It
“Are there any presents left?” Mom asked from the doorway.
“Mom! Mom! Look what Aunt Josie got me! A book about samurais! Thanks, Aunt Josie!”
“You’re welcome, Derek,” said Aunt Josie. “I had a feeling you’d like it.”
Mom sat down and then dragged me into her arms and hugged me. She was still warm from her bed and her hair smelled like sleep and dreams. We didn’t let go of each other until Aunt Josie got out of bed a few minutes later and started rummaging around in the kitchen opening and closing the cabinets.
“Please tell me you’re not out of coffee,” she shouted.
“There’s some in the pantry,” said Mom. Then she saw the Zeroman watch I was wearing. “Ooh, what’s that? Show me what that does.”
I showed her all the stuff the watch could do.
“Wow,” said Mom. “So how do you tell time on it?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a watch, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So which button do you press to find out what time it is?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think it’s that kind of watch.”
Aunt Josie made her special French toast for breakfast and afterward we went back into the living room to open more presents. I knelt in front of the tree, picked one up, and tore into it. Time seemed to speed up. Things blurred. When I’d run out of presents, I stopped and slowly looked around. The room looked like a tornado had hit it. Mom and Aunt Josie sat on the couch, holding their coffees, watching me.
“What?”
“Nothing,” said Aunt Josie. “I think you may have just broken some kind of fast Christmas record, that’s all.”
I nodded. Maybe later on I could call the world record people and ask about it. The phone rang a little while later while I was flipping through my samurai book and Mom got up and went into the kitchen to answer it.
Then she came back to the living room with the coffee pot and emptied it into Aunt Josie’s mug with the phone pinned between her ear and shoulder.
“After lunch should be fine, Helen,” she was saying. “We’ll be here.”
She said some other things, too, but she said them as she was going back into the kitchen so I didn’t really hear her. Why was Budgie’s mom calling? I bet it was about the fight. I bet Budgie had lied and told her it was all my fault and that he was totally innocent so now she wanted to come over and get her licks in, too. I heard Mom hang up the phone.
“Derek, that was Budgie’s mom on the phone. They’re coming over for tea later.”
“When?”
“Three o’clock.”
“Why?”
“I guess Budgie has something he wants to say to you.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. She wouldn’t say.”
“Well I don’t want to hear it.”
Mom came back into the living room and sat down on the couch and looked at me. Her face told me she was carefully choosing each word before she put them all together and said them.
“What if it’s good?” she asked. “You’d want to hear it if it was good, right?”
“The only good thing to come out of Budgie’s mouth was the time he burped the alphabet all the way to Q.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“You shoulda been there. It even smelled like fish sticks.”
“Ew, that’s—why are you laughing?”
“I’m not!”
But I was. I totally was. I tried to stop but I kept thinking about that day and how Missy Sprout’s face had gone green and she’d almost passed out and the more I thought about it the harder I laughed. Mom sat back on the couch and folded her arms.
“Whenever you’re ready,” she said.
Her mouth was trying to be serious but the rest of her face was laughing. We probably could’ve laughed longer but I got a bad case of the hiccups and had to stop because Budgie said that if you hiccup and laugh at the same time your lungs can come out of your mouth. Seriously. He’d seen it on the news and everything.
“They’re coming at three?” asked Aunt Josie. “Derek, what time is it now?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re wearing a watch.”
“It’s not that kind of watch.”
“What kind of watch is it?”
“It’s this kind.”
I held up my wrist, pressed a button, and zapped Aunt Josie with the laser beam.
The doorbell rang at ten past three and I jumped off the couch and ran upstairs to my room and closed the door. I didn’t care if what Budgie had to say
“Who is it?”
“Dude, just open up.”
Budgie! What was he doing here? Mom was supposed to have been the one to come get me! Now I wouldn’t be able to make Budgie wait in the kitchen or anything.
“I know you’re in there. Your mom said.”
“Leave a message after the beep.”
“Stop being a dork and open the door!”
I wasn’t sure why Budgie thought calling me a dork would get me to let him in but I went to the door anyway. I figured the sooner I let him in, the sooner I could show him out. I opened it a crack and peeked through.
“What?”
I tried to sound mean but then I saw his face and suddenly I didn’t feel like being mean anymore. In fact, I didn’t think I could be mean now if I wanted to. Even though most of Budgie’s face had healed over the past few days, his nose still reminded me of a poisonous mushroom.
“So can I come in?” he asked. “I wanna show you something.”
He held up his cell phone and wiggled it a little. I opened the door the rest of the way and he came in. His nose looked worse in the light of my bedroom. It was all bulgy and purple and in a weird way I hoped I looked just as bad. That way it would be fair. I was pretty sure I did. At least it felt like I did. Budgie sat on the bed and started pressing buttons on his phone.
“Did you have something to tell me?”
“Nope.”
“But my mom said your mom said you did.”
“Oh yeah.” He sniffled a little, wiping his nose on his sweater sleeve and leaving a glistening trail. “Sorry.”
“For what?”
“Y’know, for being mean. And stuff.” His voice sounded funny—like he had a really bad cold. “Okay, it’s downloading! C’mere! C’mere!”
I sat next to him and he held the phone so we could both see the screen. Some of Budgie’s excitement must
