As they got deeper and deeper into December, Skye quickly learned that Phil hadn't been kidding when he'd told them he went nuts for Christmas. One day she'd wake up and find the living room decked from wall to wall in tinsel, the next there'd be candles in all the windowsills or a big bushy green wreath on the front door. He played them his favorite Christmas CDs and let them do their homework in front of the TV while he played an array of Christmas cartoons on the screen for them. He was acting like a little kid he was so excited, and Skye had to admit his enthusiasm was contagious.
Even May got in on the spirit one evening, and she helped Skye, Jemma, and Bobbi bake and decorate several pans worth of cookies. Not surprisingly, the cookies Jemma decorated were all very neat and tastefully done, with the icing applied carefully and the sprinkles added in moderation, while Skye's looked more like the result of a nuclear meltdown at the Keebler Elf tree, with gobs of red and green frosting piled almost as thick as the cookie itself.
"Just looking at that cookie makes my teeth hurt," Bobbi teased, pointing down to an especially egregious cookie of Skye's that had once been star-shaped but was now just a heap of sticky frosting and sugary sprinkles.
"What's the point of decorating them yourself if you can't put on as much of the good stuff as you want?" Skye protested, sticking out her tongue. "The frosting and stuff is the best part."
"Says you," Bobbi retorted with a laugh. She swiped up a dollop of frosting with a nimble finger and, before Skye had a chance to dodge her, plunked it directly onto the tip of Skye's nose.
"Hey!" Skye scooped up a blob of her own frosting to retaliate, but Bobbi darted out of reach gleefully. Defeated, Skye slumped back against the counter and set to work trying to work the frosting off her nose with her tongue. She nearly made herself cross-eyed doing so, and somewhere out of sight, Jemma giggled at her failed attempt.
"Oh, you think it's funny?" Skye asked, a wicked grin spreading across her face as she turned towards Jemma and held her still frosting-covered finger aloft. Jemma blanched slightly and backed away.
"No, I'm not laughing at you," she insisted, but the smile on her own face betrayed her. Skye pounced and succeeded in smearing the gob of icing across Jemma's cheek as Jemma squealed and swatted at her harmlessly. Before long, all three of them had nearly as much frosting on their faces and hands as was on the cookies, and they were all laughing themselves silly when May, who had gone off in search of an old Christmas plate of Phil's mother's to put the finished cookies on, returned.
"I leave you three alone for two minutes," she said, shaking her head. She was biting back a smile though, so Skye could tell she wasn't upset with their antics. Overcome with the moment, or maybe just with all the sugar she'd recently eaten, Skye flashed a mischievous smile May's way.
"Do you want to try some, May?" she asked innocently. "It's really good."
"Oh, no," May warned, trying not to laugh. "I'll stick with the finished cookies."
"Come on, May, just a little bit," Bobbi giggled. She and Skye took a step closer, waggling their messy fingers threateningly close to May's face.
"Don't even think—" May was cut off by Jemma, who had slipped behind her undetected and managed to dab a nearly perfect curlicue of green frosting right on May's chin, like a tiny little Christmas beard. May gaped for a second, like she couldn't believe what had just happened, then she burst out laughing. "Oh, it's on now."
The reignited frosting war was interrupted a few minutes later by Phil.
"What's going on back here?" he chuckled as he came into the kitchen, totally unaware of what he was walking into. "This has got to be the most raucous-sounding baking session I've ever—"
"Get him!"
Another night, they went and got a tree after dinner. Phil drove them over to a vacant lot where a Boy Scout troop had set up shop, selling trees and lashing them to the roofs of people's cars.
"My dad and I sold trees out of this lot when I was a kid," Phil told them as they walked through the various rows of Douglas firs and Scotch pines. "The kids in our troop took shifts, and the dads would hang around to make sure we didn't hack off our fingers with the handsaw or mess up making change out of our little cash box. My dad and I always seemed to get stuck with the nights that had terrible weather – lots of snow or freezing cold – but he always managed to find a way to make it fun for the both of us. I perfected my Trucker's Hitch knot in this very parking lot, thanks to him."
"I've never had a real tree before," Bobbi admitted. She brushed her fingers through the pine needles of a tree nearby. "We had a fake one that my mom put up a few times when I was little. Back when she was still around and my parents were still trying to pretend like they didn't hate each other's guts. I'm not sure what happened to it after she left. Maybe my dad threw it out with the rest of her stuff. He didn't really like things that reminded him of her."
"My parents had an artificial tree," May said. "It was more convenient for us, plus it was a lot less hassle than getting a real one every year. But Phil loves his tree, so I've learned to adopt the tradition."
"They just smell so good," Phil said with a sheepish smile. "You can't get a pine smell like that from a fake tree. Plus, then I couldn't walk down memory lane every year. Or… memory parking lot, I suppose."
"The nuns didn't like any Christmas decorations that didn't look like they came out of the Pope's house," joked Skye. "So no trees at St. Agnes. I'm on board with anything green and prickly, so long as we get to put lights on it and stuff like people do on tv."
"Oh, we're definitely putting lights on this bad boy," promised Phil. "And I've got a whole box of ornaments that I've been saving since I was a kid. Don't you worry, our tree is going to look spectacular."
"My parents and I used to make an ornament together every year," Jemma said quietly, like the memory was just coming back to her. "We'd make a new one every year and add it to the tree alongside the old ones. We made one that looked like the rabbit from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland one year when my mum got to pick the design, and one that looked like the constellation Orion one year when my dad got to pick."
"What about a year you got to pick?" May asked.
"I picked a cuttlefish when I was five," Jemma beamed, tapping happily on her hip. "We used tinsel for the tentacles so it would be extra festive."
"Who knows, maybe we can make some ornaments this year, too," proposed Phil. "After all, we ought to start making some traditions of our own, don't you think?"
"Have we settled on a tree?" May wanted to know, after they had spent a little more time perusing the available trees. "We've been looking at this one for a while now. Should we commit?"
"What do you think, girls?" Phil asked. "Bobbi, does it look okay? Nice and full? Not too tall for our living room?"
Bobbi eyed the tree carefully, walking around it so she could get a good look from all sides. "Looks good to me."
"And Skye," Phil asked, "how's the smell? Nice and pine-fresh?"
Skye leaned in and buried her face in the prickly needles, ignoring the pokes and inhaling deeply instead. Something sharp and earthy filled her nose. "Smells like a tree."
"Jemma, how does it feel? Sturdy enough for us, do you think?"
Jemma gave the trunk of the tree a few solid taps, and the sound her finger made against the wood was a nice and strong one. "Feels good," she announced.
"Then I think we have a winner," grinned Phil. "Let me go see if I can track down a Boy Scout for us."
Before long they had paid for the tree and a Boy Scout named Daniel tied it to the roof of their car. He looked like he took his job very seriously, and when Phil praised his knots, the boy puffed up with pride. Skye didn't exactly understand what the big deal with tying knots was, but she figured it must just be some weird Boy Scout thing, because Phil seemed to be having a blast watching the kid hitch the tree up there. And, to both Phil's and the boy's credit, the tree made it safely all the way home, which Skye had to admit was impressive. She was quite confident that if she'd tried to tie a tree to a moving vehicle, the tree would have flown off down the road before the first stoplight.
It wasn't all frosting fights and tree shopping, though, of course. With the end of the grading period fast approaching, most of Skye's teachers were trying to cram in as much material as they could, and a lot of them were having unit tests and assessments before the break. Bobbi spent most of her evenings shut up in her room, studying for her own exams, and Jemma tried valiantly to help Skye prepare for their science test and the math assessment that she was probably going to do very poorly in, since she still hadn't caught up from the two weeks she'd missed earlier.
"Skye, you've got to convert the fraction first," Jemma corrected her gently the night before the test. "Just like you do when you're practicing with Natasha, remember?"
"Right, yeah, I knew that," Skye grumbled, scrubbing away at her practice sheet with the stub of her eraser. She let out a frustrated huff. "It's just easier to remember when you or Natasha's walking me through it. It's like, I know it, but the second I have to do it on my own, it all goes flying out of my brain and the numbers and words start dancing the conga across the paper."
"We know you can do it," Phil encouraged her. "We've seen firsthand how far you've come. I know things feel a little different when it's a test instead of just practice or homework, but the knowledge is all in there, all tucked away into your brain. You've worked so hard this year; it's going to feel like muscle memory soon."
"You're just saying that to be nice." Skye scrunched her nose up at him. Not that she minded, of course. It felt good to have someone say something just to be nice, even if it meant she didn't quite believe what he was telling her.
"Something can be nice and true at the same time," Phil smiled. "Just do your best, sweetheart. That's all we ever ask. And Melinda and I are already so proud of you, no matter what grades you get."
"Even if I got a negative two percent?" Skye asked teasingly, waggling her eyebrows Phil's way.
"Well, a negative two is better than a negative three," laughed Phil. "So yes, if you gave it your best shot and came away with negative two, we'd still be proud of you for trying. But I'm pretty confident you can manage better than that."
"We'll see."
"You'll have some accommodations this time," Phil pointed out. "I have a feeling that's going to be a big help, to have some extra support this time around."
Skye's ears grew warm, and she started fiddling with her pencil, not quite meeting Phil's eye. It was true that Mrs. Hinton and her teachers had finally worked out some things to help her with tests, and everyone seemed optimistic about the outcome. She knew it was supposed to be a good thing – probably would be a good thing – but she couldn't help but still feel a little embarrassed about it. At least she could just go straight to Mrs. Hinton's office to take her tests there, rather than going to class with everybody else and then getting up to leave and drawing attention to the fact that she wasn't taking her test like everybody else. That was definitely a plus.
"You and Fitz will be going together," Jemma added, like she was reading Skye's mind. It was always amazing to Skye how easily Jemma could do that. "So you won't be the only one taking your test with Mrs. Hinton. It will be nice to have a friend to go with."
"Yeah," agreed Skye, "I guess you're right." Ever since Fitz had found out he'd be getting extra time on his tests because of his concussion, he'd been ecstatic, going on and on about how he and Skye would get their own personal testing space in Mrs. Hinton's office.
"We're like scholastic VIPs," he'd gushed. "I mean, it'll be a bit frustrating not to be able to go as fast as I'm used to, but my mum always says right is better than fast. Plus it'll be nice to be a room that's plenty quiet. Not so many annoying distractions from everybody else."
"All of us commoners in the regular classroom, you mean?" Jemma teased. She'd been a little put out at first, when she realized she'd be alone on test days, but she was taking the development in remarkable stride.
Fitz blushed. "You know that's not what I meant. You're not… I would never… You're about as far from common as…"
"We all know you're one-of-a-kind, Jemma," Skye said quickly, saving Fitz from putting his foot in his mouth any further. "Like one of those three-eyed lizards you were telling me about, the ones that don't have cousins or whatever. Tara-taras."
"Tuatara," Jemma corrected, her enthusiasm bubbling up quickly. She tapped fast on her knee as she talked, an excited tap. "They're a solitary species and the only living animal in the order Rhynchocephalia. Also they're not lizards, even though they look like lizards. Far from it, really. We have more in common genetically with a kangaroo than a tuatara has in common with a lizard. And the third eye is just a parietal eye, so that's not really the most special thing about them. What's really remarkable is how old they are. They're ancient, practically living fossils. They existed alongside dinosaurs in the Mesozoic, Skye, and their genome has nearly double the number of DNA base pairs as humans do. One of the longest, most complex, and unique genomes my father ever studied, he said. They live for over a hundred years, and some scientists even think that the rapid rate of molecular evolution seen within a single tuatara genome could unlock future understanding about aging, evolution, and death."
"See? One-of-a-kind."
They'd all gotten a laugh out of that, and the memory of the exchange brought a smile to Skye's face now. She wasn't sure she'd ever be able to fully shake the discomfort of being different completely, but knowing Fitz was going to be different with her, and knowing that being unique would mean Jemma would always find her just as fascinating as a three-eyed, living fossil lizard-that's-not-a-lizard certainly helped.
When the time came for Skye to take her unit test for Mr. DeRosa, she and Fitz ducked off down the hall away from their peers and settled in with Mrs. Hinton, and it really wasn't as bad as Skye had been worried it might be. Without the pressure of a ticking clock or the extra struggle of having to decipher swimming letters and turn them into comprehensible questions, Skye was surprised to find she actually knew a decent number of the answers this time, or at least knew enough about what the question was asking to give Mrs. Hinton a partial answer that was headed on the right track. She only had to guess blindly on a handful of questions, which was a first for her.
Of course, it was still a test, and there were still plenty of things that she could only partway remember, or questions that seemed like they might be trying to trip her up with tricky wording, but by the time she reached the last question, she didn't have the sick, anxious and frustrated feeling she usually got at the end of a test. She wondered briefly if that was how other kids felt taking a test – a little bored, a little nervous about messing up, and a little relieved by how much they knew, but mostly just glad to be done and ready to move on to the next thing. If so, she could finally understand why Jemma always looked so happy when she turned a test in. It felt good to feel confident.
It felt even better when, on the last day of school before break, Skye had gotten that same test back and, to her immense shock and amazement, saw Mr. DeRosa had marked the top of her paper with a bold, red B.
"I got a B," she said, her jaw hanging slack. "I got a B in science."
"Skye, that's brilliant," Jemma glowed. She slipped her hand into Skye's and tapped warmly on the back of it. "Phil and May are going to be so excited."
"I've never gotten a B in science before," Skye murmured. She was a little dumbfounded at her own good fortune, like she couldn't quite believe the grade at the top of the page was really hers.
"Well done," Fitz nodded, glancing over her test and taking note of the questions she had gotten right and the questions she had missed. "You only missed a couple of the tricky ones, really. And the ones about photosynthesis, but that's what we learned about while you were gone, so that's understandable."
With a jolt, Skye realized that with the B she'd just made on her science test, the killer project she and Trip had managed to put together for history, and the C she'd managed to scrape in math, she was now, for the first time all year, maybe the first time in her whole life, passing every single one of her classes. She wasn't on the verge of flunking out, she wasn't being shuffled along to the next grade by teachers who didn't want to deal with having her in class for another year – she was passing, and she'd earned it, all by herself. Well, by herself with a lot of help from Phil and May, and Natasha and Jemma, and a lot of other people, too, of course, but by the merits of her own hard work and ability.
She was suddenly having a hard time swallowing around the lump that was forming in her throat. It wasn't just that she was happy she was passing, and it wasn't even just that she finally felt, for maybe the first time ever, like she was actually, well and truly, smart. No, she hadn't known it felt so good to be an achiever, a passer of classes, a kid who wasn't just another hopeless case. A person who worked hard and did all the right things and came out on top. She felt like a winner – something she had never felt at school before – and, she decided, as she sat there basking in the joy and pride of her accomplishment, being a winner felt amazing.