54

BIRTHDAY BREAKFAST AT THE DINER was a bit of a tradition with Margot and Josh and me. If my
birthday was on a weekday, we’d wake up early and go before school. I’d order blueberry pancakes,
and Margot would put a candle in them, and they’d sing.
The day of my seventeenth birthday, Josh sends me a Happy Bday text, but I get that we won’t be
going to the diner. He has a girlfriend now, and it would be weird, especially with no Margot. The
text is enough.
For breakfast Daddy makes chorizo scrambled eggs, and Kitty’s made me a big card with pictures
of Jamie pasted all over it. Margot video-chats me to wish me happy birthday and to tell me my
present should be arriving that afternoon or the next.
At school Chris and Lucas put a candle in the donuts they got out of the vending machine and they
sing me “Happy Birthday” in the hallway. Chris gives me a new lipstick: red for when I want to be
bad, she says. Peter doesn’t say anything to me in chemistry class; I doubt he knows it’s my birthday,
and besides, what could I even expect him to say after the way things ended between us? Still, it’s a
nice day, uneventful in its niceness.
But then, as I’m leaving school, I see John parked out front. He’s standing in front of his car; he
hasn’t seen me yet. In this bright afternoon light, the sun warms John’s blond head like a halo, and
suddenly I’m struck with the visceral memory of loving him from afar, studiously, ardently. I so
admired his slender hands, the slope of his cheekbones. Once upon a time I knew his face by heart. I
had him memorized.
My steps quicken. “Hi!” I say, waving. “How are you here right now? Don’t have you school
today?”
“I left early,” he says.
“You? John Ambrose McClaren cut school?”
He laughs. “I brought you something.” John pulls a box out of his coat pocket and thrusts it at me.
“Here.”
I take it from him, it’s heavy and substantial in my palm. “Should I... should I open it right now?”
“If you want.”
I can feel his eyes on me as I rip off the paper, open the white box. He’s anxious. I ready a smile
on my face so he’ll know I like it, no matter what it is. Just the fact that he thought to buy me a present
is so... dear.
Nestled in white tissue paper is a snow globe the size of an orange, with a brass bottom. A boy
and girl are ice-skating inside. She’s wearing a red sweater; she has on earmuffs. She’s making a
figure eight, and he’s admiring her. It’s a moment caught in amber. One perfect moment, preserved
under glass. Just like that night it snowed in April.
“I love it,” I say, and I do, so much. Only a person who really knew me could give me this gift. To
feel so known, so understood. It’s such a wonderful feeling, I could cry. It’s something I’ll keep
forever. This moment, and this snow globe.
I get on my tiptoes and hug him, and he wraps his arms around me tight and then tighter. “Happy
birthday, Lara Jean.”