When Elsy, a Filipino-American book nerd, tries to save Littleton's Public Library from closing down, the cutest boy in school helps her while a red leather-bound book keeps magically appearing in the hands of the townsfolk as if the library is tryi...
I couldn't find Cathy after school. I had the urge to ask Lotty for her number but felt awkward after feeling a little jealous earlier. Lotty could have other friends, and she did. I wasn't trying to keep her to myself. But I was trying to keep her around. Lotty, I mean. Because aside from my books, she was the only true friend I had in Littleton.
Sometimes, I felt alone because of the way I looked--not truly belonging to this race. But I knew this generation was the best yet when it comes to diversity. My mother, who was a millennial, had said the same thing about her generation. We only grew better with the young ones. She was glad she didn't marry my father before the twenty-first century, a time when she'd likely be called a gold-digging brown monkey for marrying a foreigner who was twenty years older than herself. I know it sounded harsh, but it was true, and these discriminative circumstances might still be happening today to someone in some part of the world. And I was grateful I never experienced it.
No, the loneliness had to be because I isolated myself a lot. It was my coping mechanism to stay away from people and hide in my reading nooks at home or in the library.
Anyway, I decided to talk to Cathy tomorrow when I saw her at school. I walked home, this time making sure to let Lotty know I was heading home early.
When I got home, I announced, as usual, "Mom, I'm home!" No one answered, and I tried again. "Mom, nakauwi na ako." It was the same thing translated into Filipino.
"In here!" my mother answered from the dining area.
I followed the hallway down to where she was and found her with a package from Amazon. "Mom?"
"What is this?" she asked, raising a black hoodie sweater to me with an I ❤️ the Internet printed on its front.
I reached out and took it from her. "You opened my package?" I studied the sweater, spreading it by its shoulders in the air in front of me. I noted that the size would be a good fit for Finn, gauging its length. Finn wasn't tall. I would say he was average at five-eight or maybe five-nine. But with me being only five flat, he was pretty tall whenever he stood next to me.
"Is that what you're going to gift that birthday boy?" Disbelief coiled under my mother's voice. "The book was a better choice."
I put the hoodie down, hugging it to my chest and looking at my mother. She had let her jet-black hair down, cascading to only a little below her collarbone. "I couldn't find anything better," I told her.
"You should have gotten him a pair of high-knee socks." My mother's brows were furrowed.
"Lotty laughed at that idea," I said, taking the opened Amazon box from our mahogany dining table and placing the sweater back inside.
"That's because socks are gifts for five-year-olds," my mother said, waving her hands as if the situation was a huge problem. "We can go shopping for a better gift now if you want." She tried to reach for the box in my hands, but I pulled away, stepping back.
"It's fine. He doesn't really care. He even told me not to get him a gift," I said.
My mother pouted. "I just want you to have more friends while you're still in high school. You should be having the time of your life. Now, I'm rethinking my strict rule about you not having a boyfriend until after you graduate from college. If I knew you'd turn out this way."
"Turn out what way?" I asked, voice shaking. I knew what she meant. I was a loner--an awkward nerd with no friends. But it still hurt to hear it, especially from her.
My mother's throat bobbed as she swallowed. Her brown eyes reflected pain. "I didn't mean anything rude by it. I know it can be hard sometimes when you're alone." She took in a deep breath. "I felt the same when I first moved to the States. I only want you to experience better."
I nodded. I understood what she was saying. I wished it was that simple to bring the most awesome gift to a party and become friends with everyone. Despite being in a more accepting generation, it was still hard to be a teenager. "I know," I said.
My mother nodded, her face relaxing as if relieved. "So, shopping?"
"It's fine, mom." I shook my head. A better gift wasn't going to get me more friends. "I'll just give him the book."
I stepped back, walked out of the dining area, and climbed to my room, hearing my soft steps on the wooden staircase. I shut the door softly, listening to the click of the lock maid in the silence.
"Alone again," I sighed.
I shook my head. Since when did I start pitying myself for being this way? I was fine, and I was going to be fine for the rest of my life. If people didn't want to be friends with me because I'm half-Filipina or because I was a book nerd, I was still going to be fine.
I placed the box on my desk beside my laptop. My eyes darted to the surface, checking if the red-leather-bound book had magically reappeared, but it was still missing. I sighed again.
"Right," I said, walking up to my closet, where I kept some art materials, including gift wrappers. There were two rolls left in green color. I took one and unrolled it, knowing the design I would see--prints of Santa Claus in his white furred red jacket, holding a sign board that said, "Merry Christmas!"
I grunted. It was too late now to accept my mother's offer to go shopping for a better gift... or a better wrapper.
"You've got to be kidding me," I said to myself. This week was all bad luck. I took the wrapper and moved to the bookshelf, where I placed the paperback copy of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. My hand hovered over it, but I stopped before I could pull it off the shelf.
"Why should I give you a copy of a beloved book if you're not going to read it anyway, Finn?" Every time I said his name without him around, his smiley-dimpled face would pop into my head. The way his looks could do that was infuriating, like a billboard advertisement that was lying at the back of my mind, subconsciously convincing me to buy a product.
I wondered if he had the same effect on other girls. It couldn't be just me, right? It was a normal thing to feel because he was good-looking, and it didn't mean anything.
I walked away from the shelf, remembering how his smile had mocked me earlier. Why did he have to stare at me like that? Was he trying to fluster me? I knew I was overanalyzing it. He could just be thinking of something else and looking straight through me, but I had this feeling that he was deliberately waiting for me to walk through that door so he could stare and make me just... ugh!
I took the I ❤️ the Internet hoodie out of the box and rolled it into a tube. I wrapped the printed Santa Clauses holding a Merry Christmas sign as if the gift was a last-minute thing--too forced and unthoughtful. None of the effort of searching for the perfect gift at all. I didn't know why, but something about the act placed a wide and psychotic grin on my face.
"I'll show you to mess with me."
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