School before Christmas was hard, but Joe loved it. This year, the teachers at Bayport Middle School were trying to take everyone's minds off Vietnam — too many older brothers had been selected in the draft, the news showing too many pictures in gruesome detail. So each classroom had a real pine tree, and the teachers had all the kids making decorations: salt-dough ornaments to hang on the Christmas trees, construction paper chains and cut-paper snowflakes, styrofoam balls with sequins pinned to them, Fruit Loops-and-popcorn garlands strung on the bushes outside, oranges pierced with cloves and rolled in nutmeg. When they weren't making decorations, all the lessons were Christmas-related, even Mr. Mack's science class.
Even better, fat Miss Callahan had asked Joe if he'd sing solo parts for the Christmas concert this year, and she'd given him an old guitar that she'd gotten at a garage sale, with an offer to find him a teacher, if he was interested.
But this 'Secret Santa' thing…Joe scowled. It wasn't just Miss Hawkins's class; all the teachers were in on it, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. It wasn't a bad idea, but teachers never thought these things through. They were clueless about the cliques, rivalries, who was in, and who was out, and the resulting draw had given Joe a big problem guaranteed to cause a major headache if he messed it up.
"You look like you ate a worm," Frank sat down next to his brother and handed him the apple from his lunch bag. "The Secret Santa thing?"
Frank was a year older, and while he and Joe had the same gold-brown hair (Frank's more on the brown side, Joe's more on the gold), Frank's eyes were bright blue, like Mom's had been. Frank was bigger and smarter and better at everything, mostly, while Joe ran towards the slender side, lean and quick, and only really excelled at science and music.
Wordlessly, Joe handed him the slip of paper. He'd drawn Kris's name from the basket.
Frank grinned. "Lucky. That makes it easy."
"That's not the point," Joe said. "Miss Hawkins said it's to get us to do nice things for other people. Tag's already my friend. It's not fair if I give her double presents and no one else."
"Huh. That makes sense, I guess." Frank chewed on his bologna sandwich a moment. "Some of the girls in my class were trading names around."
That hadn't seemed right to Joe, either. "Yeah. They were doing that in mine, too." He made a face. "Iola was trying to find out who had me." Yeah. The other big problem. Hopefully whoever had Joe would keep their mouth shut.
"Poor little brother. The girls are chasing you already."
"I'm glad you find it so hysterical," Joe said sourly. "But I don't want to trade Tag's name to someone who'll ignore her." He'd asked Kris who she'd gotten, thinking to maybe trade Kris's name to that person, but he wasn't sure Sharon was a good idea. Sharon was weird, even weirder than Kris tended to be.
Thanks to her original parents, Kris didn't have a solid grip on reality. She loved fairy tales and ghost stories and thought they were real, but she didn't care if no one else believed it. Sharon believed in even weirder stuff like UFOs and she tossed a fit if anyone acted skeptical; it was rumored that her parents had her seeing a shrink. Kris didn't need someone even more disconnected from reality; she had enough problems on her own.
Still…Sharon wasn't mean. Just weird. While Joe was certain that Miss Hawkins hadn't meant for two people to get each others' names, it wasn't like the teacher had any control over who drew what from the basket.
Worse, Kris had no real friends, other than Joe and Frank. Joe liked her, but sometimes he just wanted to go do boy stuff. She needed a girl best friend so she could do whatever girls did without boys around. Him being her Secret Santa wouldn't help that, at all. He had to find someone else.
"It's actually good you got Tag," Frank said. "I mean, it could've been one of Angie's crowd."
"How about helping me figure out who I can trade with?" Joe retorted. "Y'know, something useful." But then he saw Sharon sitting by herself in the corner of the cafeteria. Joe looked around — Kris nowhere to be seen, good. Decision made. "Save my spot," he said to Frank, and threaded his way through the cafeteria and slid in next to Sharon. "Hey."
She looked up. Her eyes were huge; combined with her short, wavy white-blonde hair, she looked like a live Kewpie doll.
"Look, I know we're not friends and everything," Joe said, "but I need a favor. Would you trade Secret Santas with me?"
Still that unnerving, wide-eyed stare.
"If you don't want to, that's okay," Joe said. "But I really, really need to trade."
"Is this a joke?" Sharon said. "I don't like jokes. You people get mean with them."
Joe shifted, uncomfortable. He rarely spoke to Sharon, and then only things like "Pass this note to Tony." She wasn't someone it was good to be seen talking to, either; their classmates were watching, poking each other, and pointing. "But I haven't been mean to you."
She looked away.
"Please, Sharon? It's not a joke, honest. Cross my heart."
"It's someone you don't like, isn't it? You don't like them, so you want the weirdo to take them."
Ouch. "No. It's just…" Joe looked around again. No sign of the tagalong, but he still lowered his voice. "It's Kris. That's who I got. She lives next door and she's like me and Frank's sister. I've already got stuff for her for Christmas. It's not fair for me to get her stuff twice. Please?"
Well, that got a return to the wide-eyed stare.
"She really likes spooky stuff," Joe said. "All kinds of weird things, just like you do. So you got that in common."
"You want the two weirdos together, you mean," Sharon said.
Sharon could be uncomfortably blunt. Joe shook his head.
"I don't like it when people lie," Sharon said, looking away again. "I don't like being tricked. And I really don't like being part of tricking someone else."
"I'm not lying. It's just like I said. And I know you wouldn't be mean to her."
Sharon turned red, bent her head, mumbled something.
"Please, Sharon?" Joe wheedled. "I can help you with ideas. I mean, I'm already friends with her and I know what she likes. Please? Please?"
She raised her head. "I said I'll think about it. I'll let you know after school."
With that, she got up and took her tray to the clean-up window.
Joe sighed. Maybe he could ask Tony.
But Tony had gotten Wendy and didn't want to trade; Wendy babysat for his little sister. Wendy flat-out refused, blushing as she did, and Joe's next pick…
"The little dummy?" Becky Martin said; the gaggle around her snickered. "Why would I want her?"
"Well, I thought you were nice," Joe snapped back. "Forget it. I wouldn't inflict you on Tag if you paid me."
"No one would pay for that," Becky said, but Joe was already stalking away.
Scowling, Joe mulled it over through the rest of his classes, trying to decide if any of his other classmates would be nice to Kris, or at least wouldn't ignore her. He saw Sharon talking to Iola — odd. Iola wasn't mean, but she didn't talk to the outs where her friends could see her. Maybe Sharon was checking Joe's story, since Iola's brother Chet was his and Frank's best friend. Joe hoped, anyway. He was out of options.
Iola was out. She was in Angie's clique; she wouldn't take someone like Kris. Besides, she was determined to get Joe's name. Though…maybe he could work that to his advantage. Maybe he could wheedle a favor out of her if he took her to a movie or something.
But that didn't sit right. Bribing someone to be Kris's Secret Santa — if Kris found out that Joe had to pay someone to do it, no matter how innocent it was…and Iola was a bit of a blabbermouth…worse, if Angie found out about it…
Joe wouldn't have worried so much about it, but given Kris's background — last year, she hadn't even known what snow was, and the whole idea of Christmas being fun had completely baffled her — he wanted this to be fun for her, too. But when the last bell rang, and Sharon still hadn't approached him, Joe resigned himself to the inevitable. He'd just have to deal with it himself.
Just as he was putting his things away in his locker and stuffing his book bag with what he needed for homework, Sharon came up to him.
"Here." Sharon handed him a slip of paper. "I'll do it. That's mine."
Relieved, Joe beamed. "Wow, Sharon — thank you, thank you. You're the boss. You're totally killer. I owe you big."
Blushing, she ducked her head. "It's okay. Everyone says you don't lie. Iola said Kris calls you and Frank her 'big brothers'." Sharon cocked her head. "Did you really adopt her?"
Joe nodded. "It was our birthday gift to her last year. We got Dad to notarize the certificate and I put all our fingerprints on it, so it's legal and everything, kinda."
"I wish someone would adopt me," Sharon muttered, and turned to go.
"Hey, wait a minute." Joe scribbled a set of numbers on the slip of paper with Kris's name. "Here. That's her locker combination. In case you need to get sneaky."
That got him a really weird look. "You have her locker combination?"
"Uh-huh," Joe said. "She has mine, too." He lowered his voice. "She has problems with Angie's crowd. Me and Frank let her keep her books in our lockers, and we check hers for booby traps before she gets in. Actually…" He scrawled a second set of numbers under the first. "That's mine. That might be better to use."
Beet-red again, Sharon mumbled something and left. Only then did Joe look at her slip of paper, his new Secret Santa, and groaned.
Iola Morton.