Hi. I’m Nani. I’m a girl in Mrs. Eberding’s fifth grade class. Yousef’s in the class too. We’re the ones who read outside, behind the school, even when it’s cold, instead of having lunch in the cafeteria. I do it because I don’t like the cafeteria or the kids in it, and Mom lets me make my own sandwich. Yousef does it because he doesn’t eat lunch.
Once I offered him half my sandwich and learned his family doesn’t take charity. Or handouts like free school lunch, he said.
Another day, he was sad and wasn’t reading. I thought maybe they’d teased him about his thrift store clothes again. “They say I should go back where I came from,” he said.
“But you’re from here, your parents too, and everybody’s legal!”
“They don’t care.” He slipped something into his coat pocket.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“What is it?”
He stared at me. “Don’t laugh. And you can’t tell anybody.”
“I promise.”
He pulled something from his pocket and slowly opened his hand.
“Is that a penguin? One of those mini Beanie Baby things?” It looked old and worn.
“Mamani gave it to me. My grandma. When I was four. Said when I feel alone, to hold it and remember her and not feel lonely.”
I was happy when Mrs. Eberding told us what we were doing on the last school day before Christmas. My first ever white elephant gift exchange! I was also happy because even poor families like Yousef’s could afford white elephants.
We all put our white elephants on the big table when we got to school. I’d wrapped mine in pretty green paper. Yousef’s was in brown grocery bag paper. They were supposed to be secret, so I didn’t tell him mine was soap that looked like a hamburger, and I didn’t ask about his.
“It’s all I had,” he said nervously. “Hope it’s okay.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “White elephants are just for fun.”
Mrs. Eberding said when she drew our names, we could choose and open any gift except our own, or take someone else’s, and they would choose again. To be fair, whoever went first could trade gifts with anyone at the end.
My name was first. I opened the pink box and smiled. It was a coffee mug showing a girl with a stack of books. “Just a girl who loves books,” it said. It was perfect. I wanted to hide it so another girl wouldn’t steal it, but that wasn’t allowed. I imagined sipping cocoa while I read my books.
When it was Yousef’s turn, he looked sad. I thought he reached for his own, but he took the baby blue one next to it. As he unwrapped it, some rude boys started laughing. When we saw the white training bra with cartoon elephants, most of us girls turned embarrassed red. I turned angry red.
Yousef didn’t turn anything. He just held it and kept looking sad.
Later, the boy who opened Yousef’s gift shrugged, but I gasped. There in his hand was Yousef’s tiny, worn-out stuffed penguin from his mamani. My heart broke, and I started to cry.
I missed what Mrs. Eberding said to me at the end, so she repeated it. “Nani, you were first. You may trade with anyone if you want to.”
I still had my mug. No way did I want to trade.
“Better hurry,” she said. “Before the bell.”
It hit me. I jumped up as the bell rang and held out my beautiful mug to the boy with Yousef’s penguin. “Let’s trade,” I said, as everyone else rushed to the door and Mrs. Eberding yelled, “Merry Christmas!”
Yousef was already gone, and I was sure he hadn’t seen my trade. I rushed out the front doors into the chilly breeze but didn’t see him walking home. I found him out back, where we always sat to read, head in hands, his body shaking. Up close, I heard his sobs.
“Yousef?”
His hands muffled his words. “Go away.”
“Yousef? Why would you—”
“Leave me alone.” He still didn’t look up. “Have a nice Christmas. Please go away.”
The sun came out and warmed us a little. “First we trade. I want that training bra.” I held out my hand with his penguin.
“No. You love that mug,” he mumbled, then sniffed and sniffed again. I stood there and just waited for him to look up. Finally, he did.
This short story in lieu of a column, the shortest Christmas story I’ve ever written, was published in The American Fork Citizen in December 2025. Reprinted with permission. Image by ChatGPT.
