Eighteen

Madelyn was doing her Christmas shopping.

And no big deal, right? Christmas shopping was Christmas shopping--you bought some small trinket for members of your family and close friends and that was that. No big deal.

Except Maddie didn't know whether or not to buy anything for Elena.

Normally, Madelyn wasn't very good at choosing presents. On Christmas morning, people always opened her presents and gave that fake smile that lied about liking whatever small thing she'd given them. Her mother, last year, had hated the bird ornaments. Her father hadn't liked the tie.



At least Elena had been honest about it--she'd returned the book and bought herself another. And she took Maddie with her. Elena wasn't all about tact, not by a long shot.

But here was this sweater, similar to the one that Elena had accidentally shrunk in the wash in September. Oh, how irritated her sister had been at losing that sweater, which she inexplicably loved more than any of her others. It was sort of stupid, but Maddie wanted to buy it for her.

But who was to say that Lena was coming home for Christmas? Who was to say she'd ever come home? After three weeks, or thereabouts, it was starting to look less and less and less likely. The fact that Elena was gone seemed, to Madelyn, a little less of a panic-inducing situation. It didn't terrify her actively so much, anymore, as freak her out passively.

She had learned to convince herself that Elena would be fine. She knew how to take care of herself. She'd been taking care of her self, for the most part, for the past few years. She would be fine.

The stupid sweater wasn't cheap, either. It'd cost her a solid twenty-five, maybe more like twenty-seven dollars, which took a solid chunk out of her Christmas money. Maddie didn't have a job, not at fourteen, and so her Christmas money was everything she had gotten as presents last Christmas, which was crap, in Madelyn's opinion. And given roughly sixty (maybe more like seventy, if she could find that ten dollar bill she though she'd put through the wash) for all her presents combined, Madelyn would seriously miss the thirty dollars it would take to buy this sweater for an absentee sister.

Elena would have loved it, though. She would have absolutely loved it. And Maddie had never bought a present that someone had really loved. She hadn't even though her mother was going to love those bird ornaments. She just didn't know what else to buy.

Even though she knew it was sort of creepy to just stand there in the store like that, Maddie deliberated for quite some time. And she counted and re-counted her funds, checked and re-checked the list of presents she had to buy. She didn't quite have enough to get a nice something for everyone if she bought the sweater. If she kept the thirty dollars, she could get something for herself, or offset the costs of next year's Christmas.

But in the end, Madelyn bought it anyway. Just in case. Just in case.