Linger by Maggie Stiefvater

changed,” Grace said. “ You should’ve mentioned it.” She pulled back to look at my face. “What were you thinking about? When I came in?”
    â€œBeing Sam,” I said.
    â€œWhat a nice thing to be,” Grace said. And then she smiled, bigger and bigger, until I felt my expression mirror hers, our noses touching. Grace finally stepped away to gesture to her offering on the counter, wrapped around my stack of books in a rather intimate way. “I’m sorry this is not more swank. There’s not really a place to do romantic in Mercy Falls, and even if there were, I’m somewhat poor at this moment, anyway. Can you eat now?”
    I slid around her and went to the front door, locking it and turning the OPEN sign around. “Well, it’s closing time. Do you want to go home with it? Or upstairs?”
    Grace glanced toward the burgundy-carpeted stairs that led to the loft, and I knew she’d made up her mind. “You carry the drinks with your big muscles,” she said, with considerable irony. “And I’ll take the sandwiches, since they’re not breakable.”
    Switching off the lights for the first floor, I followed her up the stairs, cardboard drink tray in hand. Our feet went swoof swoof in the thick carpet as we climbed to the dim loft with its slanted ceilings. With every step we took, I felt like I wasascending further and further above that remembered birthday to something infinitely more real.
    â€œWhat did you get me?” I asked.
    â€œBirthday sandwich,” Grace replied. “Duh.”
    I flicked on the lily lamp that sat on the low bookshelves; eight small bulbs cast an erratic pattern of rose-colored light over us both as I joined Grace on the battered love seat.
    My birthday sandwich turned out to be roast beef with mayonnaise, the same as Grace’s. We spread out the papers between us so that the edges overlapped and Grace hummed “Happy Birthday” in a terribly off-key way.
    â€œAnd many more,” she added in an entirely new key.
    â€œWhy, thanks,” I said. I touched her chin, and she smiled at me.
    After we’d finished our sandwiches — well, I had nearly finished mine, Grace had eaten the bread off hers — she gestured to the sandwich wrappers and said, “You should crumple up those papers. And I’ll get your present out.”
    I looked at her, eyebrows raised, as she pulled her backpack from the floor onto her lap. “You shouldn’t have gotten me anything,” I said. “I feel silly getting a present.”
    â€œI wanted to,” Grace said. “Don’t ruin it by going all bashful. I said get rid of those papers!”
    I bent my head and started to fold.
    â€œYou and those cranes!” She laughed as she saw that I was folding the tidier of the two sandwich papers into a big, floppy bird printed with the Subway logo. “What is it with you and them?”
    â€œI used to make them for good times. To remember themoment.” I waved the Subway crane at her; it flapped its loose, wrinkled wings. “You know you’ll never forget where this crane came from.”
    Grace studied it. “I think that’s a pretty safe assumption.”
    â€œMission accomplished,” I said softly, and rested the crane on the floor beside the love seat. I knew I was stalling the moment before she presented her gift. It gave me a weird knot in my stomach to think she’d gotten me something. But Grace wouldn’t be put off.
    â€œNow, close your eyes,” she said. Her voice had a little catch in it — anticipation. Hope. I silently said a prayer: Please let me like whatever it is she got . In my head, I tried to imagine the face that went with perfect delight, so that I could have it ready to pull out no matter what she had given me.
    I heard her rezipping her backpack and felt the cushions rocking as she rearranged herself on the couch.
    â€œDo you