by Lindsay Eyre
But then I thought of something else. What if he told Miranda?
I looked down at Albert’s moist, sniffing nose. Miranda would not be happy. She didn’t like mean people or lying people or people who crawled into other people’s bedrooms. Even if they didn’t do it on purpose.
“I have to go inside now,” I said. Then I ran up my porch steps and into my house without looking back.
“Sylvie?” my mom called as soon as I shut the door.
“Just a minute!” I shouted, because if my mom saw Albert, she would scream and hit him with the flyswatter.
I ran down the hallway, away from my mom, away from the front door where Georgie might be lurking. My bedroom door was open. I looked inside, searching for a place to hide Albert. Somewhere safe where he couldn’t drown or choke or get electrocuted. But it was no use. My room was full of dangerous things like outlets and seashells and tape. I couldn’t leave him in here.
“Aha!” I said as an idea fell on top of me. What I needed was a ferret babysitter. Someone to watch Albert and keep him safe while I got a new birthday present for Miranda.
The twins. They were my only hope, so I hurried to their room and found them sitting on the floor, throwing packing peanuts into each other’s mouths. I shut their door behind me and locked it. “Hi,” I said. I held Albert up in the air. “I need you guys to watch this for me, okay?”
They began to cry in delight (in the case of Tate) and in fear (in the case of Cale).
“Shh!” I said firmly. “It’s just a ferret. Not a goblin or anything.”
They both went silent as they looked Albert over from head to tail. While they were examining him, I checked out their room. The boys have a fort in their closet they never clean up. It’s made of old suitcases and boxes and broken bicycle wheels and baby blankets, and it’s practically indestroyable. Nothing gets in and nothing gets out.
“I’m going to put the ferret in your fort,” I told the twins. “His name is Albert. And I’m borrowing him for a few minutes. Don’t touch him. Don’t hurt him. Don’t tell Mom about him. We have to keep him perfectly safe.” I looked at Cale, who was cowering on top of Tate’s bed. “He won’t hurt you,” I promised.
“We’ll take care of him,” Tate said, but he looked a little too eager, like a hunter just spotting his prey.
“Don’t touch him,” I said again, with large, threatening eyes. “He doesn’t belong to us. Okay?”
“Okay,” Tate said, but I could see his fingers crossed behind his back.
“Sylvie!” my mom called again.
“No touching!” I said as I hurried out of the room. My mom had her I’m-going-to-make-Sylvie-do-jobs voice on, and the longer I took, the more jobs I would get.
“Boy, Mom, I’m really busy,” I said when I found her in the kitchen, making something for lunch that looked suspiciously like mustard. “Too busy to help you with anything.”
She looked up when I said this, the right side of her face scrunched up. When my mom scrunches up the right side of her face, it means she isn’t happy with my attitude, so I tried to change it.
“I mean, I have lots of things to do after I help you with something.” I smiled obediently. “Do you think later, after I do something for you, you could take me to the toy store?”
“Why?” my mom said, stirring her mustard ferociously.
“Because I need to get Miranda a different present for her birthday.”
“What’s wrong with the present you already got her?”
“It’s a terrible present!” I cried. “Awful! Miranda will hate it. She’ll open it up and she’ll look at it, and she’ll pretend to be nice and everything, but she’ll hate it.” I pounded my fist on the counter. “It’s not nearly as good as gerbils!”
My mom sighed and put down her mustard spoon. Then she stepped to the kitchen table and pulled out two chairs, one for each of us. After arranging them neatly, she sat down and patted the seat next to her.
I love having chats with my mom, but not when she is patting the seat next to her. Patting the seat next to her means I’ve done something wrong and she wants to talk about it. I didn’t want to sit down, but I had to.
“You seem to be struggling today,” my mom began. “You didn’t tell me where you were going this morning. You didn’t come when I called you. And now you want to throw away a perfectly good present to get a different present for Miranda. One she probably won’t like any better than the candles. The Sylvie I know wouldn’t do these things.”
I was trying to be nice so I wouldn’t get into any more trouble, but it was hard. I wasn’t the Sylvie she knew anymore. I was a stressed Sylvie. A dumb Sylvie. A Sylvie who accidentally took ferrets from mean boys’ houses. A Sylvie who was about to lose her best friend. “I just want to get Miranda a great present,” I said.
“Then what’s going on between you and Miranda?”
I looked up at her then, because I wasn’t expecting that question. She was tilting her head and looking at me with a sad face, and I knew that I could tell her right then. I could tell her everything, except for the part about accidentally taking Albert. I could tell her about Miranda and how she was becoming friends with Georgie, and if she became friends with Georgie, she wouldn’t need me anymore.
But I knew what would happen next. Mom wouldn’t understand. She’d talk about how Miranda would always be my friend and she would always need me, even if she did become friends with Georgie, and how I was worrying too much. And this made me mad.
“Nothing’s going on,” I said. “I just want to get her a nice present. That’s all.”
“Um-hmm,” my mom said, like she didn’t believe me.
“Really, Mom!”
“Sylvie, I know that Miranda is your first real best friend.”
“No, she’s not!” I said, even though she was.
“And I know things with friends can be confusing sometimes —”
“I’m not confused.”
“— but Miranda is still going to want to be your friend, even if your present is not the most wonderful present in the world.”
I frowned. I crossed my arms. I hated this conversation. I hated it.
With a sigh, she stood up and put her hand on my shoulder. “You’ll see,” she said.
I shook off her hand, even though I wanted it to stay there. “I have to go over to Georgie’s house now. Is that okay?” I had to return Albert immediately. Before things got any worse.
The right side of Mom’s face scrunched up at me again, even though I’d already fixed my attitude.
“All right,” she said. “But don’t be gone long.”
To the twins’ dismay, I retrieved Albert from their closet.
“No!” Tate shouted.
“Oh, man!” Cale said.
“It’s okay,” I told them. “One day you can get a ferret of your own. When you move out of the house and live somewhere without Mom.”
Tate kicked his dresser. “That’s going to take, like, three years!”
After giving them these words of comfort, I put Albert in a Florida Oranges box I found in the garage, slid the box lid on top, and began my march of death over to Georgie’s house. It felt as if everyone in the world was watching me. Neighbors sitting at their windows. People doing yard work. Mosquitoes.
I made it across the street, and I made it up Georgie’s front walk. But that’s where I got stuck. I could hear noises inside. People sorts of noises.
My head was pounding, my heart was pounding. The front walk seemed to be pounding too.
“I’ll check the porch,” someone who sounded very much like Georgie shouted from inside.
“Shoot!” I said. I wasn’t ready to tell Georgie about Albert. I needed time to think this out. To practice my speech. There was a big, fat bush right next to the porch steps. I shoved the box behind it and made it to the front door just as Georgie pulled it open.
“Oh!” he said. He blinked. He looked astonished. “Scruggs!”
Miranda appeared at Georgie’s side. Behind them both was Josh.
“Oh, good!” Miranda said. She turned to Georgie. “I told you she would come.”
“I didn’t know you were here,” I said. How could I return Albert if Miranda was there?
“I’m helping look for Georgie’s ferret,” she explained. She hurried down the porch steps, put her arm through mine, and made me walk into the house with her. “Dave was missing when Georgie got back from my house earlier. He brought me gerbils — oh, Sylvie, you’ll love them! One is black and white, just like a cow, and I thought you could name —”
“I know about the gerbils,” I said, so she would stop talking about them.
“My ferret’s name isn’t just Dave,” Georgie said. “It’s Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy’s. Dave Thomas is the guy who made up the Wendy’s place where they sell hamburgers. My dad met him once, so we decided to name Dave after him. Because Dave likes hamburgers.”
Georgie kept on talking about Dave then. How great Dave was. How smart. How funny. My head was starting to hurt. My eyes were getting fuzzy. I wanted to tell him the truth. But my mouth wouldn’t open.
“We’ve already searched the main level,” Miranda said when Georgie was finally through.
“Why don’t you search the basement next?” That was Georgie’s grandma talking. She was standing in the room next to the front door, sorting laundry. The room had an enormous window that looked out onto the front yard, right over the bushes where Albert was hidden.
Georgie looked worried. “If Dave is in the basement, he might be in trouble. He might have found some rat poison. Or worse.”
Miranda looked at me, her eyebrows scrunched together. She knows I don’t go into basements, because goblins live in basements. Even though goblins aren’t real. “Why don’t you go search Georgie’s room one more time, Sylvie? We don’t need four people searching the basement.”
So I walked down the hall with Georgie, where he practically shoved me into his room. He didn’t give me a chance to say, “Wait! I know where Albert is! He’s in an orange box in your bushes.”
“Wait —” I said as Georgie ran down the hallway toward the basement.
But it was too late. Georgie was gone, and now Miranda thought I was helping look for Albert. “Why didn’t you tell us right away?” she would say if I told the truth now. “Why did you take Albert home at all? What is the matter with you?”
“I don’t know,” I said to nobody.
I had to get Albert out of the bushes before Dagger sniffed him out and ate him, but I couldn’t just walk out Georgie’s front door. Georgie’s grandma was standing right beside it. She’d watch me pick the orange box up out of the bushes, and then she’d wonder why I was storing oranges in her bushes. She might open the door and say, “Why are you storing oranges in my bushes?”
A stream of sunlight from Georgie’s window suddenly shone on my face.
Georgie’s window!
That was it — I could climb out Georgie’s window, crawl over to the bushes so Georgie’s grandma couldn’t see me, and rescue Albert from Dagger. Even better, I could get Albert and slip him back into Georgie’s room. Then Albert would be found, and Georgie would never know I’d taken him at all. And neither would Miranda.
Georgie’s window was shut, of course, and locked. The lock was in the middle of the window. Even stretched up on my tippy-toes, I couldn’t reach it, so I pushed Georgie’s desk chair over to make me taller.
Still I couldn’t reach it. So I got Georgie’s pillow, an old shoe box, a book, and a pile of sweatshirts, and stacked them on top of one another. I climbed on top, got on my tiptoes, stretched my arm up as far as it would go, and at last, I could reach the lock.
I remembered how you unlock things, lefty-loosey, righty-tighty, pushed the lock to the left, and smiled at the sound of the window unlocking.
“Hello?” said a big scary man-voice.
I yelped and tumbled off the chair, landing on my hands and knees on top of a pile of LEGOs.
“Ow!” I said.
Georgie’s dad left the doorway and came two steps closer. “Are you all right?” Georgie’s dad was a muscley dad, twice the size of mine. He took another step toward me.
Every particle of my knees and hands hurt, thanks to the LEGOs, and I was pretty sure I was bleeding internationally, but I got to my feet anyway. “I’m fine,” I said without looking at his face. “You don’t have to do anything.”
Georgie’s dad coughed. “Okay. You must be one of Georgie’s friends. Are you helping look for Dave?”
I stared at Georgie’s messy floor. “I haven’t seen Dave anywhere in this room,” I said carefully.
Georgie’s dad coughed again. “Well, I suppose I should leave you to your, um, search.” Then he pretty much ran out of the room.
I didn’t bother to watch where he was going. I didn’t even bother to shut the door. Anyone could pop into the room at any moment, and I had to hurry. My hands shook as I put Georgie’s things back on his bed. They trembled as I picked up the chair.
And that’s when I saw it. The box. Sitting on top of Georgie’s dresser next to too many old baseball trophies. A tall box wrapped in shiny silver wrapping paper, a white ribbon, and a bow.
A present. It hadn’t been there before. There’d been nothing on Georgie’s dresser before except dusty trophies and potato chip wrappers. A birthday present, I thought.
I knocked the chair over again in my hurry toward the box. There was a tag on top with a silver smiley face. I lifted the tag just enough to read it. To Miranda, it said. Have the happiest of birthdays, Georgie.
“Sylvie!” I heard Miranda call.
“I’m in here!” I said, rushing into the hall so Miranda wouldn’t come into the room and see the box and know that Georgie had bought her another present.
“I have to go,” I told her as I met her in the hall. “But tell Georgie that he will find Albert, I mean, Dave, really soon, so he doesn’t have to be sad about it.” I leaned in closer. “You can just go home right now, if you want. You really don’t need to look for him.”
Miranda gave me a sad look. “You have to go? Right now? I was hoping you could stay. Georgie still needs help looking — and you’re the best looker I know.”
“I can’t stay,” I said. “But I’ll see you tomorrow. At your birthday party. And I’ll have a really great present for you too. You’ll love it!”
“Sounds perfect,” she said. But she was already walking away, looking for Georgie.
I nearly left Albert and the orange box in the bushes, because surely someone would find him at some point. But it might take a long time, and Dagger was outside in his yard with his pretend fence, snarling at me like a lion with a stomachache. He knew where Albert was, and if he got the chance, he would eat him.
Georgie’s grandma was missing from the front window, so I snatched up the box as fast as I could and ran back home as if Albert’s life depended on it.
After leaving Albert in the twins’ fort, I went to my room to think. Albert’s fine, I told myself as I flopped onto my bed. He’d only been missing from Georgie’s for a few hours, and Georgie wasn’t really that sad. Not yet. Georgie’s window was unlocked now, so I could return Albert later that night, when everyone in the world, even Dagger, was asleep. Georgie would wake up to the best surprise of his life in the morning.
But then there was that box. The box with the silver wrapping paper. It was stuck in my brain like gum on a shoe. It was so large and square and expensive-looking. I thought about it while I helped my mom clean up the kitchen, I thought about it while I chewed my sausagey pizza, and I thought about it as I ate my Moose Tracks ice cream.
What could be in a box that big?
Later that night, after watching the twins play beef-jerky catch with Albert, I had a talk with my dad while we did the dishes. “I have to get a new present for Miranda,” I told him.
Because he is my dad, and not my mom, he just said, “Really?�
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“Yes,” I said. “The best present ever.”
“The best present ever,” he said, rubbing his chin like he was thinking about it. “That’s a tough order.”
“I know,” I said. Then I rinsed pepperoni grease off a plate and waited for him to tell me what to do. “Well?” I said when he didn’t.
“Well, what?” he said.
“What should I do? I don’t have any money. And Mom won’t buy me another one.”
“Then you’ll have to make her something.”
“Make her something?” I was stunned. Flabbergasted. “I can’t make her something,” I said. Definitely nothing as good as gerbils or a giant silver box, I thought.
“Now, now,” he said, flapping a dish towel in my face. “The best presents are the homemade ones. Anyone can go to a store and plunk down some money and buy something —”
“Anyone who has money,” I said.
“Yes, of course, but it is the rare friend indeed who will take the time to make her friend a homemade present. It’s much more meaningful.”
While my dad began telling me about the horse his dad carved for him out of a bar of soap — he’d named it Sudsy — I thought about this. Making something sounded nice. Like giving away your Christmas presents to kids who didn’t get any.
But would Miranda really want me to make something for her?
“What would I make her?” I asked my dad.
He was in the middle of telling me about Sudsy’s best friend, Bubbles, so it took him a moment to come up with an answer. “What would you buy her if you had money?” he said.
That was easy. “A gigantic castle to hold all her specimens. Her other one’s too small now.”
“Then that’s what you should make her,” he said.
* * *
In my room was an enormous tub of long, skinny blocks, the kind that balance so well you can build a tower as high as your ceiling.
I couldn’t return Albert until it got dark, so right away I got busy. I found a square of plywood in the garage, got my mom’s (off-limits) glue gun, and a giant (off-limits) bottle of glitter. I spread newspaper on the floor, because I am a responsible individual who doesn’t want to get glitter on the carpet and face a lifetime in Mom Prison.