Page 51 of Ask Your Mom If I'm Real

I’d been staring at that particular piece of paper since I’d walked around the corner.

I don’t know why that one drew my attention.

But it did and held it.

I pulled it down off the tree and stared while absently pulling all the other angels off the tree.

I must’ve stared so long that my sister had time to get through the line for coffee and get back to me.

“What’s taking you so long? Just grab them,” my sister grumbled.

I glanced at her as she tapped her foot impatiently. “I’m working on it.”

“Well, what it looks like is you’re standing there with your thumb up your…” She trailed off as she saw that I had the entire stack of Angel Tree kids in my hand. “Is that all of the kids?”

I shrugged. “Yeah.”

She sighed. “My husband is so going to kill me. This is going to take all day.” She smiled. “You’re such a little pushover.”

“It’s a week before Christmas. If they were going to get chosen, it would’ve already happened,” I pointed out.

“You’re right,” she agreed, her shoulders slumping. “But we could’ve just offered them money like we did last year.”

I knew that they would choose the gifts.

But there was just something about this one little girl…

“Okay, how about this,” I suggested. “We buy this one.” I held up the one little girl that had caught my eye. “Then we offer them money for the rest of these.”

She narrowed her eyes. “What’s so special about that one?”

I showed the one that’d instantly caught my eye the moment I’d walked up.

“That’s not very much,” she mused. “It’s like she really only put the necessities on there.”

I agreed.

The woman that’d filled out the questionnaire hadn’t wanted to overburden other people, so she’d taken the things that she needed, and a few of the lower priced item wants, and written them down.

She wasn’t like a few of the other kids that had listed an iPad or an Xbox console.

Name: Anleigh

Age: 2.5

Sex: Girl

Favorite thing: Christmas

Needs:

— Winter Jacket

— Size five youth shoes

— Jeans 3T

Wants:

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