Told by Pearl Summers
After my aunt Shannon had my baby cousin Mitzi last year, she looked like she’d been run over by a truck. She had dark circles under her eyes from not sleeping. She wore pajama pants with baby barf on them all day, and she pretty much never washed her hair anymore.
That was how I felt by the time the holiday play came around—minus the baby barf.
If you think looking after an egg sounds easy, think again. According to the internet, a duck egg needs to be kept warm (but not too warm) all the time. The ideal temperature is 99.5 degrees Fahrenheit—which is about body temperature—and keeping that temperature constant is critical to the duckling’s survival.
Unless you happen to have an incubator, you need a mother duck to sit on the egg. And since the only duck I had was still refusing to come down from the garage loft, the only choice I had was to fill in for her. That meant keeping the egg warm with my body heat twenty-four hours a day. Not to mention keeping it safe, which is hard to do when your gym teacher expects you to play dodgeball, your best friend gets all hysterical because you won’t tell her what’s inside the purse you’re suddenly carrying everywhere, and you’re supposed to wear a skintight elf costume with no pockets to hide an egg in.
For four nights straight, I’d been up almost all night holding the egg. I was terrified I might roll over it if I fell asleep with it in my hand. I’d also been spending so much time in the garage trying to coax Svenrietta down that I hadn’t practiced my solo for the show once. I needed that egg—and that duck—out of my life, so you can imagine my relief when I overheard Pouya telling Jang Hu that Shady was coming to watch the holiday musical with his parents.
Finally! Here was my chance to get the duck back to him. The idea had come to me at the dress rehearsal when the other elves had used the props—those empty boxes I’d wrapped to look like presents. To sneak the duck back into the school, all I had to do was wrap her up like one of those fake gifts.
I could sneak it under Shady’s seat where he’d be sure to find it. It would be like the ultimate Secret Santa gift. He’d be thrilled to have Svenrietta back, and—best of all—nobody would ever have to find out that I’d taken her. Plus, I’d put the egg in the box. Like a bonus present!
Everything was going according to plan too. I didn’t feed Svenri breakfast that morning, so when I got home, she was starving. She came down right away to get her after-school mega-sandwich, and I scooped her into the box, tucking Aggie in gently underneath her, and wrapped them up like a present.
When it was time to get ready that night, I changed into my elf costume and put the duck box gently into the trunk of the car. And now that I was backstage, waiting for the show to start, all I had to do was keep a lookout to see where Shady and his family were going to sit so I could sneak over and deliver the duck-filled box.
“Where’s my nose?!” Amber shrieked.
“On your face,” Wendel answered.
“No, idiot. My reindeer nose. It was here a second ago.”
“Who still needs makeup?” Mrs. Carlisle was running around with a brush and blusher. Anthony and Daryn tried to dodge her, but she caught up with them. “Boys too! This is stage makeup!”
I folded my elf hat in half and pressed it between my head and the wall like a pillow. If I could just get through this performance and get rid of the duck, I’d make it to winter break, and then I was going to sleep for two weeks solid.
I closed my eyes for just a second, then opened them to peer out into the audience. Just then, Gavin walked up behind me.
“Okay, I don’t want to put pressure on anyone, but remember, this is probably going to be the last show these people ever see. So we need to make it great.”
“I, for one, am planning to do my best performance,” said Sara.
“Well, duh,” Wendel said. “Nobody’s going to do a bad job on purpose. It’s not like we want to die with regrets.”
“Oh, shut up!” I said. My head was aching. “If the world is really ending on New Year’s Day, I think people have bigger problems than whether or not the school play is good.” I—for one—definitely had bigger problems, like the fact that Shady and his family were still nowhere to be seen.
I sighed, peered out through the side of the curtain one more time, and caught sight of the glint of mirrored sunglasses toward the back of the gym.
“Thank God.” I glanced at the clock. Two minutes till showtime. I was going to have to move fast. “I need to—um—run to the art room and fix the tape on this box,” I said to anyone who was listening, then I bent down to grab the present, but…“Where’s my box?” I yelled.
“What box?” Sara asked.
“The one that was here a second ago!”
“It’s probably with the rest of the props.” She motioned toward stage left, where a big stack of present props—all identically wrapped—was sitting. Someone must have grabbed it in the split second I’d had my eyes closed.
“I need it!” I yelled. “I need it right now!”
“Everyone, places, please!” Mrs. Carlisle announced.