"You can't just call him and ask?"
"No. Too awkward."
"Why? It's not like you're asking him out for a date or anything." Her father paused, put down the shoe he was holding, and looked over at her. "Are you?"
Eva rolled her eyes, sneezed once, and went back to raiding the fridge one-handedly for carrots. She was clutching a dumbbell in her other hand. "Yeah. Right. You know exactly what I'm talking about. I can't just ask him what he'd want for Christmas." She scowled, then slammed the fridge shut and put her back against it. "Maybe I shouldn't go. They all hate me anyway."
"Don't say that," her father chided her gently, picking up the next shoe. "They can't all hate you."
"Well, no. I guess there's Gwen, Cody, Izzy… Tyler…" Eva hesitated, then mumbled out, "Noah."
"See? You have friends. Won't it be nice to see them again? Other than Katie and Sadie-"
Eva tensed, flinging one arm up in front of her face. "Don't say their names out loud! They have radars! They can feel disturbances in the universe or something dumb like that. Seriously, it's extremely creepy."
The eyebrows wiggled again.
"It's too soon," she said defensively, sneezing once more. "I can't stand another dumb sleep-over. Those two have some of the most awkward conversations I've ever-"
The house phone began to ring. Eva flattened herself against the fridge and moaned, "If that's them, I swear I'm gonna break something."
Her father checked the name. "Nope. Looks like one of your gym buddies wondering why you aren't up there today."
"I'm sick."
"Just anxiety over Cody's party next week," he insisted, putting down the phone without answering. "Which reminds me- Izzy called last night, wanting to know if you had any gift ideas. Are you planning to bring presents for everyone, or just for a select few?"
"I don't know. I just know that I don't want to give Noah a bag of dumb candy corn." Eva folded her arms and looked away. "Everyone knows he likes that stuff, and if they're not doing it to be nice then they think it's funny 'cuz when he gets happy it switches off his thing. He'll get tons of it, plus some books… The whole point of Christmas is to come up with something special."
"The whole point," her father repeated, and she sneezed and rolled her eyes.
"Well… his friendship matters to me, and I don't wanna be cliché. I want to get him something… creative. Something he'll use even after he's read the books and eaten his candy. Y'know, something… sort of practical."
"Ice skates," her father said, the light of teasing in his eyes. "Those are pretty practical."
Eva stared at him for a few seconds, then suddenly pushed herself away from the fridge. "Dad, you're a genius!" She bolted past her puzzled father and came back several minutes later with a crumpled yellow sticky note in her hand. Then she picked up the phone and stabbed in the numbers. The other side was picked up at once, as it usually was.
"Eva?"
"Izzy, do you happen to know the measurements of Noah's feet?"
There was… a bit of an awkward pause interspaced with a few loud thumps. Eva could practically see Izzy tilting her head, lips pursed, trying to decide whether or not she should laugh.
"Well, I mean, not off the - Whoa! - the top of my head or anything, 'cuz I'm a little - Ack! - occupied with, um, other stuff right now, but I can totally find out for you, if you like."
Eva was about to tell her, "Awesome, that would be great, thanks," before she remembered who she was talking to. Really not wanting Noah to find Izzy stalking him around his house again, she groaned and instead said, "No thanks, Iz- I'd rather do it myself."
"All right, if ya say so! Have fun - whoops! - and be sure to let me know how you find out, hahaha!"
"Oh, shut up," Eva muttered back, and hung up.
"Taking an interest in podiatry, are we?" Her father asked, thumping once on his chest. "Like your old man?"
"Maybe," she said with utter seriousness. She fumbled again with her sticky note, then dialed in another number. Her thumb hesitated over the call button for a long moment, shifted to 'Speaker', and then she put it on the counter, listening to it buzz.
"Hello?" chirped a cheerful voice. Eva's shoulders sagged with relief when she realized that the voice belonged to one of his older sisters. She was about to reply when Noah's voice echoed in the background.
"No, no! If that's someone from Total Drama, don't answer it!" There was a muffled murmur, like his sister had cupped a hand over the phone to respond, and then Noah's shout came again.
"Give me that! Hey! Mandy, come back!" Several thumps and chuckles were heard on the other side before real words came again.
"H-hello?" Noah finally gasped into the phone. Eva wondered what he was doing: Flopping backwards onto the couch, slumping against the kitchen counter, or perhaps hiding in the bathroom from his sisters' teasings. "Eva? You called?"
"Um…"
"'Um', huh? Riveting. I'm so glad you didn't call collect."
Eva slid a hand along her forehead. This was going to be awkward no matter what way she said it. She should just hang up without saying anything and act like the whole thing had never happened. She shot a helpless look to her dad, and he mimed licking an ice cream cone. Eva scowled at him, so he shrugged and pointed to the TV in the next room.
"Kssh. This is Noah Colby speaking. Kssh. Come in, Eva Baker. Kssh. Do you read me? Over. Kssh."
Eva shook her head, her father held up a measuring tape and pointed to himself, and she covered her eyes and moaned into the phone.
"Hey, Fruitcake," she said, tugging on a long strand of hair, "Um, Izzy was just wondering if… you… would like to join us both for… a get-together? Like, maybe tomorrow? Around noon? At my place? She's planning to be here too, so it won't be like, just the two of us, or anything."
The phone was fumbled on the other end. Eva bit her lip, convinced he'd dropped it in shock or something, but then she heard, "Mandy, give it back!" and "Violet, catch!" and "Oh sure, pick on me just because I'm shorter, why don't you?"
Eva shook her head at her dad a second time, sneezed once, and said, "I should've just asked him for his shoe size straight out."
"No, this way he'll never know what you're getting for him. It's perfect. But you do realize that now you're going to have to help me clean up and get this place ship-shape and ready for a party, don't you?"
She groaned.
"I'll be there!" she heard Noah holler, and there was another loud thump. "Anywhere is better than here!"
Mandy's voice: "Hey, wait a minute. Don't you have dodgeball practice tomorrow?"
"No, what are you talking about? You're crazy. Hey, Violet, you can't-"
The connection died.
Eva's father walked into the next room and clicked in a DVD. Once she'd grabbed two carrots, Eva followed him with a roll of her eyes. "I prob'ly should've just asked him straight out," she began again, and then trailed off to watch as he used the remote to skip through the episode, "Dodgebrawl". "Why are you watching this?"
"Because while you were setting up your party I remembered how much Noah makes me laugh. Watch, right here is when he gets hit in the face with the dodgeball."
Eva shook her head and called Izzy to let her know about her new plans. She was taken aback when Izzy picked up and screamed, "Not now, Eva; they're after us!"
Duncan's voice: "What the heck was that?"
"Courtney, left turn here, now! Look out! That one's got a watermelon!"
"I can see that for myself, thank you very much! Can't this shopping cart go any faster? And for the record, this is the last time I ever listen to you when you say that the front door is never guarded by-"
The phone went to black static again. For an entire minute Eva stared at it, then glanced back up at her dad. "I need new friends."
"You could always invite Katie and Sadie-"
"No!" she shouted, and the phone began to ring again. Thankfully it wasn't either of the Twins: Just Ryan again, and she didn't answer. Instead she slumped against the couch, arms folded, watching as her dad constantly rewound and re-watched the scene where Heather mocked Noah just after he got hit in the face.
"You're right. Sports aren't your forte." Zip. "You're right. Sports aren't your forte." Zip.
"Dad, do you even realize how awkward this is?"
"What? A father and his daughter watching TV together?"
"No, it's just… I dunno. Knowing that I just talked to Noah, like, five minutes ago and now we're watching… this. Just makes me feel weird, us watching him without him knowing."
"You know what else would be awkward?" Her dad opened the DVD case and pulled out 'TDI Disc 5'. Eva cringed when she saw it, knowing there was only one episode on that one, and watched as her father fast-forwarded through "Total Drama, Drama, Drama, Drama Island".
"Let's see," he murmured, "it's right about… Here it is."
The three of them - she and Izzy and Noah - skidding to a halt right in front of Justin.
"Watch it," her on-screen self snarled, "It's a trap!"
Eva sneezed, coughed, and put one hand to her forehead. She attempted to cover her eyes, but her father elbowed her teasingly in the side. Eva parted her fingers as a horrified Noah ran for Justin, and she stuck out a leg to send him sprawling.
"Heh. That part gets me every time. Just look at his face. Look at your face."
"Aw, forget this." Eva stood and threw the phone onto the couch, then stomped from the room. "I have a dumb kitchen to clean."
She was just finishing all of it - the cleaning - when the doorbell rang, again and again, like a woodpecker was trying to break through it. Wrinkling her nose, Eva opened the door. She was expecting to find Ryan out there with his typical hockey stick, but instead a snow-dusted Izzy shoved her away and raced inside, Courtney hard on her heels. Both of them dove beneath the table and shouted, "Shut the door, shut the door!" and Eva did.
"What-?"
Courtney and Izzy clung to one another, shivering, eyes glazed and teeth chattering. Izzy finally stammered out, "Hundreds and hundreds of them, like zombies," as if that explained everything.
Courtney whispered, "We lost Duncan."
Izzy pushed Courtney away and wrapped her arms around herself. "There's n-no way the RCMP didn't see that, and the nearest forest is, like, I dunno, way far away. I don't think even Izzy c-can make it there before they catch her."
Eva put her face to one of the windows, squinting. The street fluttered with quiet snowflakes in both directions. A shopping cart lay overturned on the driveway, its wheels spinning in empty air.
She decided not to ask. It wasn't like this was Izzy's most alarming entrance.
"I'll… make hot chocolate," she muttered, and did. Courtney and Izzy had both recovered by the time she finished and were now shaking frost the ends of their torn sleeves and arguing with one another.
"Well, if you hadn't taken off Duncan's super-clever disguise-"
"Oh, so now it's my fault! And anyway, that was the stupidest disguise I've ever seen in my life! A fedora and a bushy mustache? For real?"
"It fooled that girl with all the candy canes!"
"That's because that was Lindsay!"
"Both of you just shut up! Yeesh." Eva slammed the two mugs down on the table, spilling chocolate, and sneezed into the crook of one arm. "Or do I have to bust some behinds?"
They shut up.
"But for the record," she heard Courtney murmur into her drink, "I so won."
Eva wasn't close with Courtney. Sure, they'd had their moments at Playa Des Losers 1.0 and 2.0 when they'd occasionally teamed up to teach a couple of the others a lesson, but sometimes it felt more like they were head-to-head with one another than back-to-back. But Izzy seemed to like her (for some reason), and they had looked so freaked out, so, hey- Eva figured she'd let them off the hook. For the moment.
She wandered back into the TV room. Her dad was skimming through "Basic Straining", and Eva made him turn it off, fast. Courtney in psycho-mode was the last thing she wanted to deal with right now. She took his tape measure and tossed it across the table to Izzy along with specific instructions. You couldn't assume Izzy would maintain sensible boundaries.
"He'll get here around noon tomorrow, and you can't let him figure out what you're doing, got it?"
"You can't put her in charge," Courtney insisted. "I was a C.I.T."
They both stared at her.
"Therefore I should be in charge of anything and everything. Including something as stupid as figuring out what size shoe that bookworm wears. Why don't you just ask him?"
Izzy smirked and retracted the tape measure with a snap! "Oh, hey Noah! I haven't seen you for, like, two weeks. How've you been? And by the way, what are the measurements of your feet? Not that I care, of course, ha ha- Just wondering. No need to think I'm some crazy stalker like Izzy's new friend, Sierra."
That made Courtney drum her fingers on the table. "So you invited him over to try and measure his feet without him noticing."
"It made sense in my head," Eva said defensively. "He overpronates something awful. My dad's a podiatrist, so I was just hoping that if I got his measurements maybe I could, I dunno, get my dad to design some personal innersoles for him, or whatever it is he does."
"He over-whats?" Izzy asked, and Courtney said, "It means he walks on the insides of his feet, Einstein." That made Izzy mad. She shouted, "So that's how it's gonna be, huh? Fine! May the best measurer win!"
"Ha! I accept your challenge! Eva, do you have a can of paint I could borrow?"
"Izzy has dibs on the garden hose! Ooh, ooh, and the canoe too!"
"Yeah," Eva grumbled to herself as Courtney and Izzy streaked for the garage, grunting and shoving at one another's shoulders, "I should've just asked him straight out. Merry Christmas, Fruitcake. You're prob'ly gonna need it."