Angus didn’t think Coach would go for it.
I was shocked. Generally speaking, Angus could be a giant ass-pain as far as looking on the bright side. “Demon,” she was always saying, “life is a wild, impetuous ride. There could be good shit up ahead, don’t rule it out.” Which I mostly did, rule it out. But Christmas? I was not giving up that one. I told her we didn’t have to get Coach involved that much, we’d just give presents to each other. She admitted there was maybe a point in time where she’d been jealous of kids that got to do Santa. But if she’d asked him, it would have been like betraying her dad. I listened while she talked herself through this. Maybe he was past that now. Maybe he didn’t actually care one way or the other.
“Fine,” I said. “I know where we’re getting our tree.”
We stole one.
Never mind realizing after we got it home that we had nothing to decorate it with. We hung whatever the hell we felt like on that tree: spoons, mint Life Savers, CDs, some earrings and shit that Mattie Kate had given Angus over the years in a futile attempt to mold her fashion sense. Pretzels. It was our tree of utter ridiculousness. Epic.
We got so psyched over our presents, we couldn’t wait. The round-the-clock Christmas movie reruns start playing well before, which makes you think it has to be already Christmas somewhere. Around midnight of maybe the twenty-third, halfway through our second or third Chevy Chase, we called it. Ran downstairs like kids, tore everything apart while Coach was asleep. Angus got me amazing comics including a manga series of a kid named Gon Freecss on a journey to find his dad that left whenever he was a baby, and was said to have superpowers. Obviously a hit. Also clothes, which sounds boring but this being Angus, was not. Not the badass stuff she liked, either. She thought out the angle of Demon, Popular Kid, from head to toe: a Members Only jacket, parachute silver, just for example. I would own the school in that jacket.
The thing about Angus. We both had our crap to live with, and her way was to give no shit whether you liked how she was doing it, or not. But if I wanted to be a different type person and try for popular, she wasn’t going to stand in my way. She was going to help. Not very usual.
She also gave me a model ship, with tiny sails, tiny ropes, an entire seafaring vessel made of painted wood and toothpicks and here’s the killer part: inside a bottle. Not even big like a deuce, just the regular beer size. How in the holy heck somebody got it in there, she had no idea. She’d found it that way, at the antiques mall. She said it was me all over, my ocean thing, and also the thing of beating impossible odds, because someday I was going to go wherever the hell I wanted.
“If you say so,” I told her. “But will I always still be in a bottle?”
She laughed. “The world’s a bottle, Demon. Gravity and shit. Don’t expect miracles.”
I was more excited over my presents for her than getting mine. Also nervous, because let’s face it, she was one rock-hard peanut to crack. Coach’s credit card wasn’t my money and felt like cheating, so I used my cash I earned from drawings, and went to pawnshops. I did wonder if the guy at Here Today Loan and Pawn in Jonesville would remember the street brawl, boy on a man’s errand, etc. He never looked up from his magazine. I checked for McCobb booty, but it was long gone. They do a quick turnaround at those places, mostly guns and jewelry unless it’s nonsense items or weird antiques, which is what I was looking for. I found an awesome hat, black velvet, with a veil that came down over the face part. More femmy than typical Angus, but I had a hunch, and was right. She vamped around in that hat, saying she would be the funeral fox of Lee County. I also got her some old-time books including this advice one we read aloud, on what to do in every emergency: shipwreck, nightclub fire, plummeting elevator. What is a nightclub? She said it’s like a bar, only in the city, so you’re jam-packed in there with your face against the armpits of others. So in case of a fire, you’re toast. I can’t remember the advice.
My main thing, though, was her portrait. I put it in a serious pawnshop frame, glass and everything. I’d known for a long time what superhero she’d be: Black Leather Angel. A badass one, black leather angel wings. It took quite a few tries to make it not look like any form of Batgirl. But I got it. The main aspect of Angus being those gray eyes that look straight into what’s eating you. The superpower of reading your mind and making you talk. She was floored. She carried it around with her all day, cuddling that big square frame like a freaking teddy bear.