The Last Present Read online

  He pats me on the shoulder. “That’s my smart girl.”

  Miraculously, Leo/Leon manages to fix the screens. Mostly he gets lucky by pushing the right buttons in the right order. Mrs. Kelly asks if I wouldn’t mind helping her set up the table where the girls are going to have lunch after they bowl. While I lay out the plates and cups, I watch her fill the goody bags with a mixture of candy and little toys like notebooks and glitter pens. Nothing looks enchanted to me, but Angelina works in mysterious ways. Clearly.

  I pull Leo aside and point to the video camera. It’s propped up next to the pile of gifts. It feels too risky to be so involved with the party when the incident with the goody bags won’t happen for a long time. We slip away, unnoticed. Without discussing it, we return to the mirrored trophy case.

  “You look cute in braces,” Leo says, grinning at my reflection.

  I run my tongue along my teeth. “It’s so weird. I don’t feel them at all.”

  He moves his finger on the bridge of his nose. In the mirror, his glasses rise up an inch. “Freaky. I don’t feel these, either. It’s like my hand is touching thin air.”

  “You look very smart with them on. Like a young professor.”

  “You’re saying I don’t look smart otherwise?”

  “I’m just saying, you should get a pair for school. The teachers might give you better grades if they think you’re suddenly smarter.”

  “I don’t think it works that way.”

  Once we’ve stared at our strange selves for long enough, we move into the cafe area. After making sure none of the coins was minted after today’s date, Leo treats us to an order of French fries. We find a table in the back where the sound of flying pins hitting wood is a bit muffled.

  I munch on a fry and then ask, “Isn’t time travel supposed to be, you know, more exciting than this?”

  “You mean more exciting than eating soggy French fries in a noisy bowling alley that smells very strongly of dirty socks?”

  “Yes, exactly. Like, aren’t we supposed to be able to win the lottery now or something?”

  He looks thoughtful. “We would have had to look up the winning numbers before we left, then when we got to the past, we would have had to buy the ticket. And, you know, be old enough to buy the ticket, which we’re not.”

  “True. And I guess that would count as playing with the future, which Angelina warned us about.” I pull another fry from the pile. “Well, there’s got to be something cool we can do.”

  Leo shrugs. “After a year of not being able to do it, I’m just happy to be here talking with you. And by you, I mean Amy, of course.”

  “I wonder if Amy’s getting French fries caught in her braces.”

  “Probably.”

  We finish eating and I duck out of the cafe to see what’s happening with the party. “They’re on to the pizza now,” I report back. “A few more minutes to go.”

  “Should we just try to stop him now?” Leo asks. “I mean, why wait until he tries to steal them?”

  “That’s a good idea. Okay, you go distract him.”

  “Why me?”

  “He sort of already knows you. I mean, he knows Leon.”

  “How am I supposed to distract him?”

  “I don’t know. Talk about whatever boys talk about.”

  “What is it you think boys talk about?”

  “Sports? Girls? Sports?”

  He rolls his eyes. “You forgot video games.”

  “Yes! Connor loves video games! Good, now go.” I give him a little shove.

  “Wow, Amy’s bossy,” he says, making a big show of stumbling forward.

  The party area is bustling with activity. Girls are laughing and eating, Mr. Kelly pours lemonade, while Mrs. Kelly accepts a present from a tall but slightly stooped older man who must be Connor and Grace’s grandfather. I remember him from the video, but the true brightness of his hair didn’t come through on film. It’s really weird seeing an old man with red hair, let alone fire-engine red hair. It doesn’t exactly go with the wrinkles.

  I search for Connor and find him on the floor, lining up the shoes to return. He really is such a helpful older brother. I find it hard to believe he would ruin Grace’s birthday in any way. But videos don’t lie. Leo/Leon sits on one of the hard plastic seats across from him and they start talking. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but Connor’s not even glancing at the goody bags. I think this is going to work! One birthday fixed, only two more to go!

  But then his grandfather goes over and tells Connor something, and he looks over at the goody bags and stands up. “No, no, no,” I say out loud. But he walks right over to the goody bags and picks up the whole box. I watch helplessly as Connor carries the box away from the party and into a door marked OFFICE STAFF ONLY.

  “Why didn’t you stop him?” I ask Leo when he hurries back over to me.

  “I couldn’t. His grandfather told him to do it.”

  “What? His grandfather told him to steal the goody bags and ruin the party?”

  He shakes his head. “No, of course not. Apparently the bowling alley gives each kid at the party a free pass to come back. The manager told his grandfather to bring the goody bags into the office so they can put the coupon, or whatever, into all the bags. Connor offered to carry the box. How could I have stopped him?”

  “I guess you couldn’t.” We stand by helplessly as Connor comes back out of the room empty-handed. We watch the room for a few minutes, but no else goes in or out. “This is so weird. Why wouldn’t Connor have gone back to get them, then? Maybe they got lost or something? Or given away to the wrong party?”

  “Let’s not wait to find out.” He yanks me in the office with him. I expect to find someone stuffing the bags, but the small room is empty. No staff person stuffing goody bags, and worst of all, no box of goody bags at all! The box has vanished! Leo points to a back door marked EMERGENCY EXIT. “Maybe someone left through there?” He’s about to push the door open.

  “Wait, what if it sets off an alarm?”

  “We’ll have to take our chances.” He gives the door a quick push and no alarms go off. The door opens on to the same view as the parking lot, just farther down. There’s nowhere for anyone to hide. We peer into the drizzle. “I don’t see anyone.”

  “Me, neither,” I say. “On the video the next thing that happens is they realize the goody bags are gone and everyone looks around and then they kind of give up. Right?”

  He nods. “Why wouldn’t Connor just tell them where he brought them? It doesn’t make sense.”

  We watch from a few lanes down as it all unfolds. They look around for the bags. They argue over who did what with them. It’s not even worth telling them what happened, since we still don’t know where the bags disappeared to. “So is that it?” I ask. “Did we fail our first time out?”

  “Not necessarily,” Leo says. “Angelina didn’t say we had to replace the goody bags with the exact same goody bags, right?”

  “No, I guess she didn’t. But where would we get new goody bags? The kids’ parents are going to be here in a few minutes to pick them up.”

  Leo looks around the crowded bowling alley for answers. “How much money do you have?”

  I fish through my pockets and pull out two quarters and a dime. I hold them up. “What about you?”

  “I have a dollar left after buying the fries. I didn’t think about bringing money with us. We’re going to have to do better with that next time.”

  We’ll have to do better with a lot of things next time. “Well, what can we buy in a bowling alley with a dollar sixty?”

  Leo points to the gum-ball machines a few feet away. “It’s a tough call. You’ve got your standard rubber balls in multiple colors, your glitter stickers, or your temporary tattoos in the shape of beloved childhood television characters.”

  “They’re SpongeBobs, aren’t they?”

  He nods.

  “Let’s go with the balls. They look like little bowling balls, t
o remember the party by.”

  “Sounds good,” he says, feeding his dollar bill into the coin changer. “Even though they look nothing like bowling balls.”

  “Yeah, and you look nothing like you.”

  He looks up at me and grins. “You know what, Amy? You’re right. I shouldn’t have judged these little guys. Inside, we know we’re Amanda and Leo, travelers through time and space, who —”

  “Really just through time.”

  “Anyway! My point is, who’s to say that inside these little guys there doesn’t lurk a ball big enough to knock down ten pins at once?”

  “Exactly!”

  We feed the machine until we’ve got a pile of sixteen rubber balls threatening to bounce in every direction. The Kellys are still arguing over the missing — and presumed stolen — bags when we arrive. “Here,” I say. “I know it’s not much, but inside these little balls lurk the hearts of champions.”

  “They’re like teeny tiny bowling balls!” Grace says, smiling up at me.

  This is the first time I’ve really allowed myself to look at her since we’ve arrived. She doesn’t look much different than she did when I saw her yesterday. Well, except for the whole catatonic state and all. She’s been very brave about the fact that her goody bags were stolen. A lot of other kids would be having a tantrum.

  I don’t trust myself to say anything else to her, so I pile the balls into her hands, then scramble after the ones that roll off onto the floor. Connor bends down to help me.

  “Thanks for your help,” he says. “So you heard about the goody bags being stolen?”

  I lean back on my heels. “Stolen?”

  “Yeah, like from right in front of us.”

  “Crazy.”

  “I know.”

  He glances around to make sure no one can hear us. “Hey, you weren’t really in my Spanish class, right?”

  “Um, no, I guess not. I was confused before. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. It’s just that, I’m sure I would have remembered you.” It may be my imagination, but I think he’s blushing.

  “It’s time to go,” Leo says, pointing to the clock. “My shift is almost over.”

  I get to my feet. “Bye, Connor.”

  He waves and smiles at me a few seconds longer before turning away.

  Leo leads me to the front door. “We only have a few minutes left to the official end of the party. That’s when Angelina said we have to go back. If we miss our window of time, we could be stuck here. That would be a disaster.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He waves his hand in front of my face. “Are you even listening to me?”

  I grin. “I think Connor has a little crush on Amy.”

  He rolls his eyes. “Let’s go, heartbreaker.”

  We swing open the door and together step outside into the bright sunlight. “Home!” he says, breathing deep.

  Rory and Tara come running up to us.

  “You did it!” Rory yells, jumping up and down. “We got up to the counter to get our shoes and they started making everyone leave for the private party! We all wound up at the diner, instead.”

  “How did you know we had anything to do with it?” I ask.

  “The woman said the name on the party was D’Angelo!” Tara says. “We figured it out!”

  “I feel a little bad about it now,” I admit. “I mean, they must have lost a lot of money when no one showed up.”

  “We can have our birthday here next year,” Leo says. “That’ll make up for it. Sort of.”

  “How did it go in there?” Rory asks, tugging on my sleeve. “You went back in time! Was it totally amazing?”

  Leo and I shrug. “Actually it wasn’t all that exciting.”

  “Are you sure you did it right?” she asks. “I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be life changing.”

  “Really, the only strange part was that Connor didn’t seem to remember he moved the goody bags right after he did it,” Leo says. “He could have been lying, but it didn’t seem like it.”

  “Also, we looked like ourselves to each other, but to other people we were like these totally different kids. Connor didn’t recognize us!”

  “Amanda had braces!”

  “And Leo had glasses! And a limp!”

  “I didn’t have a limp!”

  “You sort of did. Like a little shuffle.”

  He crosses his arms. “Harrumph.”

  “Don’t worry, it was cute.”

  “I had a cute shuffle?”

  “Okay,” Rory says. “That’s super weird. Tell us the rest while we walk back to the diner, okay? The parents made us promise we’d bring you right back after you got off work.” She shudders. “You already missed two hours of listening to them reminisce about the good old days over chocolate chip pancakes and gravy fries.”

  “Bummer,” I say, trying to look disappointed about that. Rory and Tara interrupt every few minutes but by the time we reach the diner, we’ve filled them in on what went down at the party.

  “We need to go find Angelina,” Leo says. “We have to find out if replacing the goody bags with the little bouncy balls worked.”

  “Okay,” Tara says, “but don’t have a yarn on the way. The oldies are getting restless.”

  Leo tilts his head at her. “Say what now?”

  “Oops,” Tara says. “That comes from living in a house with Ray for too long. Just hurry back.”

  She and Rory head into the diner, and Leo and I run across the street and down the blink-and-you-miss-it back alley. Angelina’s shop is at the end. As usual it’s filled with all sorts of merchandise, most of which has seen better days. Only people who have been involved with one of Angelina’s “projects” can see inside the store window, though. To everyone else it’s an empty building. That’s another thing I’ll have to ask Angelina to explain one day. But for now I’m willing to focus on the problem at hand.

  The lights are off, but that’s not unusual. “She could still be there,” I say, reaching for the knob. Leo points at a small sign posted inside the window. GONE FISHING. BE BACK NEXT WEEK.

  I lean my forehead against the cool glass and close my eyes. “She chooses now to go on vacation? How are we going to know if what we did today worked?”

  “Actually, we already know,” Leo says quietly.

  I turn away from the window to find him holding up the little spiral notebook that Angelina gave us at the hospital yesterday. He has it open to the page with the bowling party. There is now a big red X covering the page from corner to corner. Scribbled on the side are the words, Good try, though. Must do better tomorrow. It’s not even worth wondering how she was able to write in our book while we had it the whole time. If she can enchant goody bags, she can enchant a notebook. “Well, at least she’s trying to be encouraging.”

  Leo takes my hand and tugs. “Let’s go back to the diner. I think you could use some chocolate chip pancakes.”

  “I could use some chocolate chip pancakes?” I ask as we start walking.

  “That’s what I said.”

  I sigh. “I miss Leon.”

  He laughs. “You’ll see him again soon enough.”

  “Make sure he wears his glasses.” We both laugh, but then I stop right before we exit the alley. “What if we can’t get her back? Grace, I mean.”

  “We will. We’ll get better. This was only our first try.”

  I hope he’s right. Tomorrow’s party is at the beach. Angelina enchanted the balloons, and then the video showed Connor untying them and watching them fly away. Somehow we’ll have to stop that. “You know what? I really could use some chocolate chip pancakes.”

  Leo squeezes my hand. “That’s my girl.”

  He holds on tight the whole way down to the diner. This is the longest we’ve ever held hands. There are people all over the place, ducking in and out of stores, riding bikes or scooters, but all I can see are our hands. They loom as large as a highway billboard.

  In unspoken agreement we let them d
rop before pushing open the door.

  One place I didn’t expect to find myself at 9 a.m. on Monday morning was the bottom of a huge hole. Yet that’s where I am. Leo and I had come over to Tara’s house early so we could plan for the party before Ray drives us to the beach. Tara ushered us right out here because apparently the house is crawling with grown-ups.

  “Your parents seem really cool,” I tell her. “I liked hearing about their adventures in Madagascar.”

  “I don’t know about cool,” she says, “but apparently when your parents leave you for a month to travel to the other side of the world, all they want to do when they get back is follow you around. They won’t think to look down here.”

  “At least the rest of our parents came to their senses and remembered they actually have to work for a living,” Leo says. “I couldn’t handle a day of trying to dodge them at the beach.”

  We rewatch the video from Grace’s beach party until Rory’s face appears over the edge of the hole.

  “There you guys are.”

  “Come on down,” Leo says. “The water’s fine.”

  Rory swings her legs over and then hesitates. “I’m really not the best climber.”

  Leo holds out his arms. “You can jump and I’ll catch you.”

  “Um, I’ll pass on that.”

  “David used to come down here to practice for his bar mitzvah,” Tara calls up. “It’s not as hard as it seems.” She points out all the handholds and footholds we used and Rory slowly makes her way to us. She balances on one of the wooden planks that line the bottom of the pool and looks up at the clear sky. “It’s pretty neat down here. Very private. Maybe I’ll stay here instead of going to the beach.”

  “Really?” Leo says suspiciously. “You’d rather stay down here, where there are likely to be creepy-crawly things with many legs, instead of spending the day at the beach with us, your closest friends? There can only be one explanation for that.”

  At the same time the three of us yell, “Jake Harrison!”