I rolled my eyes dramatically. “Now you’re just playing dirty.”
He shrugged. “I prefer the termstrategic incentive deployment.”
I leaned against the fridge, pretending to consider it. “You just said it wasn’t a competition.”
“It’s not.” He paused. “Not really.”
“Josh.”
He grinned. “Fine. But between you and me, I still bet I can wrap more presents than you during our shift.”
I took another sip of water and narrowed my eyes at him. “That sounds like a challenge.”
“It is.”
“Then you’re on.”
I tugged off my scarf as we climbed the stone steps up to the school’s main entrance. The brick building was decked out with string lights and makeshift cardboard snowflakes taped to the windows.
Through the glass, I could already hear laughter echoing from the gym and smell something dangerously sugary in the air.
Josh swiped his school badge that had a picture of him that made him look like a mad scientist. Why in the world had his hair looked like that on picture day? I didn’t think I’d ever seen him use hair gel in his life.
Had it been a bet? A dare?
He held the door open for me. “Prepare yourself.”
“For?”
“Holiday madness. Kids hyped up on candy canes and divorced dads pretending they know how to use Scotch tape.”
“You really know how to paint a picture.”
The second we stepped inside, I was hit by warmth, bright lighting, and the unmistakable chaos of a school holiday fundraiser. Long folding tables were piled with unwrapped donations. Parents bustled about in red sweaters. And there, at the end of the room, was a whiteboard labeledWrapping Warswith tally marks already in progress.
It was hard not to think that you weren’t a holiday extraordinaire from the moment you walked into the middle school, however. The entire gym had been transformed into a sort of wonderland that represented any winter holiday the kids celebrated.
Classic tunes circulated through the speakers. Armed with colorful rolls of wrapping paper, shiny ribbons, and an assortment of gift tags, staff cleared a space on foldable white tables. It transformed the gym into a wrapping headquarters.
I guessed that made us holiday elves. With Josh’s bright burgundy hat that was a size too large for his head with a giant white puff ball on top, the elf metaphor felt even more apt.
On one side of the gym, there were parents helping their kids wrap their cheap plastic trinkets they had purchased at the school’s Christmas market.
Josh and I, along with a half dozen others, were on toy donations that would be going to the local shelter brought in throughout the month before the holidays so that those who stayed there would have something to open the day of Christmas when everyone else was looking beneath a tree for what Santa might’ve brought them.
I dropped the next gift onto the center of a bright red sheet of wrapping paper. I looked over the doll, complete with a hairbrush and a change of clothing including a pink dress and matching plastic purse, mentally calculating just how much paper I was going to need. I sliced through the paper confidently in one crisp swipe.
I had never speed-wrapped presents before, and now I honestly thought it should be considered an Olympic sport. Or at least a holiday sport. Was there such a thing?
The DIY television channel or the local Home Haven magazine would eat this kind of thing up.
Maybe I could attempt to pitch Home Haven again as their website started to publish more. Get in before other writers got wind of just how much charity one of the smaller middle schools was doing in the city.
“Now you’re getting the hang of it,” Josh commented, slapping a bow perfectly straight on the top of his latest box, which looked like some kind of building block set. “Soon enough, you’ll be wrapping yours at a fast pace.”
“Ha-ha,” I said blandly, though he was already moving on to the next gift.
I quickly shifted my attention back to what I was doing. I started to twist the present around and find a rhythm that Josh had already seemed to perfect. The paper hugged the box gently before I taped the seams, though I still had an odd bump on one edge.
