Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 69452 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69452 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
I smiled and kept walking but said, “Just heading to the Angel Tree.”
I had no clue what I’d find today, but seeing the tree with so many children’s wishes wasn’t what I expected.
Usually, at this time of year, a lot of them had already been adopted.
Hell, I’d already picked up twenty-five Angel Tree kids myself utilizing my family’s help.
But this year had been a bad year.
Bad enough that even my own grandmother had broken down and asked me to cover her electricity bill.
It was frustrating sometimes because I had all this money thanks to my job, and my entire family refused to let me help them.
Stubborn asses.
“Oh, okay. Well it’s right here, let me…”
My sister waved him off. “It’s okay. We know where it is.”
She said it so sweetly that the woman nodded and smiled, when in reality, my sister was being an asshole.
She’d perfected the art of saying “fuck off” without actually saying “fuck off.”
And she did it so nicely that you couldn’t even tell that she was doing it.
“Noel.” I laughed.
She rolled her eyes. “We don’t need her to show us because it’s literally right there in the middle of the mall.”
We were at an outdoor mall that had tons of shops in a star shape leading off of the central hub. It was an awesome outdoor shopping experience, and something that Hooker, Oklahoma, had finished only recently.
It wasn’t brand new, per se. Some of the buildings in downtown Hooker had been renovated and turned into outdoor lounging areas, while others that were in pretty bad disrepair had been torn down completely.
With the already star shape of the downtown area, it worked out well to promote foot traffic instead of vehicles.
“I’ll be at the food truck there getting coffee. You grab the rest of the angels.”
I gave her a thumb up and walked up to the tree.
But as I got closer, I didn’t go pulling off all of the angels and stacking them in my hand. I instead went to one white cardstock paper in particular and reached for it.
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:
— Christmas shirt
— Books
— Personal sized Christmas Tree
“Come on,” she said. “We’ll go offer the money for these like last time.”
The woman manning the donation station beamed. “Oh my god!” The five grand that I’d offered should cover the last ten kids on the list. “This is amazing.”
“I’m going to go shop for this one,” I said. “I’ll have it back by the deadline this evening, though.”
She nodded, her eyes wet with tears. “This is amazing.”
I winked at her and peeled off, heading toward the first store. “What do you think we should buy her?”
“I would suggest buying a couple of pairs of shoes,” she said. “They grow fast at this age. I say we go with the size listed. Then buy a few in the next couple of sizes up. We should also buy her a bigger pair of winter boots.”