Read Online Blind Squirrels by Jennifer Davis - Free Book Online Page B

these
shortcomings, I promptly inferred that she was not perfect and that helped to
put me at ease.  Her frosty white hair and plump face gave her a pleasant look,
and she smiled brightly as I walked up to her.
    “I’m looking for ID bracelets,” I
told her.
    “What?  Oh, I’m sorry.  I don’t
work here.  This nice young man was just showing me some watches.”  Great.  The
old bat was passing me off to the shark.
    “I’ll be right with you,” he said. 
“The bracelets are in that case to your right.”
    Olivia and I stepped in front of
the case and started browsing.  In a few moments, the man came over.  He opened
the case and pulled out a tray of ID bracelets.  Some were silver; some were
gold.  All of them looked expensive.
    “I might as well tell you that
we’ve only got twelve dollars,” Olivia said to him.
    He quickly returned the tray to
the case.  Directing us down an aisle opposite the counter, he said. “You might
find something down there.  There are some leather bracelets with names and
designs on them.  They are more in your price range.”
    I headed down the aisle to have a
look.  The bracelets were not exactly what I wanted, and none of them had Max’s
name.
    Olivia was still up by the
counter.  She turned towards me and said, “Well, do you like them?”  I shook my
head.  “Come here and take a look,” she said.
    I joined her at the counter and
she was pointing at some key rings.  “What about one of those?  You could get
Max’s name engraved on one.  Or your name.”
    “I don’t need a key ring,” I said
tediously.
    “You are so dense sometimes,” she
responded.  “I meant give him a key ring with your name on it.  Look, there’s a
heart-shaped one…”
    “I really don’t think Max would
carry a heart-shaped key ring.”
    “He probably won’t carry any key
ring that you give him, but so what?”
    I was starting to wonder why I
had friends at all.  Every one of them made cracks about my chances with Max.
    I asked the man behind the
counter to let me see the heart-shaped key ring.  It was gold-plated, but it
wasn’t too bad.  “Can you engrave it?” I asked.
    “We have someone who can.  Let me
locate him.”
    An hour later, Olivia and I were
on the bus and headed home.  The key ring looked very nice in its little gift
box.  Max’s name was on the front and mine was on the other side.  He would
love it, I was certain.  If he didn’t, I would die.
    At home, I began doubting
myself.  I kept envisioning the moment that I would give Max his gift.  One
scenario had him showing the key ring to all his friends.  Most of the time,
however, I pictured him throwing the thing at me.  By the next morning, I was
questioning whether I should give it to him at all. 
    I finally decided that I would
let Alice deliver the gift to him.  Then, if he didn’t want it, he couldn’t
throw it at me at least.  He would either have to keep it, or he could throw it
in the trash.  Hopefully, he wouldn’t throw it at Alice.  No matter what he
did, it wouldn’t embarrass me.  It was a great plan.
    Monday morning, I told Alice. 
She was very agreeable and even willing to do it that day.  I told her that
Friday would be the day – then I wouldn’t see him again until after Christmas. 
In the meantime, I planned to compose a letter to go along with the gift – sort
of explain why I was giving it to him.  I started on it right after homeroom.
    Four days and ten pages later, I
tried to stuff the letter and the key ring into a business-sized envelope.  I
finally succeeded with the help of some Scotch tape.  Luckily, I had written
Max’s name on the outside before I filled the envelope.  I didn’t want my
envelope getting mixed up with someone else’s.
    As the lunch bell rang, I
presented the envelope to Alice.  We walked out to the lunchroom together, and then
we parted.  I joined Olivia and Aurelia at our favorite bench, and we pretended
that it was a