door is open, so we walk in. The minister is around fifty, with very little hair and a friendly smile. “How can I help you?”

  There’s no way David is going to say anything, so I step forward. “This is going to sound —”

  But David steps in front of me and blurts out, “How do you know if you’re doing something because it’s what everyone did before you, or because you really believe it?”

  Well, that was a surprise.

  The minister leans back in his chair. “Ah, young man, that’s the age-old question, isn’t it? The simple answer is that you don’t know … until you do. Know, that is. Does that make sense?”

  “Um, I’m not sure,” David says.

  “Children are generally brought up to believe what their parents believe, right?”

  David nods.

  “Then at some point, when they’re old enough, they start to question it, as you might be now.” David nods again.

  “And then at some point further down the road, they’ll decide what’s right for them. But you’d be amazed at the power of tradition. When something is in your bones, it’s pretty hard to ignore.”

  “Thank you,” David says. “I’ll think about that.”

  “You two have a lovely day now,” he says, turning back to the papers on his desk.

  David turns to go. I grab on to his shirt. “Um, actually, we have another question.”

  He looks up expectantly.

  “This is going to sound weird, but you wouldn’t happen to have a copy of the Bible with two books of Genesis in it, would you?”

  “Actually, we do!” he says, clasping his hands together. “It’s been in our storage closet in the basement since I was around your age!” He chuckles. “We used to bring it out and try to make the old minister think he was going senile. Hmm, that doesn’t sound very godly of me. Forget I said that!”

  “And you still have it?” I ask.

  He nods. “Indeed. No one wants to throw out a copy of the Bible, even if it IS missing the book of Exodus! It’s a dilemma. Can’t use it, can’t throw it away.”

  “Then this is your lucky day,” David says. “We can help you by taking it off your hands. We know someone who’s looking for it.”

  “Is that so? And what would this person be doing with it?”

  “I can honestly say I have no idea,” David says.

  I’m glad David answered that one, since I have a pretty good idea I know exactly what Angelina’s planning on doing with all this stuff. If she can find room on the shelves.

  The minister pushes back his chair. “Well, who am I to keep a Bible out of someone’s hands who’s asking for it? I’ll go get it for you.”

  He leaves us in the office grinning at each other. “Nice work,” I say.

  “You, too.”

  We keep grinning until David’s phone rings. “Am I supposed to answer it in a church?” “I have no idea.”

  “It’s pretty loud. What if people are trying to pray?”

  “Good point. You better answer it.”

  He pulls it from his pocket. “Hello? Uh-huh. Really? No way! What are we going to do? What are the odds? Crazy! I’ve gotta go, we’re still in the church. I may be sinning right now. No, I’ll tell her.” He hangs up the phone and shakes his head. “You’re not gonna believe this. That was Leo. He said we got an e-mail from someone who has the steamer trunk! The lady says we’d be doing her a favor by carting it away!”

  “That’s great. Why wouldn’t I believe it?”

  “Because it’s your aunt!”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “What about Connor?” David suggests. We’re sitting on a park bench, splitting our third hot pretzel. After a flurry of panicked texts and phone calls between everyone, we’ve decided the best way to handle it is to let someone else handle it. Someone Aunt Bethany wouldn’t connect to me.

  “Would he do it?”

  “I think so,” David says. “If I can wrestle the video-game controller out of his hand.”

  “Okay, let’s try him.”

  David goes off to call Conno
r while I text Rory to let her know. As I’m sending off the text, my phone rings. I don’t recognize the number.

  “Hello?”

  “Tara? Tara, it’s Dad!”

  I jump up from the bench. “Dad! Where are you?”

  “We’re in Madagascar, honey, remember?”

  I laugh. “I know, but where are you calling from?”

  “The top of a baobab tree! You should see the view!”

  I laugh again. I didn’t realize how much I missed hearing his voice until now.

  “Okay, I’m actually calling from the base camp.”

  “How are the lemurs?”

  “Pretty cute. Mating habits? Not so cute. Many people here believe in the supernatural, though. I’m getting a lot of great material for my next book.”

  “Do you believe in it?” I ask, half hoping he says yes. But the connection gets garbled and I miss his reply. Then I hear, “How are you enjoying my hometown?”

  I plop back down on the bench. “Everything’s … really different than I thought.”

  “Different good or different bad?”

  “Good, I think. Mostly. I’ve met some really nice people and seen some … really strange things.”

  He laughs. “That’s Willow Falls for you!”

  “I know Mom said people get busy and stuff, but didn’t you ever want to come back here?”

  It’s quiet for a few seconds, and I fear the call dropped. But then he says, “For whatever reason, your mother felt strongly about never going back. I didn’t want to push it. By the time we were out of college, Grandma Emilia had passed away and the rest of your grandparents had retired to Florida anyway.”

  David’s still on the phone with Connor, so I move a little farther away and ask, “Hey, do you remember a lady named Angelina D’Angelo?”

  “Short, white hair, duck-shaped birthmark?” he asks.

  I gasp. “Yes! That’s her.”

  “Sure, everyone knew her. She was a fixture in town. At one time I think she was the chaperone for all the school dances up at Apple Grove.” He laughs. “She used to make sure you could fit a ruler in between the boys and the girls during a slow dance.”