13 Gifts (22 page)

He takes a deep breath and says the only line in our version of the play that isn’t part of a song: “Without our traditions, our lives would be as shaky as a fiddler on the roof!” The curtain parts farther, to reveal Bucky Whitehead sitting on the fake roof. As Bucky starts playing his violin, David starts belting out
“Tradition! Tradition! Tradition!”
And the crowd starts clapping and hollering. They quiet down just as quickly, though, when they realize we never considered the whole need-for-microphones thing.

“Matchmaker, Matchmaker” is up next, with Emily, Rory, and Stephanie as the three oldest daughters. Emily glides across the stage, her voice pure and strong. Rory and Stephanie, well, they’re not really singing, so much as
talking
the words. And the dancing is more like, well,
walking.
Grace and Bailey run around after the older sisters trying to be silly and get their attention. The lyrics are pretty funny as the sisters basically beg the matchmaker not to match them with a total loser, and the audience is cracking up. At one point Stephanie completely forgets the choreography and does a cartwheel followed by a back handspring instead. Mrs. Grayson drops her head into her hands, but the audience cheers! By the end, Emily’s bonnet has fallen over her eyes so many times that she winds up ripping it off and tossing it inside the black trunk.

David then appears in the make-believe barn and launches into “If I Were a Rich Man.” At this point, everyone in the audience over fifty starts singing along with him. Seriously, like, two hundred people are singing and David just goes right along with it.

At the end, Connor joins him on stage. He’s wearing a fake beard and a pillow stuffed under his shirt. He’s supposed to look rich, so he’s wearing a fancy suit that used to belong to Mrs. Grayson’s late husband. He and David sing “To Life,” which is a really rowdy, upbeat song. They totally ham it up, tripping over each other, throwing up their arms, yelling,
“L’chiam!
To life!” At the end they fall to the ground, kicking up their legs, and get a standing ovation. They exit the stage, bowing repeatedly. The curtains close. When they reopen, Jake
Harrison is standing in front of the forest with Emily by his side. The audience jumps back up and goes crazy, whistling and yelling. Ray has to come out and shush them so the song can begin.

Jake does an amazing job with “Miracle of Miracles,” swinging Emily around as they weave in and out of fake trees, singing with such love and confidence. It’s easy to see why he’s a star. Bucky’s violin sings right along to Jake’s words. When it comes time for the backward somersault, Jake gets stuck in exactly the same place as in our living room, and Emily gleefully pushes him the rest of the way over. The audience chants for an encore, but there are still four more songs left to go. Leo is really good in his number with Stephanie, and Annabelle is funny as the gossipy matchmaker. Rory and Vinnie — who I haven’t gotten a chance to talk to at all — pretty much give up in the middle and make up their own lyrics. In the last song, Amanda’s shawl gets tangled on a fake tree branch and David has to untangle her before she chokes. Other than that, the play is a rousing success!

By popular demand, Jake and Emily come back out and do their whole number all over again. Behind me, Aunt Bethany weeps openly. She must have used up a whole memory card with all the pictures I heard her taking throughout the play.

Ray bounds out on the stage when they’re through. “Good on ya, everyone!” he says, slipping back into Aussie. “Bonza job today!” He gestures for the whole cast to go back on stage to take their bows. The audience stands and claps and yells
Woo-hoo
and takes pictures. Another new emotion fills me —
pride. But not pride in myself, pride in people that I care about for being so amazing. I close my eyes, waiting for whatever’s supposed to happen to me to happen. I don’t know what I’m expecting, a voice to come down from heaven? A telegram revealing some big secret?

Jake’s manager whisks him off the stage pretty quickly, but the applause continues for everyone else. When everyone’s convinced that Jake isn’t coming back out, the clapping peters out, and the room starts to clear. The rest of the cast runs off the stage to wherever their families are waiting. Emily gives me a high five, and runs into her parents’ arms. A tall, thin man in a black T-shirt and jeans heads toward us. I don’t think he’s from around here. I saw him talking to Jake’s manager before. He walks up and introduces himself as a Broadway producer from New York City. “You should try out for my new show,” he tells Emily. “You could have a future on the stage.”

Emily smiles and says, “Thanks, but my future’s going to be solving the world’s greatest mysteries through math.”

“Are you sure, Em?” Aunt Bethany asks.

Emily nods. “It was really fun, but this was Grandma’s dream, not mine. Except for the Jake part, which was totally mine!”

The producer shrugs and says, “Well, if you change your mind, here’s my card.” I’m sure he’s not used to people turning him down.

The two other Emilys pull my Emily away, and I drift to the edge of the crowd. Even with all the excitement of the play still rushing through me, an emptiness is rushing in with it. Like, the opposite of what it should feel like when your soul attaches
to your body. Was I a fool to believe Angelina when she told me all the stuff that would happen if I did the play?

I watch Rory and Amanda and David find their families, and wish for the first time that my parents could have been here. I know it’s impossible, but at least it would make this hollow feeling a little less painful.

I try to keep busy by gathering up the stuff I left in the cabinets behind the ticket table. All the money (which, thankfully, is still there in the gym bag) and the cane and bottle. I figure I’ll give the money to Ray to figure out what to do with. I spot Angelina still in her seat and head over to her first. I don’t have a plan of what to say, so I’m hoping something comes to me before I get there.

Nope. Nothing. I sit down next to her and wait for her to speak.

“Ah, my cane!” she says, plucking it right from my hand. “This is
yours
?”

She nods. “I must have left it somewhere the other day.”

“The other
day?
It’s been in the diner for thirty-five years!”

“That long?” she says, shaking her head. “Time really flies.”

“I’m confused. If it wasn’t a prop in the play, but it was on your list, doesn’t that mean that I wrote down the right list after all? You said since I completed the wrong list, I had to put on the play in order to repay my debt. Not to mention the whole thing about finding out why I’m in Willow Falls. Whatever
that
means.”

“You kids, always talking in circles. What is it that you’re asking?”

“Was this the right list after all?”

She shrugs. “What does it matter?”

I throw up my arms in exasperation. “It matters! I mean, the whole play —”

“Wasn’t it wonderful?” she asks, beaming. “Consider your debt repaid!”

“But I still don’t understand! Why did I have to put on the play in the first place?”

She shrugs. “It’s one of my favorites.” Then she taps the end of the cane on the floor and starts singing “If I Were a Rich Man.”

I know there are people milling all around us, laughing and talking, but all I can focus on is Angelina, like we’re in our own little pocket of the world.

Speaking slowly, I say, “So you’re telling me I did all this because you wanted to see the play and didn’t get a chance to thirty-five years ago? That’s
it?
You said something special would happen for me afterward, but nothing did. Nothing.” If I were in a cartoon, steam would be coming out of my ears.

“Nothing happened?” she repeats calmly. Pointing at Emily, she says, “You got that girl to do what she loves in a way that surpassed her wildest dreams. And the boy, the movie star, he got a chance to prove he’s more than just a pretty face.” She points to Bettie. “She always felt hidden in her mother’s shadow. You gave her a chance to shine.” Then she points the cane at Bucky, who is shaking hands with the Broadway producer. “That man stopped playing the violin the night your grandmother bowed out of the play. And look at him tonight. He’s radiant!”

She points to Ray. “There’s enough money to start up the theatre group again. They’re going to need a director, and who do you think they’ll ask? You got a whole community to come together to celebrate the theatre — something that hasn’t happened in thirty-five years. And your friend over there?” She points to David, who is tossing his hat in the air and trying to catch it on his head. “Did you see his face during his first song? He’s not confused about tradition anymore. He knows exactly what his role is when he stands up there tomorrow for his bar mitzvah.
You
did all that for everyone, and more. You — the girl who only wanted to sit on the sidelines.”

“How … how do you know all this about everyone?”

“Oh, I get around,” she says, her birthmark wiggling.

I look around the room at my friends. Big Joe is twirling Mrs. Grayson around the stage and she’s giggling like a teenager. Angelina is right about everything she said, except for the last part. I look down at my hands. “But you know I didn’t do any of this for them. I did it all because you told me there was something I needed to know that I could only find out after putting on this play. I never stopped to think what anyone else needed, or wanted, at all. I can’t take any of the credit.”

She laughs. “Of course you can! Are you so self-centered that you think the universe cares what your motivations are? If a wealthy businessman donates ten million dollars to build a new hospital, would it matter if he only did it to get a building named after him? Not to the people inside it. If everyone waited to do something good until they had purely unselfish motivations, no good would ever get done in the world. The point is to do it anyway. To do it at all.”

The point is to do it at all.
I’d never really done anything big before today. “I never thought of it that way.”

“And soon enough,” she adds, “it will be easier to see what people need, and how to help them. Only the rarest of young people have that gift from birth.”

I think about Rory, and how she’s always one step ahead of everyone else. “I don’t think I’d be very good at it,” I admit.

She shrugs. “It won’t happen overnight. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

The crowd is thinning now. It’s mostly cast and crew and their families. A few older women are setting up card games, and a group of moms are giving their kids snacks, and chatting. I turn back to Angelina. “So I guess all that stuff about me finding out why I’m here in Willow Falls was just to get me to put on the play?”

She doesn’t reply.

“Angelina?”

She just twirls her cane, the duck’s head twisting toward me, then away, toward, then away. I have to grit my teeth to keep from yelling in frustration as my earlier anger creeps back in. Rory was wrong this time. Angelina doesn’t always come through in the end. I grab the gym bag full of money, and the purple bottle. “Here,” I say, holding out the bottle as I stand up. “This must be yours, too. There was no place for it in the play.”

She shakes her head. “It’s not mine.”

“Why was it on the list, then?”

“It’s for you,” she says.

“Me? What am I supposed to do with it?”

She shrugs. “If you don’t want it, why don’t you give it back to the person you got it from? She’s right over there.”

She gestures with the tip of the cane toward the group of women with their toddlers. She’s right. The woman
is
here.

“Fine, I will.” I stomp off toward the woman, then force myself to calm down. It’s not like it’s her fault that Angelina is once again not being straight with me.

I tap her on the shoulder. “Excuse me? I’m sorry to bother you.”

“You’re the girl with the bracelet,” she says. “You don’t want to trade back, do you? I don’t have the bracelet anymore, and I’m not bringing that bottle back into my house.”

I lower the bottle to my side. “Oh. Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. I only have bad memories associated with it.”

I open my mouth to say okay, but something stops me. I don’t know whether it’s because the conversation with Angelina is still fresh in my mind, or whether I really care, or whether her last word stretched out a tiny bit too long indicating she has more to say, but I ask, “Why?”

She immediately asks one of the other moms to watch her daughter, then pulls me onto one of the couches. I’m already wondering if this was a mistake. Ray said he’d take me to the mall to get a gift for David. Then later, Rory, Emily, and Amanda said they’re planning a girls-only night for my birthday. But I’m sitting here now, so I might as well listen.

“No one asked me about that bottle for twenty-five years,” she says. “Until the day you rang my bell. I was so eager to get rid of it that I didn’t tell you anything. I’ve felt a little guilty about that ever since. The owner of the bottle should know its story.”

“I should?”

She nods. “What do you know about the bottle already?” I turn the jar around in my hands. “Um, it’s small. And purple. It’s pretty?”

“That’s it?” she asks.

I nod, wondering what else I’m possibly supposed to know. Was it forged in a volcano on Venus?

She glances back at the group of kids and moms, and then leans close. “I haven’t told anyone about this, ever.” She takes a deep breath. “Okay, here goes. When I was in eighth grade, so around your age, I had a crush on this boy. I knew my best friend liked him, too. The eighth-grade dance at Apple Grove was coming up and everyone was going to be there. I thought that would be my night. We would dance, he would pledge his undying love, that sort of thing.”

I nod, wondering when we get to the part about the bottle.

“I was always pretty fortunate in the boy department, and kind of suspected that he liked me. But I didn’t want to take any chances. My grandmother — may she rest in peace — knew this old woman on the other side of town who specialized in, shall we say,
unusual
things. My grandmother brought me to her house, and I told the woman my problem. I know this is going to sound crazy, but she sold me a love potion. In that very bottle.”