The Last Present

by Wendy Mass

  He shakes his head. “No, they don’t come up here much. We usually go there.”

  “Oh,” I say. “I must be confused, then.”

  “But I think I know who you mean. It’s probably my great-uncle Bill. He’s my mom’s uncle.” He scratches his head. “Or is it my dad’s?”

  “That must be the guy. He seemed … nice?”

  Connor nods. “He never misses one of Grace’s parties, and always helps out. He brings the coolest presents, too.”

  Okay, so now at least we know one guest who will be there today. Maybe there’s some way to use that information to help us get in. I sure hope we will look different than we did at the backyard party. Although this one will have happened before that one, so he won’t have actually met us yet. The rules of time travel, Angelina-style, are very confusing! But I think I have a plan.

  “What’s all this?” Leo asks as he climbs into Ray’s backseat an hour later. “Did you rob a flower stand?”

  “Never gonna get the smell outta my car,” Ray grumbles.

  I turn around in my seat. “Like ’em? They’re part of my grand plan to get us into the party today.”

  He picks through the mound of roses, carnations, and lilies that takes up the other half of the backseat. “Do tell.”

  “I also have this!” I reach down and pick up a medium-sized cardboard box covered in yellow wrapping paper.

  “You’ve been busy!”

  “I’ve had help,” I admit. “So basically here’s the plan. I thought we could pretend to be delivering flowers from Grace’s grandparents from down south, who won’t be there. We know that Connor’s other grandfather — who’s actually his great-uncle Bill, by the way — will be there because Connor told me he never misses a party. We can wait till he arrives, then sort of walk in with him, like we belong. And the present is to switch out with the one that Connor sits on. I tried to match up the size with the one in the video. Pretty good plan, right?”

  “Sure,” he says. “But if we’re delivering flowers, how come we need Great-uncle Bill? Wouldn’t we just ring the bell and say we have flowers?”

  I pause. “Yeah, all right. That’s why you’re usually the plan maker.”

  He reaches over and hands me a rose. “It’s a good plan, Amanda. I think it will work.”

  We pull up to the house and Ray parks out front. “Hey,” he says. “If you don’t leave the car and the party starts, will you fall right onto the road?”

  “Pretty sure we would,” I say, thinking of our fall through the bench yesterday and my sore butt.

  Leo brings the flowers and I have the box. We hide around the side of the house until it’s time. The only way I can tell we’re now in the past is that Ray’s car is gone and there are two balloons tied to the mailbox. I peek around the corner in time to see Great-uncle Bill step out of his car. He looks a little younger than in previous years, not as stooped. He pats his hair into place, straightens his shirt, and reaches in for his gift. It’s the same one I have in my lap.

  “Great-uncle Bill just got here,” I whisper to Leo. “And the gift that Connor breaks is his!”

  Leo groans. “Great. Another run-in with crazy Great-uncle Bill. It felt like he locked us in that bathroom on purpose, ya know? Like he knew we were trying to keep Connor from falling into the cake.”

  “He couldn’t have, though, right? I mean, he said he heard us talking and knew we were plotting something. Plus if he knew why we were really doing this, he’d WANT us to help Grace. Connor said he’s a really good guy.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” Leo says. “I’m just being paranoid. C’mon, let’s get this over with.” He thrusts the flowers at me and takes the gift. I wait until Great-uncle Bill has gone inside to ring the bell.

  “Come in,” a woman’s voice calls out. “It’s open!”

  “That was easy,” Leo mutters.

  “She must think we’re more guests.” I slowly push the door open. “Flower delivery,” I call out.

  Heels clack on the wood floor and a pretty woman wearing a KISS THE COOK apron appears. She looks familiar from a few of the parties. “Oh, I’m sorry!” she says. “I thought you were my sister Ida. She’s always late.” I smile at her around the flowers.

  “Oh my,” she says, stepping back. “They really do make you get into costume, don’t they?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Unless you always dress like that,” she says, laughing.

  Leo grabs my shoulders and turns me toward a large mirror hanging in the hallway. I lower the flowers even more. We are both wearing cow costumes. COW COSTUMES. Our faces are colored with white paint. Black splotches dot our noses and cheeks. I have a TAIL. “I bet she’s getting back at us for messing up the last one so badly,” I mutter angrily.

  “Moo,” Leo replies.

  “Here, let me take those,” Aunt Millie offers. She reaches out for the flowers but I hold tight.

  “Why don’t we put them in water for you?” I ask. “It’s sort of part of the job.”

  “Lovely! The kitchen is this way.” She leads us down the hall. “You can lay them on the counter and I’ll find some vases.”

  “They’re, um, from Grace’s grandparents,” I tell her.

  “Really?” Her brows rise in surprise, but she covers it up with a smile. “Hey, kids!” she calls out. “You must come see the flower-delivery people.”

  Connor and Grace and a bunch of cousins come running into the kitchen, sliding around in their socks. At four, Grace is even more adorable. She takes one look at us and her face begins to crumple. I’m afraid she’s about to cry when Great-uncle Bill kneels beside her and says, “Wow! Will you look at them! Aren’t those the best cow costumes you ever did see? They must be here to play birthday games with you, isn’t that right?”

  “Um, sure,” I say, “we can sing a song for you.”

  “Moo,” Leo adds, pushing the present behind his back.

  “Let’s all go into the living room so everyone can watch,” Great-uncle Bill suggests. Grace reaches up for her uncle’s hand, and Leo and I exchange a look. We hang back a step to let everyone file into the next room. “I’ll keep their attention on me,” I whisper, “and you switch out the present.”

  He nods and we move the box from behind my back to behind his.

  “Wow,” Mr. and Mrs. Kelly exclaim when they see us. “Great costumes.”

  Leo gives a little bow, careful not to reveal the box. “We’re here to wish Grace a moo-tiful birthday!”

  I cringe at his pun, but at least he’s saying more than moo. I spot Great-uncle Bill’s gift on the top of the pile on the coffee table. I can tell Leo sees it, too. I step into the front of the room so everyone’s backs are to the pile. “Gather ’round,” I tell the kids, waving my arms in big circles. I glance around in the vain hope that there might be a drum set that I can play, but of course there isn’t. The only kids’ song I remember is “The Wheels on the Bus,” so that’s what I sing. I do the motions along with it and hope my cow tail is swishing to the beat. Leo’s right — I must be getting braver.

  I watch out of the corner of my eye as he places our present next to the original, then lowers that one to the floor and slides it with his foot so it’s behind the couch.

  Everyone claps and asks for more. “I’m sure our lovely cow friends have to get to the next house,” Mrs. Kelly says. “Plus we have gifts to open.”

  “We can stay through the gifts and sing more after,” I offer.

  “All right, then,” Mrs. Kelly says, a bit hesitantly. She’s not quite sure what to make of us. Grace claps her hands and Mr. Kelly starts piling the gifts on the floor in front of her. Our gift remains on the top. Great-uncle Bill reaches for it and turns it around. “Does anyone see a card in a yellow envelope?” His voice has an edge of panic to it not normally reserved for missing birthday cards.

  I lean into Leo. “Did you notice a card with the other one? I didn’t see it on the video.”

 
“There could have been one taped to the back that we didn’t see.”

  A few people join in the search while we try to blend into the wall, which is impossible due to our being COWS.

  “Here it is, Uncle Bill!” Connor shouts, reaching behind the couch and lifting out the original gift. “That one must be someone else’s!”

  Leo and I cringe.

  Great-uncle Bill takes the gift and pats Connor gratefully on the shoulder.

  “Okay, Plan B,” Leo whispers. “Stop Connor from sitting on it.”

  Everything unfolds so quickly after that. Grace begins opening her gifts with gusto. Wrapping paper flies everywhere. I wish there was a way to take back our fake one, but I can’t think of anything.

  To my horror, Mr. Kelly picks it up next and puts it in Grace’s hands. She gleefully unwraps it and starts yanking at the box top.

  “Do you even know what’s in there?” Leo whispers, his voice edged in worry.

  I shake my head. “Rory made it. It could be empty!” I can’t bear to watch and squeeze my eyes shut.

  “Wheeee!” Grace shouts. “It’s Knuffle Bunny from the book!”

  I allow myself to peek. She’s swinging around a green stuffed bunny that looks awfully familiar.

  “Isn’t that Sawyer’s favorite stuffed animal?” Leo whispers. “He’s gonna freak when he can’t find it.”

  I shake my head. “Rory told me once that her mom keeps duplicates around in case he ever lost it.”

  I give a silent prayer of thanks to Rory’s mother for her forward thinking. And to Rory!

  “Who gave Grace this lovely bunny?” Mrs. Kelly asks. When no one in the room lays claim to it, I slowly raise my hand/paw. “It came with the flowers.”

  Mrs. Kelly raises an eye. “How generous!”

  Grace plops the bunny onto her lap and turns her attention to the next gift. Everyone else does, too, except for Great-uncle Bill. He is staring at us and then back at his own gift. I glance away, but can tell out of the corner of my eye that he is still staring. That can’t be good. I watch him lean over Connor, who is sitting on the couch, and ask him something that I can’t hear. Connor jumps up and runs into the kitchen. As soon as he’s gone, Great-uncle Bill places the gift on the couch, right where Connor had been sitting, and lays a pillow gently in front of it. I grab Leo’s arm.

  “I saw it,” he whispers anxiously. “We need to stop Connor from sitting back down.”

  Connor soon reappears, a glass of water in his hand. He heads back toward the couch and I lift my arm/paw to stop him. But before my hand reaches Connor’s shoulder, Great-uncle Bill steps between us. He meets my eyes. “Please,” he whispers. “Don’t.”

  I don’t think anyone has ever looked at me the way he’s looking at me now. His deep brown eyes are literally begging. There is no more denying it. He knows something.

  “But I’m trying to save her,” I whisper. “Grace.”

  “So am I,” he replies.

  We stare at each other for what seems like an eternity. Up close like this he looks … off somehow. Like his features don’t all match up.

  Leo, unable to see Great-uncle Bill from where he’s standing, nudges me. “C’mon, grab him.”

  But I can’t turn away from those pleading eyes. My hand falls away. I watch as in slow motion, Connor places the water on the table, then plops right down onto the present, which shatters loudly. Everyone gasps and runs over.

  “Thank you.” Great-uncle Bill presses my hand before joining the others.

  Leo is shaking his head in disbelief. “You had him. Why didn’t you stop him?”

  I drag Leo out of the room and share what happened on the way out the front door. “The way he looked at me! It was so intense. He really wanted Connor to sit on that present, maybe more than we wanted him not to. I don’t know why, though.” Instead of heading directly to the side of the house to wait to return to the present time, I lead Leo over to the car Great-uncle Bill arrived in.

  “It’s time for some real answers.” I pull the door open and slide in. Leo climbs in the other side.

  “What are we looking for?”

  “Anything.”

  “There’s a duffel bag back here,” Leo says, reaching into the backseat. He unzips it to reveal a huge wad of cotton balls, a bottle of contact lens solution, a bag of bobby pins with strands of red hair sticking out of some of them, and a makeup kit with a business card tucked inside that reads, Let Bettie Make You Beautiful. Bettie is the makeup lady in town. She did the makeup for the play last week. Last he pulls out a well-worn brown wallet. “Should I open it?”

  I nod and take a deep breath. Leo flips the wallet open to reveal Great-uncle Bill’s driver’s license. Only the man in the photo has white hair and blue eyes. And his name is Arbuckle Whitehead. We gasp.

  It’s Bucky!

  “Wow, you look nice!” Leo says when he arrives at my front door. He swings my backpack over his shoulder. “Should I go home and change?”

  I shake my head. He’s wearing tan cargo pants and a long-sleeved blue shirt. “You look fine. I just thought, you know, dancing in the moonlight and all, that I’d dress up a little.” Kylie had lent me the sundress. When she’d asked why I wanted it, I told her I might be seeing a cute guy tonight. She tossed it to me without any more questions. Then she tossed me her lip gloss and hair straightener.

  “Didn’t your parents wonder why you’re wearing a skirt to go camping?”

  “They already left for their big Saturday night date.” I yawn, unable to help it. After finding out that Bucky was the one trying to ruin Angelina’s plans, I didn’t sleep much last night. I don’t think any of us did. He wasn’t at the community center when we went to find him after returning from the party. We’d gone over it late into the night, trying to make some sort of sense out of what happened. At first Tara was convinced that Bucky must have been going back in time, too, but we were able to figure out that he couldn’t have. He was in all the original videos. Plus Connor knew him even before all this. That means he must somehow have known how to stay one step ahead of Angelina, always ruining her plans and setting up Connor to take the fall. But why? He loves Angelina, and he seemed to honestly care about Grace, too. We’re hoping that tonight gives us some answers.

  Leo keeps looking over at me and smiling while we wait for Ray to pick us up. He steps a little closer and then pretends to “accidentally” drop his hand into mine. A movement out of the corner of my eye attracts my attention. I turn in time to see the curtain in Kylie’s room move to the side. She stands framed in the window, watching. Before I can pull my hand away from Leo’s, she lifts hers and gives me the thumbs-up. I turn back around before she can see me smile.

  Ray pulls up in the SUV. Tara and Rory are already at Apple Grove. Leo tosses our backpacks into the backseat next to three rolled-up sleeping bags and enough snack food to last a week. I lift out a plastic container filled with a mixture of candy corn, M&M’S, and pink jelly beans. “My parents are trusting you to provide for our health and well-being. I don’t think this is what they had in mind.”

  “Blame that on Emily,” Ray says. “She wanted to come, but when she learned that Jake Harrison wasn’t going to be there she changed her mind. Those snacks were supposed to be presents for Jake.” He rolls his eyes. “I don’t see what all you girls see in him.”

  “Me, neither,” Leo says, climbing over the sleeping bags.

  “Sure you don’t,” I reply, slipping into the front seat and helping myself to some of Emily’s mixture. “Thank you for doing this, Ray. I’m sure you had better things to do with your Saturday night.”

  “Not really,” he says, pulling away. “And I like sleeping under the stars. Reminds me of the outback.”

  “When you used to go camping all the time with the Rover Scouts?”

  “Hey, don’t dis on the Rovers. I learned some valuable skills from those mates. You can pitch your own tent, if you like.”

  “No, thanks,” Leo says.
“Go, Rovers!”

  “That’s more like it.”

  I munch on Emily’s candy mix and try to focus on the job ahead. It was so hard missing Grace’s third birthday party today, but between Angelina and Bucky, they’ve really left us no choice. It was at a petting zoo at one of the farms on the outskirts of town. Angelina had tried enchanting Grace’s party hat, but somehow the string got cut and the hat wouldn’t stay on Grace’s head.

  “Wake up, sleepyhead,” Leo says, shaking my shoulder. I slowly open my eyes, disoriented. For a split second, the combination of Leo’s arm fluttering back and forth and the dusky sunlight behind him reminds me of the SpongeBob SquarePants’s balloon. I instinctively pull away and then yelp as the seat belt digs into my stomach. I sit up and wipe my mouth, hoping I didn’t drool. It feels like I’ve been asleep a lot longer than the fifteen-minute drive to Apple Grove. “What time is it?”

  “We let you sleep while Ray set up the tents. They’re very sturdy. The other Rover Scouts would have been proud. Come see.”

  I smooth down my rumpled dress and follow him out into the clearing. Ray is busy taking a nap on his sleeping bag, and Rory and Tara wave us over to the campsite they’ve set up. I really did sleep a long time! The tents encircle a small fire pit, with a lantern at one end and the broken old fountain at the other. David’s voice is streaming out of Tara’s iPod. I always thought his voice sounded best right here.

  Apple Grove at dusk is my favorite place in the world. The leaves from the big oaks splinter the sunlight into prisms and the air smells like wet earth, the kind that feeds baby apple trees. Our tiny trees may never bear fruit, but they’ll be big and strong, and we’ll string lights in their branches one day. The smell of apples hits me strongly, much stronger than usual. I turn to Leo. “Do you smell it?”

  He nods. “We all do. I think it’s a sign that we’re on the right path.”