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Artemis fumbles with the wrapping papers, feeling around and gently shaking it next to her ear. Across from her, Jade has a goofy grin plastered on her face, and Roy holds his cellphone camera up, recording intently for Wally on the other side of the screen.
Artemis shakes the box again, hoping that the contents of the box will give her some kind of clue; but she’d out of luck. There’s no distinct sound, only an average sounding thump as whatever’s inside hits the sides of the box.
She runs through a list in her head, of all the things that could be in here. The box is too small to be a new bow, not long enough to be some new arrows. Whatever’s in there doesn’t feel light enough to be clothes, but doesn’t feel heavy enough to be spare motorbike parts. She can’t think of anything else she wants or dropped heavy hints about wanting, and after one last shake, she’s forced to sigh, looking once at the camera and then at Jade and Roy.
“ Fine, I give up, can I open it now?”
There’s a moment of silence before she hears Wally’s loud whooping on the other side, followed by a string of coughs as he chokes on the pizza he was eating when he answered the phone.
There’s a look of defeat on Roy’s face as he pulls out his wallet and hands Jade a crisp fifty-dollar bill. Artemis just shrugs. Roy should know better than to make bets with Jade and Wally; they were devious once they put their minds together.
“Well, go ahead. Open it,” Jade says, shifting impatiently.
Artemis does, sliding her finger under the tape so she doesn’t ruin Jade’s good wrapping. There’s a small flat box, with only the words Star Printing on it in shiny gold print. She pauses to look up and is met with Jade, Roy, and Wally’s eager stares, a half-eaten slice of pizza gripped in Wally’s hand.
She lifts the lid off the box to find a grey hoodie folded neatly inside. There’s a cute little cartoon tiger printed on the front, with hearts where the pupils of its eyes should be.
“Be careful, there’s something in it,” Wally says quickly as she removes it from the box.
She carefully unfolds it and almost lets a tear slip when she sees that bundled up in the hoodie is a framed picture of the four of them when they went to the beach. Wally’s buried in the sand and the three of them are sat around him with buckets and spades in hand, grinning at the camera. It had probably been their most peaceful day of the past year, and when times got stressful she always found herself thinking back to that day, and she could always feel the sun on her skin and the sand beneath her fingertips.
She quickly wipes away the tear and stuffs the hoodie back into the box, leaning over to give Jade and Roy a quick peck on their cheeks. She blows Wally a kiss and he makes a show of catching it and putting it in his pocket launching into a faux-teary speech about how it’s going to get him through his final week of quarantine. As the four of them dissolve into laughter, Artemis can’t help but hope that once Wally gets back, there are more times like this. Happy times with the people she cares about most, even when it feels like the world is slowly falling off its axis.