Since You Asked... by Maurene Goo

Author:Maurene Goo [Goo, Maurene]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2012-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Hoisting my Santa Claus bag of goodies over my shoulder, I walked toward the usual lunch spot in the Quad. I spotted Liz first — you couldn’t miss her multiple shopping bags and Santa hat. Only Liz could manage to make holiday costume wear fashionable.

She greeted me with a hug and a “Merry almost-Christmas!” She also handed me a sparkly holiday gift bag filled to the brim with wrapped objects.

“LIZ! This is way too much stuff! As usual!”

“Oh, whatever. Like I have a budget,” she said, waving her hand dismissively. I couldn’t argue with that. I handed her my gift, which was wrapped in newspaper comics and fat pastel yarn. Only the very best for my friends.

“Ooooh!” She accepted it gleefully. Liz loves receiving gifts — one of the reasons I love her so much. I mean, she literally could buy herself whatever she wanted. She even liked that hideous bobcat statue I made in my ceramics class and gave her that one year. That’s a true friend.

Eventually Carrie and David met up with us, also armed with gifts. It was time for our annual last-day-of-school-before-the-holiday-break gift exchange. We looked forward to this every year — almost as much as the MTV Video Music Awards, when we sat around Liz’s huge flat screen and made fun of everyone’s outfits.

Carrie gleefully collected her gifts and growled, “MINE!” David tried to snatch a couple away from her, resulting in Carrie rolling around in the dirt trying to keep them out of his reach. I swear, Carrie’s the brother David never had.

“Oh my Lord, can you guys behave?” Liz cried, trying not to laugh. Soon we sat around in a circle with our presents piled up in front of us.

“Me first!” I exclaimed. I picked up Carrie’s, a box wrapped in brown butcher paper and green-and-red bamboo-fiber ribbon, and shook it next to my ear.

“Oh, please, like that ever works,” Carrie scoffed.

I carefully opened it, peeling the paper back meticulously so that it didn’t rip. Carrie groaned in frustration. “HOLLY! You’re killing me. Get on with it!”

“Okay, okay, sheesh!”

I squealed when I saw it was a DVD set of the entire British Office series. “Awesome! Yes, yes, yes!”

“It has a bunch of extra commentary from Ricky Gervais,” Carrie said excitedly while I read the description on the back cover. “We need to revisit the entire series!” All of us had spent the previous summer completely obsessed with the show. Well, except Liz, who said she couldn’t stand all the British mumbling. “WHAT are they saying?” she’d yell before storming out of the room.

We all opened the rest of our gifts — I got a ton of great books from both David and Liz, including a first edition copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Liz got me an array of nail polishes in hopes of me actually wearing some. Hehe, good luck.

I excitedly watched everyone open my gifts. I had made them mixed CDs with hand-drawn cover “art,” and little photo albums that held a bunch of our pictures from the past few years.

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