The Best Present is Your Friendship

A year ago, I played secret Santa for the first time with my friends. We decided to play the game during P.E and we used paper towel to pick out our secret Santa at random. I picked out one of the crumbled pieces and opened it up to find a name written right in the middle. That day after school, one of my friends invited all of us to go ice-skating, but only two of us could come. As we were walking around the mall to find some place to eat, she started talking her native language with her mom. As they talked, I heard two words that I understood, “secret Santa” and “Gaetane”. That made it seem really obvious that she was my secret Santa.

            The next week on Tuesday, some of us gave our presents to the teachers and told them to give it to the person they had. It was really fun. I hid my present in the locker of the person I had gotten, because I knew her combination. When she opened it, the smile on her face gave me the clear message that she liked it. Happy that she had appreciated my present, I went to my next class. The whole day I waited to find the present from my secret Santa somewhere around the school. Since I knew who was my secret Santa, I finally went over and asked her where it was because I had looked everywhere. She just pointed up and I asked her if she meant the bathroom. She just continued pointing up as we entered Mrs. Valdes’ room.

            When the bell rang, I asked her one more time. She pointed up once more and I told her I really didn’t understand what she meant. “Here, I’ll give you another hint…” this time she made a flushing noise. “So it is the bathroom!” she just looked at me as if it was nowhere near the bathroom. “So where is it?!” Frustrated, I decided to leave. I thought it was really unfair that she wouldn’t just tell me. I looked back one last time to see her face still looking at me and then continued.

            I went home and realized that she was not even going to be there the next day because she was going to a Tai Kwan Do competition and she would not be here for the rest of the week. I thought about the way she had looked at me when I’d left. I thought about the way I’d snapped at her. Had I overreacted? All she’d done was made it more fun for me to find the present and I’d snapped at her like all that mattered to me was what I would’ve gotten. The thought haunted me the rest of the week until she came back. As soon as I saw her, I gave her a big hug and apologized. She did the same and I told her it was not her fault. She gave me the present before going to Mrs. Trius’ and I kept it next to my bag. As soon as I got to my next class I opened it and found a SpongeBob snow cone machine. I thanked her and gave her another hug, knowing that I didn’t deserve the gift, after all.