Switch

wel, not impress Stela. I could never impress her. To not

disappoint her. To not prove her right about me. That was

al I wanted to do. To not prove her right.

'You're so stubborn sometimes.'

'It's caled determination,' I murmured as I looked one last time at the shelf in front of me.

'It's caled stubborn as hel and refusing to admit it. I'l be

outside.'

I barely glanced up as she left. I'd known Kira's attention

span wouldn't make her the best companion for this trip,

but I'd put off buying Stela's gift for too long. I hadn't seen

much of Kira since I'd moved away from our hometown to

Harrisburg. Actualy, I hadn't seen much of her even

before that. When she'd caled to see if I wanted to get

together I hadn't been able to think of a reason to say no

that wouldn't make me sound like a total douche. She'd be

content outside smoking a cigarette or two, so I turned my

attention back to the search, determined to find just the

right thing.

Over the years I'd discovered it wasn't necessarily the gift

itself that won Stela's approval, but something even less

tangible than the price. My father gave her everything she

wanted, and what she didn't get from him she bought for

herself, so buying her something she wanted or needed

was impossible. Gretchen and Steve, my dad's kids with

his first wife, Tara, took the lazy route of having their kids

make her something like a finger-painted card. Stela's

own two boys were stil young enough not to care. My half

siblings got off the gift-giving hook with their haphazard

siblings got off the gift-giving hook with their haphazard

efforts when I'd be held to a higher standard.

There is always something to be gained from being held to

the higher standard.

Now I looked, hard, thinking about what would be just

right. Don't get me wrong. She's not a bad person, my

father's wife. She never went out of her way to make me

part of their family the way she had with Gretchen and

Steven, and I surely didn't rank as high in her sight as her

sons Jeremy and Tyler. But my half siblings had al lived

with my dad. I never had.

Then I saw it. The perfect gift. I took the box from the

shelf and opened the top. Inside, nestled on deep blue

tissue paper, lay a package of pale blue note cards. In the

lower right corner of each glittered a stylized S surrounded by a design of subtly sparkling stars. The envelopes had

the same starry design, the paper woven with silver

threads to make it shine. A pen rested inside the box, too.

I took it out. It was too light and the tiny tassel at the end

made it too casual, but this wasn't for me. It was the

perfect pen for salon-manicured fingers writing thank- you

cards in which al the i's were dotted by tiny hearts. It was the perfect pen for Stela.