I went home that afternoon convinced I’d ruined everything—our friendship, Christmas, any chance of ever feeling normal. The image of her tears looped in my mind, mixing with the hum of the fridge that barely cooled, the thin walls that carried my parents’ late-night money fights. I thought the book had betrayed us, its worn spine shouting what we never said out loud: we didn’t have enough.

So when her mother arrived at school the next morning, calling my name with that unreadable expression, my stomach dropped. I waited for judgment, for pity dressed as politeness. Instead, she knelt to my height, eyes kind, and offered a bag so full it looked impossible: toys I’d only seen in catalogs, clothes with tags still on. Then she took me to lunch, into a world where refills were free and no one rushed. She didn’t fix our poverty, but she cracked something open in me—a belief that I was worth kindness. Now, each Christmas, I look for the kid who wraps their fear in careful tape and reused paper, and I try to answer it the way she answered mine: with quiet, ordinary magic.