The Last Present

by Wendy Mass

  “Your mom still makes you reuse yours till it falls apart?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “That’s pretty gross.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I drag him away and we turn into the baby aisle. We have to step around a girl in pigtails. Her baby brother is gleefully flinging pacifiers at shoppers’ legs while his sister struggles to take them from him and put them back in the bucket they came from. I’m glad I don’t have any younger siblings. Not that having an older one is such a joy, but still, it’s hard enough to be responsible for myself, let alone a little kid.

  I bend down to help the girl pick them up.

  “Thanks,” she says, pushing up the glasses that have slipped down her nose. “The second my dad went to grab something at the end of the aisle, my brother decided to do this. I think he lives to embarrass me. And he’s not even one yet!”

  She smiles gratefully as I hand her a bunch of pacifiers and I realize she’s older than I first thought — she’s just small and her hairstyle makes her look even younger. Leo yanks my arm so tight, I’m afraid he’s going to pull it right off. “Don’t talk to her!” he hisses in my ear. “That’s Rory!!”

  I whirl back around. The girl is bending down again because this time her brother has torn open a box of Cheerios. I gasp for the second time in as many minutes. He’s totally right! It’s nine-year-old Rory! We should keep moving, but we’re trapped by shoppers on both sides, and I kind of want to stare at this version of Rory for a few seconds longer.

  “Look what I found!” Mr. Swenson calls out, pushing his way through the aisle.

  “Guess the whole family’s here,” Leo mutters.

  Mr. Swenson holds up his basket. “Trick candles! They’ll be perfect for Sawyer’s birthday party next week. He’ll never see it coming! I grabbed all the ones they had!”

  “That’s great, Dad,” Rory says. “A little help here?”

  “Hang on a few more minutes, hon. Your mom gave me a whole list. You’re doing great.”

  Before she can complain again, he takes off. I can’t help but notice there is no stripe in his hair yet.

  Leo hisses at me again. “He took all the candles!”

  “I know,” I whisper back. “We can’t exactly tackle him.”

  “C’mon, Sawyer,” Rory says, turning back to her brother. “Let’s find a more boring aisle with nothing to play with.” She reaches down to pick him up and then quickly straightens up again. I expect to see Sawyer in her arms, but they’re empty.

  I look down. Sawyer’s not there! I turn around in a circle. He must have crawled through people’s legs in the split second Rory was talking to their father. Instead of freaking out like I thought she would, Rory merely sighs and shuts her eyes. I’m about to offer to help find him when I hear a whistle blow. Rory opens her eyes. “And there it is,” she says, taking off in the direction of the whistle. We hurry after her.

  “You can’t do that, little boy!” the store manager is yelling. “That’s for display purposes only!” We round the corner to find Sawyer, pants and diaper at his ankles, sitting on a plastic Elmo potty in the middle of aisle three. He looks up and gives Rory a big grin and two thumbs up.

  The manager is turning all sorts of unpleasant shades of red. Rory’s parents arrive and take in the scene. Mrs. Swenson hands her husband her fistful of coupons and bends down for Sawyer. “Look on the bright side, honey,” Mr. Swenson says as Mrs. Swenson pulls up Sawyer’s pants. “I bet he’ll be really easy to toilet train!”

  “You know you’re buying that now,” the manager says, barely containing his anger.

  “We’ve gotta go,” Leo whispers as Rory’s dad assures the manager that Elmo will be going home with them. Leo drags me away from the scene, which really, in any other circumstances, would have had us laughing until our sides hurt. We turn into the much less crowded greeting card aisle, where he lifts the bottom of his shirt and quickly drops it again, but not before I could see the box of trick candles stuck in his waistband!

  “Where did you …” I lower my voice. “You’re not going to steal those!”

  “Of course not,” he says, pulling the box out. “I mean, I did steal them from Rory’s dad’s basket when he was otherwise occupied with a peeing baby, but c’mon, the guy had six boxes. That’s called being greedy.”

  “Slick move, Leon,” I say as he strides up to the last aisle, which fortunately is the farthest from where Mrs. Swenson is now trying to convince the manager to sell them the potty at a discount since it’s used. Mr. Swenson doesn’t seem to notice that his basket is one box of candles lighter. We pay and run out of the store, not looking back. We only slow down when we get within a few stores of the pottery place. I lean against the wall to catch my breath. “Do you think Rory will remember me, I mean Amy, talking to her?”

  “I’m not sure. Depends on how many embarrassing moments she’s had. This one might not stand out.”

  I consider this. She’s had a lot just in the last few years that we’ve been friends. And this one clearly wasn’t the first. Even though it was risky talking to her, it was really cool and I’m totally glad I did it.

  Leo and I slip around the back of the pottery store. The back door is open, with just a screen door between us and the party that we can hear going on inside. The door creaks as we open it, but it’s way too loud in there for anyone to notice. As we’d hoped, the cake is sitting on the counter in the back room. Beside it lays a box of small pink candles.

  I reach into the bag from the drugstore and pull out the new ones. Besides being rainbow colored, our candles are considerably taller. “What are we going to do?”

  “We don’t have a choice,” Leo says, already shoving the pink box into his pocket. “Let’s just leave them here. Maybe they won’t notice.”

  I place ours on the counter. “Or maybe they’ll think the store gives everyone a free box.”

  We slip back out, then hurry around to the front so we can watch through the store window. It takes a while to collect all the pottery pieces and clean off the tables so Mrs. Kelly can lay out the paper plates. Leo already has Angelina’s notebook out in front of him, staring down at the page. “Any minute now,” he says.

  The singing begins and we risk pressing our faces up to the glass. I’m very relieved to see our candles in the cake, their tiny flames dancing and sparkling. “We didn’t leave them much choice,” Leo whispers, reading my mind.

  Grace makes her wish, then begins to blow out the candles. As expected, Connor squeezes right up next to her and blows as hard as he can. The flames flicker and we grab each other’s hands tight. But the flames soon return, strong as ever. Everyone laughs and Mr. Kelly forcibly removes Connor from the table. Grace giggles and keeps huffing and puffing until all of them are out. All the kids and grown-ups are laughing and clapping with delight. I glance over at Connor. He just seems confused. Only two grown-ups aren’t laughing — Mrs. Kelly, who is busy glaring at Connor for trying to blow out his sister’s candles, and their grandfather, who is frowning at a piece of broken pottery in his hand.

  “Ta-da!” Leo says, holding up the notebook. “A big red check mark!” We high-five and run around to the back of the store again. One of the college girls who they hired to help with the party is carrying some trash out to the dumpster. If she doesn’t get back in on time, she’s going to see us disappear!

  She turns back toward the building, but then stops and takes out her phone. My heart sinks. “What do we do?”

  “I got us out of this before,” Leo says confidently. “I can do it again.”

  We walk over to the spot where we first arrived, and even though I’m sure she must be wondering why we’re standing here, she’s too absorbed in her conversation to say anything. She’s still only a few feet away from us, though. This is not good.

  I lean toward him and whisper, “I think she’s too old to care if Jake Harrison was spotted nearby.”

  “I got this, don’t worry.” Leo checks his watch.
“Okay, here goes nothing.”

  I take a deep breath and cross my fingers. “Hey!” Leo shouts at the girl. “Is that a chicken?” She looks over at us and then at the dumpster behind her where Leo is pointing.

  The next thing I know we’re flying ten feet in the air.

  I land on my butt. I have just enough time to register that it doesn’t hurt as much as I thought it would before I bounce right back up again. I finally come to rest, staring up at the wide blue sky above. Leo’s sneaker is tangled in my hair and I think my pinky might have gone in his ear. “Seriously, guys? A trampoline?” I turn my head toward my so-called friends.

  Ray, Tara, and Rory are literally pounding the ground, they are laughing so hard.

  “We couldn’t help it,” Tara said, gasping for breath. “It’s so boring waiting for you to come back.”

  “You should have seen your faces.” Rory wipes tears from her eyes. “It was all Ray’s idea.”

  “You’re a grown man, Ray,” I remind him. “Or you know, mostly grown. I would have expected more from you.”

  Ray shakes his head, trying to look serious. This would be easier if he weren’t clutching his belly and shaking with laughter. He takes deep breaths until he’s able to speak. “All I did was drag it from the sporting goods store down the street.”

  Leo groans and rolls over. “There is no sporting goods store down the street.”

  “Hmm, it did look suspiciously like someone’s backyard,” Ray admits. “Either way, I’ll return it. Don’t be wowsers, it was ace!”

  I’m pretty sure we’ve just been insulted. “So glad we could entertain you.” I untangle Leo’s shoe and toss it to him.

  Leo tries to push himself to a sitting position but winds up springing forward onto his face. The others stifle a laugh. “Why does my ear hurt?”

  “Sorry ’bout that,” I say, rolling to the edge. I know better than to try to sit up or walk. Once I reach it, Rory pulls me off.

  “You’re not really mad, are you?” she asks.

  “I guess it was better than landing in a hole full of sand again.” I take out my phone — which fortunately bounced along with the rest of me — and call Connor to see if Grace has improved. The call goes to voice mail, so I leave a message and then text just to be sure.

  Ray and Leo half drag, half carry the trampoline back to its rightful place while Tara and Rory and I head over to the pizza place down the street. We grab sodas from the case and pick a big table in the front. I want to find out if Rory remembers seeing me in the past but don’t want to ask outright, in case it messes something up in the space-time continuum. Not that I know what that is, but it’s something I heard on Star Trek once when my dad was watching a weekend-long marathon, and it sounds like something you should avoid doing.

  So I try to be really vague and tell them that the drugstore was really busy and at first we couldn’t find the candles, but then some kid distracted everyone and we were able to get the last box. Rory listens to the story with a look of growing unease on her face. I continue the story and may have let slip that there was a plastic Elmo potty involved. Then her eyes open wide as the realization hits her.

  “Was that you who helped me with Sawyer? Were you really pretty? I mean, not that you’re not pretty now, of course, but —”

  “You two saw each other?” Tara asks, clearly confused. “But Rory was here the whole time.”

  I look around the restaurant to see if time is going to fold in on itself or something, but nothing seems to change. “Leo and I saw the nine-year-old version of her.” I lean over and pinch Rory’s cheek. “And she was so cute!”

  Rory bats my hand away playfully. “I wasn’t wearing pigtails, was I?”

  “Do you want me to lie?” I ask. “Seriously, you were adorable and so was Sawyer.”

  She closes her eyes. “I can’t believe he peed in that potty.”

  Tara giggles and says, “Sorry I missed that.”

  Ray and Leo join us. “Sorry you missed what?” Ray asks.

  “Rory’s little brother peeing in the middle of the drugstore,” Tara says.

  He wrinkles his nose. “Glad to have sat that one out. Will you guys manage without me for a bit? I have to help the boss strip the rubber off two hundred old tires.”

  Leo opens his mouth but Ray holds up his hand. “Don’t even ask, because I have no idea. When you work for an inventor, you never know what they’re cooking up.”

  We assure him we will survive without his supervision. At least until the next time we need a ride.

  Time travel really does make a person hungry! I’ve eaten two slices and am on to my third when Connor returns my call. I put my phone on speaker so we can all hear.

  “You won’t believe what happened,” he says as soon as I say hello.

  “Is she better?” I ask. “Is she talking more?”

  “She’s not talking at all anymore, actually.”

  The four of us exchange disappointed looks. Even Leo puts down his slice.

  “But wait till I tell you this!” We hear a deep intake of breath, then, “Grace grew four inches!”

  “What?” we all shout at once, causing a few other customers to turn and look our way. I quickly take the phone off speaker and hold it to my ear. “Let me get this straight. Your sister grew four inches taller since we saw her yesterday?”

  “No, not since yesterday,” he says. “Since an hour ago! Seriously, it just happened. She usually grows, like, an inch a year, not even. It’s like she grew four years’ worth, instantly!”

  “We’ll be there in five minutes.”

  It takes closer to ten, but we’re soon standing by her bedside. Flowers and balloons now cover every available surface. Her parents, the gray-haired doctor from the hospital, and another man in a baseball cap whisper in the corner. I recognize the younger man as Dr. Frieling, my pediatrician.

  “It’s Dr. Frieling’s day off, but he came by to see her,” Connor explains. “He’s the one who noticed first. Come look.”

  We step closer and right away I can tell she looks different. The sleeves of her shirt are really tight, and her sweatpants are almost at her knees.

  “Where’s the IV?” I ask.

  “She doesn’t need it anymore!” Connor says. “She’s able to eat and drink now.”

  I look up at Grace’s face. Her expression hasn’t changed much. She’s still not blinking. “And you said she’s not saying all those words anymore?”

  He shakes his head. “I guess that’s a good thing. She’s not laughing anymore, either, though.” He smiles wistfully. “I liked that part.”

  Dr. Frieling tips his cap at me as Mr. Kelly leads him out. I glance down, suddenly shy. It’s weird seeing your doctor in the real world. The doctor from the hospital leaves, too, after handing a long list of instructions to Mrs. Kelly. She lays them on the nightstand next to my statue of the dancer.

  “It’s so kind of you to visit again,” she says. “Have you seen our latest miracle? Four inches! Grace is going to be pretty surprised when she wakes up.” She blinks away a tear. “If she wakes up.”

  Connor puts his arm around his mom. “Of course she will, Mom. Look how far she’s come since Saturday.”

  “I could bring some clothes,” Rory offers. “Looks like she can use a bigger size.”

  “That would be wonderful,” Mrs. Kelly says, squeezing Rory’s shoulder.

  “I should have some, too,” I say. “And probably some shoes.”

  “I hadn’t even thought about her feet,” Mrs. Kelly says, going down to inspect them. She smiles and tickles the bottom. We all look up at Grace’s face to see how she’ll react.

  No response. Mrs. Kelly’s smile fades. She mumbles, “Thank you,” again, and hurries from the room. Connor casts us an apologetic look and follows her out.

  “Hey,” Tara says brightly. “Look at it this way. By this time tomorrow, Grace could be totally normal again. Only one more check mark to go, and how hard can it be to keep one e
ight-year-old boy from knocking over a cake?”

  Leo grimaces. “We’re not above tackling him at this point.”

  I stand beside Grace and take a good look. “Seriously, guys, I think this is what she would look like now if Angelina had been able to give her the benediction when she was born. Like we’ve given her two-thirds of it now by saving two out of three birthdays.”

  “I think you’re right,” Rory says. “I mean, I know I’m small for my age, but not like Grace was.”

  “Angelina told us Grace had all these stomach problems when she was really young that kept her from growing as well as other kids. She wouldn’t have had those problems if Angelina hadn’t failed.”

  “Well, let’s get her some clothes that fit so she’s more comfortable,” Rory says. “We’ll need to call one of our parents for a ride. Who will ask the fewest questions? My dad’s at work and asking my mom means we get Sawyer, too. And you know how unpredictable that can be.”

  “Mine are both at work,” Leo says.

  “My mom’s decorating a house across town,” I say. “She’d probably be able to take a break if we needed her to, though.”

  “I’ll call my mom,” Tara says. “She’ll ask a lot of questions and will totally embarrass me, but I can live with it. Plus I think she really likes driving around in my aunt’s car.”

  Not even five few minutes later, a large silver SUV careens into the driveway. “That was really fast,” Leo says as we head to the car. “Your mom must have broken all sorts of traffic laws.”

  We pile into Tara’s aunt’s huge car and I can’t help but notice that Mrs. Brennan looks like a kid in the driver’s seat. Tara definitely gets her height from her dad.

  “Where to?” she asks, smiling at each of us. Rory gives directions and we head toward the other side of town at a normal, safe speed. Mrs. Brennan keeps grinning. She’s even bouncing in her seat a little.