Don't Call Me Christina Kringle (8 page)

“Nails!”

“Relax, Professor. I'll sew it up when we're done checking out the scenery.”

“My,” Professor Pencilneck sighed, “what marvelous shop windows! What festive decorations!”

Christina looked at the same old storefronts she passed every day on her way to school. They were all decorated for the holidays. Twinkle lights. Wreaths. Fake snow flecked on windowpanes. Disco-dancing Santa dolls.

“Just a bunch of cheap plastic crap you have to take down in January when it's freezing cold,” she said. “It's another reason I hate Christmas.”

“Really?” said Nails skeptically.

“Totally. If you ask me, Christmas is a waste of time and money. Christmas stinks.”

After Homeroom, Christina went to music class.

She was quite good on the violin; she had been taking lessons since she was six.

This morning, as part of the school orchestra's rehearsal for the upcoming holiday concert, she performed a piece she had worked up over the weekend. It sounded sad and melancholy. Like a funeral dirge. Something an undertaker string quartet might play during a graveside burial service.

“That was … interesting, Christina,” said her music teacher, trying to sound positive. “Somber. Morose.”

“Thank you. That was my intention.”

“Uhm-hmm. What, exactly, was it?”

“A yuletide classic.”

“Really? I didn't recognize the tune.”

“It's ‘Have a Holly Jolly Christmas.' That's what it sounds like if you play it really, really slow.”

After music came math.

The teacher, who liked to wear loud Christmas ties all through December, strolled up the aisles between desks collecting homework papers.

“Miss Lucci? Your homework.”

Christina winced. She had forgotten all about her math homework! She had started it that night when Nails and Professor Pencilneck first showed up but had never gone back to finish it.

“Right,” she said, wondering what to do or say. “Homework.”

“You did do it, didn't you? You had all weekend.”

“Oh, yes sir.” She bent over. Fussed with her backpack. Unzipped the top. “But I think …”

“What? Your dog ate it?”

The other kids laughed.

“No, sir. We don't have a dog. …” She reached into the bag.

“Where, then, is your homework, Miss Lucci?”

“Well, sir, I …”

While her hand was inside the backpack, she felt a stack of papers that was shoved into it.

Stunned, Christina slowly pulled out the pages she had never worked on and handed them to the teacher.

“I certainly hope, Miss Lucci, that you gave this assignment more attention than you typically …”

He looked at her work.

Then he looked amazed.

“You factored the trisection of the angle and the quadrature of the circle?”

“I did?” She felt a small kick in her shins from her book bag. “Yes, I did.”

“I didn't assign those.”

Christina pasted a smile on her face. “I figured I could use the extra credit.”

“Well,” said the math teacher, scratching his head, “this is a true Christmas miracle. You answered every question correctly. And your extra-credit work is exemplary. Congratulations, Miss Lucci. You might actually pass this class after all.”

He strolled up the aisle to continue collecting papers. Christina leaned over to find a fresh pencil in her book bag.

Actually, she wanted to whisper a word to Professor Pencilneck who was hiding behind her peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. “Show-off,” she said with a very grateful smile.

The professor touched the tip of his cane to the brim of his top hat and gave her a slight bow.

“Just finishing the work you had started,” he said in a hushed voice. “After all, it's what we brownies do.”

After math came language arts.

The usual teacher was out with the flu. They had a substitute: a lady with big hair and poinsettias knit all over her sweater.

Elizabeth Grabowski stood in front of the class and proudly presented her essay on her family's favorite holiday traditions.

“Christmas is the smell of cloves and mulled cider. It is a fuzzy-faced nutcracker nestled upon the mantle. It is warm cocoa and cozy mittens. It is family and friends and, just like the song says, it is the most wonderful time of the year! The end.”

The girl smiled smugly.

“Bravo!” the substitute teacher gushed. “Gosh, I feel all warm and toasty inside. Thank you, Elizabeth! Thank you for sharing your gift.”

“You're welcome.”

“Let's see …” The teacher scanned her roster. “Is there a Miss Lucci? A Miss Christina Lucci?”

Christina limply raised her hand. “Here.”

“Come on up. You're next, dear!”

“Can someone else go before me?”

“Why? Is there some problem?”

“Yeah,” said Christina. “I'm still in sugar shock from listening to Elizabeth's sappy essay.”

Her friends laughed. The teacher did not.

“Miss Lucci, I may be a substitute but I demand full-time respect.” She snapped her fingers. Pointed to a spot on the floor directly in front of the blackboard. “Your essay. Now, if you please.”

“But, I …”

“Now, young lady!”

Christina shuffled to the front of the class. She had a crumpled sheet of paper stuffed into the back pocket of her jeans. Most of her friends wouldn't look at her. They looked down at their desks or their feet because they felt so sorry for her. Christina hated it when people pitied her.

“We're waiting,” said the teacher.

Christina unfolded her essay even though she hardly glanced at the paper while she spoke.

“Christmas Traditions,” she said, her voice strong and somewhat angry. “We have so many in my family because my father absolutely loves Christmas. We decorate every room in the apartment and every window. We buy a tree on the Friday after Thanksgiving and decorate it that night. We help my grandfather decorate his shoe shop. We exchange gifts on the morning of Christmas Eve. Right after breakfast. We open all the gifts except one. We each save one special gift for Christmas night.”

The teacher sat back in her chair and smiled. Christina could tell she was feeling all warm and toasty again. The lady loved Christmas. Stupid substitute teacher.

“Why do we save one special gift for Christmas night?” Christina continued. “Because on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, when normal people open their presents, my father is always busy. He puts on his Santa hat and loads up his fire truck with all sorts of toys to take to the kids in the hospitals and up in the housing projects. Kids who aren't going to get anything else for Christmas, just the stuff Santa delivers off the back of the Engine Company 23 fire truck.

“But then, last year, Santa, my dad, gets a 10-75 call. That's an All-Hands Fire. So Engine Company 23 responds to the scene and Santa never comes home. There's no special gift on Christmas day. No nothing. Just his empty place at the dinner table and a framed photograph and his bronze baby booties hanging on a fake aluminum tree in a crummy little shoe repair shop. Christmas traditions? They just remind you of what you used to do with people who aren't around anymore. They stink. They stink like crappy chunks of cloves floating around in stinking mulled cider at Elizabeth Grabowski's house. They stink like Christmas stinks.”

She folded up her paper.

“The end.”

The horrified substitute's jaw was hanging so low you could count her fillings.

Christina sat down at her desk and jammed the essay into her backpack.

When she did, she heard Nails whispering: “Boy, somebody up there sure needs a Christmas miracle. Either that, or a year's supply of pixie dust.”

While Christina was reading her “holiday traditions” essay to the class, the school janitor, a roly-poly man with plastered-back hair so black and glossy it looked like he painted it on his head every morning, was waddling up the hall toward the boys' bathroom.

The janitor was carrying a very large wooden toolbox, a crate so heavy it made him tilt to the side.

“Just a few more feet,” he said to himself, huffing. “Almost there.”

This was the hardest part of his job: lugging the box up and down the school's corridors.

He used his free hand to push open the swinging bathroom door and stepped inside. Since classes were in session, no boys were in the boys' room. He set the wooden toolbox down on the tile floor, went over to a sink, and swiped its water spigot with a rag. Twice. Then he touched a toilet seat with a bristle brush. Once.

“Oh, me,” he said in a loud and stilted voice. “Some human has started cleaning this bathroom but they have not finished the job.”

He flipped up the latches on his toolbox and raised the lid.

“I'll be back,” he said to his tools. “Do a good job, and I'll bring you a carton of milk from the cafeteria!”

Between classes, Christina went to her locker to stow her backpack.

“Thanks for the help on the math, Professor,” she said as she stuffed the nylon bag into the bottom of the locker.

“You're welcome. Perhaps, this evening, we could take a second look at your holiday traditions essay. Jolly it up a wee bit?”

“No thanks. Look, I have to go to science class now and I don't want you guys playing with the chemicals and junk.”

“I make a swell foaming volcano,” said Nails.

“That's what I'm afraid of.”

“Why?”

“Because we're not studying volcanoes!”

“So?”

“Just stay in here and try to stay out of trouble. Maybe you could grab a quick nap. Don't forget, you're going to be working on shoes all night. You need the rest.”

Professor Pencilneck poked his head out of the book bag. He had torn off a corner of Christina's lunch sack and origamied it into a beautiful brown rose. “My condolences on the loss of your father,” he said, handing Christina the delicate paper flower.

“Yeah,” said Nails who had climbed up beside the professor. “Ditto.”

Christina smiled faintly. “Thanks,” she said. She took the brown rose and tucked it into the pocket of the hoody she always wore to school in the winter. “After science, I have to go to this stupid Secret Santa party in social studies.”

“Sounds like fun!” said the professor.

“Yeah. Right. The whole thing's a rip-off. Besides, I forgot to buy anybody anything. Just another human task left undone.”

“Won't Miss Tanake be disappointed?” said the professor.

“How'd you know I drew Kaio's name?”

“I saw the note in your notebook: ‘Buy Kaio Tanake stupid Secret Santa stuff.' ”

“Yeah, well, she'll get over it. The holidays are one big downer.”

“Check your coat,” suggested Nails.

“What?”

“The pocket,” said Professor Pencilneck.

Christina took her coat off its locker hook and felt around inside the pockets.

“What's this?”

She pulled out a foil-wrapped gift box topped with a bow and glittering ribbon.

“It's for young Miss Tanake,” said the professor. “Have fun at the party.”

“This wasn't in here earlier.”

“Really?” said Nails. “Well maybe some magical-type beings slipped it in when you weren't looking. They'll do that you know, them magical-type beings.”

Stunned and amazed, Christina walked away from her locker, admiring the beautifully decorated gift box.

She was so stunned and amazed, she forgot to close her locker door.

Or lock it.

The instant Christina rounded a corner, Nails hopped out of the locker.

“C'mon, Professor. I need to stretch my legs. My hamstrings cramped up on me squatting in that bag all morning.”

“But Christina advised us to stay here.”

“So? Come on—let's go check out the bathroom! We can make a volcano in one of the commodes.”

Nails scampered up the empty hallway. Professor Pencilneck had no choice but to follow him.

“Nails? Wait! I fear your fondness for merry mischief might land us in trouble!”

“Yeah!” said Nails. “Ain't it great to be a brownie?

Christina went to social studies and saw a small wrapped box waiting for her on her desk.

“Open it!” said Zachary Thomas eagerly.

“In a second.”

“I got it for you!” Zachary, apparently, was forgetting the “secret” part of the whole Secret Santa routine.

“Thanks.”

“It's pretzels. Peppermint-and-white-chocolate-covered pretzels.”

Christina nodded. “Want one?”

“Sure!”

Christina handed him the box. “Enjoy.” Zach tore off the snowflake wrapping paper, which was held in place with about a quarter mile of plastic tape slapped on at all sorts of screwy angles, proving that Zach had, indeed, wrapped the present himself.

“These are awesome!” he said, munching a candy-crusted pretzel while slamming the Official Wham-o Super Ball he received from his Secret Santa so hard against the floor it bounced up and boinked a ceiling tile.

“Take it easy, Zach,” said the teacher with a laugh while she showed Emily True how to work a Slinky.

Everybody was up and laughing and playing with their new toys.

Everybody except Kaio Tanake, who was sitting in her usual spot at the back of the class. By herself.

Kaio's family had moved to America from Japan in September so she didn't have very many friends at the school. She had played Secret Santa and given Anna Bloomfield a complete Pokémon card set that Anna was already playing with at her desk but nobody had given Kaio a thing because Christina, her Sluggard Santa, should've brought her gift in yesterday like everybody else did.