Jingle Boy (14 page)

JOLLY OLD SAINT NICHOLAS

“WHAT THE HECK WAS THAT?” I WHISPERED INTO THE darkness of my bedroom, clutching my new sheets to my sides. Something had jolted me awake. A noise? A movement? What? My heart was pounding in my chest, and, like a little kid who’s just had a nightmare, I was afraid to even look left or right. If there was something freaky in my room, maybe it wouldn’t see me if I didn’t see
it.

A couple of minutes of holding my breath and I started to relax. A few very weak, very pink rays of sunlight were starting to peek through my windows. Maybe it was nothing. Just part of a nightmare I could no longer recall. I was just letting my heavy eyelids close again when I heard it.

It was faint at first, so faint I thought I might already be dreaming. But it gradually grew louder and louder. A persistent jolly tinkling sound. The sound of jingling bells.

I sat up straight in bed. Okay, now I was sure I was losing it. Who would be outside jingling bells at five o’clock in the morning?

I whipped off my blankets and swung my legs over the side of the bed. Moving the stiff new curtains aside ever so slightly so that the psycho outside wouldn’t notice, I looked out.

That was when I
knew
I was still sleeping. Because there was no way I was seeing what I thought I was.

“Ho ho ho!” the freak on the lawn shouted, waving a velvet-gloved hand at me. “Merry Christmas, Paul!”

It knew my name! The freak knew my name!

I turned away from the window, grabbed my robe, and flew down the stairs. “I am not going insane, I am not going insane, I am not going insane,” I chanted as I pushed my arms into the sleeves. I was going to get outside, the wind was going to knock me out of my sleepwalking stupor, and I was going to wake up to a normal day. Or as normal as the day could be when I’d been arrested the night before.

I flung open the front door and my heart literally stopped for half a second.

My whole house was ablaze with Christmas lights. They dripped from the eaves and surrounded the windows and doors. They laced the bushes that lined the house and ran along the ground on either side of the front walk. My father’s Santa in Space extravaganza was in full effect, except the iridescent spaceship was set up on the front lawn instead of the roof. And the Santa inside it was not plastic. The Santa inside it was
real.

“Hello, Paul,” Santa said with a twinkle in his deep blue eyes. Then the spaceship let out a huge burst of dry-ice steam from its rocket blasters. Just like my father had planned.

“Uh . . . hi?” I said, my arms hanging limp at my sides as Santa stepped out of the ship.

He smiled and patted his stomach as he gazed at me. “The answer to your question is yes, Paul. It really is me. It’s Santa Claus. I’m the real thing.”

My head started to pound as I looked into his eyes, trying to find the truth, but it didn’t take long. As I looked at him, a sudden, soothing, even elating warmth came over me and my heart tingled with anticipation just like it did every Christmas Eve. It was true. I was standing on my front lawn in my pajamas with Kris Kringle himself.

“Wow,” I said under my breath. “Wow.”

“Paul,” Santa said, his eyes suddenly narrowing a bit but never losing their twinkle. “We have to talk.”

He brought his big hand down on my shoulder and turned me around. We walked together over to the front steps and Santa sat down. As I stood there, unsure of what to do, he reached into his sleeve and pulled out a candy cane.

“Peppermint?” he asked, offering it to me.

“No thanks,” I said as I dropped down next to him.

I have to say, I couldn’t stop staring. It isn’t every day a person gets to meet the real Santa. His thick red suit stretched over his sizable belly and was fastened up the front with silver buttons, each in the shape of a different snowflake. The white fur around his collar and the edges of his sleeves had wisps of light brown in it and his black boots were cracked and mud caked, the laces fraying. I guess getting in and out of a sled a billion times over will do that to your footwear.

“Mama always shines them up for me on Christmas Eve,” Santa said, picking up his left foot slightly when he noticed me looking. “They’re a bit well worn right now, I’m afraid.”

“I can’t believe you’re actually here,” I said, inhaling the pure evergreen scent that surrounded him and trying to commit it to memory.

“Well, son, you brought me here,” Santa said. He stroked his beard—real curly whiskers as pure white as new-fallen snow—and looked down at his lap for a moment. “You know, I’ve always admired you and your family, Paul,” he said, looking me in the eye again. “The Nicholas clan has always understood the true spirit of Christmas. You live it all year round. Do you have any idea how rare that is in this day and age?”

I felt a cold sliver of guilt start to slice its way through my gut. “Yeah,” I replied, because I felt I had to.

“Well, gosh darn it, Paul, you’ve really gone and messed it up this year, haven’t you?” Santa chided.

I blinked at him. “How did you—”

“You forget, Paul. I know everything,” Santa said, leaning toward me slightly. “But to be sure, I never thought I’d see the day when Paul Nicholas of Paramus, New Jersey, U.S.A., would wind up on my naughty list.” He shook his head and looked away with a sad sigh.

I couldn’t believe it. I’d disappointed Santa. What was the world coming to?

“I’m sorry, Santa,” I said, staring down at my plaid flannel pajama pants. “It’s just, I lost my Santa hat and then everything started to fall apart. My girlfriend broke up with me, my dad was electrocuted, my house burned down, and now my best friend has up and left me. I thought . . . well . . . I guess I thought Christmas was punishing me,” I finished lamely.

“None of this has anything to do with your Santa hat. Can’t you see that yet, Paul?” Santa asked me, placing his hands on his knees. “Your father and the house . . . well . . . that was an accident. But everything else you’ve told me was your own doing. You can’t blame Christmas because you chose the wrong girl.”

Huh?
my brain asked. “The wrong girl?” I said.

“Don’t you see, Paul? Sarah wasn’t the girl for you. She never had the true spirit of Christmas,” Santa explained. “All Sarah Saunders cares about is Sarah Saunders. And presents. Trust me, I know. I’ve been getting her Christmas list for the past sixteen years. Last year it was so big she sent it to me on a Zip disk. I don’t even know what a Zip disk is.”

Santa chuckled and I did, too. That sounded like Sarah.

“You’re better off without her,” Santa said, patting me on the back and sending another shot of warmth right through me. “Look what she’s done to you. You ended up torturing that Scooby kid, yelling at your best friend, falling in with a bunch of anti-Christmas hooligans. Paul, you sabotaged the Wooddale parade!”

My head fell into my hands. The last thing a guy like me ever wanted to hear was Santa Claus’s voice listing my many, many mistakes.

“Oh, son, I didn’t come here to make you feel bad,” Santa said, reaching out to tousle my hair. “I came here to tell you it’s not too late. You can still save Christmas.”

“But . . . but how?” I asked, lifting my head.

“Well, you know the true spirit of Christmas is making the people you love happy,” Santa said, his eyes twinkling like stars.

“Right,” I said. “But how am I supposed to do that now? My mom hates me, my dad’s in the hospital, and I don’t even know
where
Holly is.” Just saying it made me feel suddenly and irrevocably overwhelmed, like a cold boulder was pressing down on my chest.

“You miss her, don’t you?” Santa asked, his voice a kind, soothing rumble.

The moment he said it, I felt like my heart was going to curl up and die. I’d been trying not to think about it—focusing on Scooby and all that—but I missed Holly so much it actually hurt. I saw her in my mind, standing in front of me at the Holiday Ball, her eyes at half-mast, and suddenly I saw myself kissing her. Felt myself kissing her. My whole body flushed. And I realized. I should have done it. I
wanted
to do it. I wanted to kiss Holly Stevenson. And I wanted her to want to kiss me back.

“Shoulda gone for it, son,” Santa said, slapping my back.

I almost choked.

“But it’s not too late,” he answered. “Holly’s the
right
girl. And just realizing that is half the battle.”

“But I don’t even know where she is!” I told him, my voice embarrassingly high-pitched. “And I still have to fix everything else! What am I supposed to do here, Santa?”

“Ho ho ho,” Santa laughed quietly. “Take it easy there, Paul. All you have to do is take it one problem at a time.”

“One problem at a time,” I repeated.

Santa smiled slowly, knowingly. “The answers are right in front of you, Paul,” he said, rising from the step. He turned to stand right in front of me and laid his hands over his stomach. “You can’t trust every guy in a Santa suit.”

I opened my mouth to ask him what he meant, but Santa simply winked and in a sudden whirl of magical snow, he was gone.

I woke up with a start and looked around my room like a madman. Sunlight streamed through my windows and the red numbers on my digital clock read 7:15. My heart filled with disappointment. Was it all just a dream?

I jumped out of bed, ran downstairs, and whipped open the front door. The front yard was as barren and dull as it had been the day before. There were no lights on my house, no sign that anything had happened. As I stood there on the front steps, where Santa and I had supposedly sat just a couple of hours ago, I felt my shoulders start to slump. The mind really could play some evil tricks. How could I have ever let myself think that it was real?

I trudged back up to my room, pondering the chances of my mother letting me stay home from school, but the second I got back to my doorway, I froze. Every inch of my skin tingled and suddenly, I could smell that evergreen scent that had filled my senses when I was chatting with Santa.

There, sitting on my pillow, was a Santa hat. I flung myself onto the bed, grabbed the hat, and turned it inside out. My name, in my own crappy handwriting, was scrawled across the brim. The semimatted fur. The cocoa stain. I lifted the hat to my face, closed my eyes, and inhaled. Ahhh . . . mulberry wine!

It wasn’t just any Santa hat. It was
my
Santa hat. And there was only one way it could have gotten there, only one person who could have pulled off such an amazing Christmas miracle. The big guy. Santa himself. I pulled the hat on over my head and savored the warmth that rushed over me.

Maybe Christmas hadn’t forsaken me after all.

YOU’RE A MEAN ONE, MR. GRINCH

SOMETIMES, WHEN I’M HYPER OR EXCITED OR INSPIRED or just happy, my brain seems to function on two levels. I can do two things at once—like programming the VCR while vacuuming (my weekly chore that I manage to do once a month and still get an allowance for). Or I can solve two problems at once or finish a trig test in half the normal amount of time.

Well, that morning in school my brain was functioning on
three
levels. Santa hat firmly in place on my head, I sang “Deck the Halls” with all my heart while simultaneously working to figure out how to save Christmas
and
listening to Turk Martin and his buddies whispering behind my back. I knew the rumors were already flying about my mall escapade and my time in jail, but I didn’t care. All that mattered now was the fact that I had been visited by Santa. And Santa was counting on me to make Christmas right again.

The only problem was, I had no idea where to begin.

Mr. McDaniel raised his hand as we held the last note, then closed it into a fist with a flourish to cut us off.

“Very nice!” he exclaimed, his bright eyes falling on me. “It’s good to see that you have all regained your enthusiasm this morning.” He smiled slightly and I knew he was talking mainly to me. I hadn’t exactly been into singing carols lately and I’m sure Mr. McDaniel was starting to wonder if I would ever snap out of it. I knew he was glad to have me back.

“I think everyone deserves a water break,” McDaniel said. “Back in five!”

The room exploded with chattering voices as half the choir streamed toward the hallway and the water fountain. Mr. McDaniel disappeared into his office and I walked over to the windows at the back of the room to look out over the gray parking lot and the grayer sky. There was snow in the air—I could smell it. I smiled and crossed my arms over my chest. A white pre-Christmas would definitely be a good start to putting this holiday season back on the right track.

“So, dude, is it true?”

My heart jumped, but I managed not to have a blatantly physical reaction to the fact that Turk and Randy had somehow snuck up on me. I turned to them slowly and smiled.

“Is what true?” I asked, as if I didn’t know what they were talking about.

“Did you really spend last night in jail?” Randy asked, his whole triangular face crinkling up in disbelief.

“Yeah,” I said simply. “I did.”

Turk rolled back his shoulders and brought himself up to his intimidating full height, which was even taller than usual since his hair was spiked extra high this morning. He eyed me skeptically. “Whadja do, go for a joyride on too much fruitcake?” he asked.

“Actually, my friends and I tried to burn down the mall,” I said, holding Turk’s gaze. Okay, so maybe I wasn’t in on it. And maybe I didn’t want to be found guilty of being in on it. But I had to see their reactions, right?

Turk’s and Randy’s eyes seemed to take on this whole new expression I’d never seen there before. Could it be . . . respect? Turk’s gaze slowly traveled up to the furry brim of my Santa hat and rested there for a moment.

“Wow, man,” he said finally. “You’re even crazier than I thought.”

He pulled up his hand and I almost flinched before I realized he wanted to slap hands with me. I put out my arm tentatively and he brought his hand down on my mine, clasped my fingers for a second, then smiled.

“Crazy,” he told me, shaking his head.

After that I had to concentrate to keep from smiling and betraying my giddiness. Suddenly Turk thought I was certifiably cool. All this time all I’d had to do to end the merciless Christmas season teasing was get arrested? Huh.

What the heck was
wrong
with these people?

The door to the hall opened with a creak and the room filled with the sound of girly giggling. I knew it was Sarah and her friends, and I heard my name mentioned a few times, but I didn’t give them the satisfaction of acknowledging them. This morning Sarah was wearing yet another Scooby gift—this time a pair of diamond earrings—and I was getting a little sick of seeing her toss her hair around to expose them. Sarah and her heartbreaking ways had sent me down the destructo-path I’d been on, and just being around her today was setting me on edge.

“Hey, Paul,” Lainie Lefkowitz said, cutting the giggles short so that everyone could hear. “I see you’ve got your dorky little hat back.”

I looked over my shoulder at her and just stared. I stared and stared and stared as her cocky grin faded, then she had to look away, and then she finally rolled her eyes and
turned
away. I smirked. It was interesting. Suddenly I didn’t
care
about the teasing anymore.

But then Sarah had to speak up.

“Yeah, aren’t you supposed to stop being Santa when you leave the mall?” she said, earning another round of laughter. “Are you delusional or something?”

That was it. That was all I needed. She just
had
to sink to their level, didn’t she? On top of everything else she’d already done to me. All the pent-up tension and anger toward her rushed into my head at once and something inside me snapped. I walked right over to Sarah and her sniveling little friends and the entire room fell silent.

“You had me so fooled,” I said, looking right into Sarah’s surprised face.

“What?” she asked, trying to laugh it off.

“I thought you really liked me, but it turns out you’re nothing but a materialistic, selfish money-grubber. All you were interested in was my car,” I said, my whole body heating up.

“What car?” Lainie put in. The laughter was quiet and less assured this time. I ignored her. My beef was not with Lainie Lefkowitz. It was with the girl who’d tricked me into giving her my heart.

“Well, you know what, Sarah? If you’d rather date a scrawny dorky pseudorapper who sports a monster Adam’s apple just because he has money, then that’s fine by me,” I told her as she tried to look away. “Because I wouldn’t touch you again with a ten-foot pole. In fact, you can just take Scooby and all his gifts
and
his stupid homemade rap album and blow them all out your tiny little butt!”

“Oh!” Turk Martin let out as I turned back to take my place on the risers. All the guys hooted and clapped and I even noticed a couple of girls trying to hide their smiles.

Mr. McDaniel walked back into the room and sat down behind the piano.

“Okay, let’s try ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’!” he called out jovially.

Sarah shakily took her place and I could tell she was looking at me from the corner of her eye, but I ignored her. As McDaniel started to play the intro to the song, I saw Turk turn out of the line, perpendicular to everyone else.

I glanced over at him and he grinned and raised his eyebrows.
“Crazy!”
he mouthed, with nothing but admiration in his eyes.

I started to sing. If this was what crazy felt like, I should have tried it sooner.

My mother wanted to drive me to the mall on Tuesday afternoon to turn in my Santa suits, but I convinced her to let me go it alone, giving her some speech about facing the music and being a man. What she didn’t know was that I didn’t plan to hand in the costumes and walk out of there with my proverbial tail between my legs. All I could think about were Santa’s words:

“You can’t trust every guy in a Santa suit.”

He had to mean Scooby. He just
had
to. But the thing was, I already knew Scooby was a loser and a schemer and a girlfriend stealer. I already knew I couldn’t trust him. So what, exactly, was Santa getting at? I was determined to find out.

The glass doors slid open in front of me and I walked into the mall. Dale Dombrowski spotted me from his position at the corner by the Diamond Center and he instantly brought his walkie-talkie to his mouth, his eyes never leaving my face. I knew he was warning the office that I had arrived and I felt a little spear of shame shoot through me. All I had wanted was to be a mall Santa and now I was public enemy number one.

Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?

I hopped on the escalator and double-timed it to Papadopoulos’s office, more than ready to get this over with. Sharona Drap, Papa-D’s secretary, took one look at me, picked up the phone, and started dialing, pretending to be too busy to deal with me. When I walked into the inner office, Mr. Papadopoulos jerked out of his chair, stood up, and smoothed down his tie.

“Paul,” he said, clearing his throat. “Didn’t think I’d be seeing you again so soon.”
Because I figured
you’d be well up the river by now,
his eyes added.

My heart twisted, but I reminded myself that I had done nothing wrong. And once I cleared my name, all these people were going to be rushing to apologize to me.

“Just wanted to turn in my costumes,” I told him, leaving the neatly stacked pile of red suit pieces on a chair in the corner. They looked so sad and sorry just sitting there. Suddenly I was hit with the realization that I’d never done them justice. My body had been in those suits, but my heart never had. All I wanted was a second chance, but that was never going to happen.

I took a deep breath and looked at my former boss. “For what it’s worth, have a merry Christmas,” I told him.

His expression softened slightly and his shoulders relaxed. “You too, Paul,” he said.

My spirits heavy, I turned and walked back out to the mall. I knew that Dale and Papa-D and everyone in this place would be happy if I would just disappear, but I wasn’t ready to leave just yet. I walked across the food court to the bathrooms and made my way to the last stall, my heart pounding with nervousness. I put my backpack on the toilet seat and yanked out my father’s trench coat and a fake beard from an old wizard Halloween costume. It took me a while to get everything on, what with my hands shaking and all, but I managed. Finally I pulled my Giants baseball cap low over my head and emerged from the stall.

The mirrors were right across the way and I did a double take when I saw my reflection. Even I didn’t recognize myself. I looked like a celebrity who was trying to go Christmas shopping incognito. No one was going to realize who I was in this getup. Not even Scooby.

I slipped from the bathroom with the confidence of a supersleuth, feeling like I could go anywhere and do anything undetected . . . and walked right into Melissa Maya.

“Hey! Watch it!” she screeched.

“Oh . . . sorry,” I said. Then, hearing my youngish voice, I cleared my throat and tried again. “Sorry, excuse me . . . sorry.”

She narrowed her eyes as I scurried away, but I was pretty sure she didn’t recognize me. Still, I was going to have to remember that even in disguise, I wasn’t exactly the invisible boy. I stepped onto an escalator behind a crowd of shoppers and tried to blend in.

Moments later I was leaning against one of the pillars across from Santa Land, stewing in a familiar pot of anger. There Scooby sat, in all his Santa glory, welcoming child after child onto his lap, shoving CD after CD into their faces. But other than his normal level of repulsiveness, nothing seemed amiss. After standing there for an hour I started to wonder again what Santa’s hint meant. Of course I couldn’t trust Scooby, but how was that knowledge going to help me save Christmas? How was it going to help bring my family back together?

Suddenly I missed Holly more than ever. I needed someone to help me figure this out. I needed
her.
But she hadn’t even left me her number in Colorado. For all she knew, I had no idea she was there. Maybe I could try calling all the ski lodges in Aspen, looking for her, but even if I found her, wasn’t she just going to laugh in my face if I told her how I felt?

“One problem at a time, Paul,” I told myself, trying to put all Holly thoughts out of my mind. “Save Christmas first, then deal with finding Holly.”

By the time Scooby had sold his tenth CD of the afternoon I was fed up, my stomach was growling, and my beard was itching me something awful. Maybe it was time to lay all this to rest.

But as I walked around the back of Santa Land, I saw something that made me pause. There, behind the collection counter for Hope House, was That Awful Woman. She must have felt me watching her because she looked up from stacking coins and her steely eyes locked with mine. An icy shiver passed down my spine.

I swear on my life, the woman is pure evil.

Finally I managed to drag my eyes away and I kept walking. My disguise must have worked on her because she immediately returned to her business. Knowing her, if she’d recognized me, she would’ve called out the National Guard. Part of me wanted to just go home and sulk, but I knew instinctively that something was up, so I ducked behind the Stuff ’Em Yourself stocking kiosk to watch her.

On the surface it wasn’t that strange, a mall employee volunteering more than once to work the charity booth. But it
was
weird that Marge Horvath was there again. That Awful Woman didn’t care about anyone but herself. I figured she spent her free time at home, polishing her broomsticks and counting her money. She definitely wasn’t the type to volunteer her time.

Suddenly Marge’s head snapped to the right and I followed her gaze to see what had commanded her attention. Eve Elias was stringing up the red rope and telling everyone in line for Santa that it was time for the big guy’s dinner break. Marge took note of this, then leaned over to the girl working with her at the charity booth and said something in her ear.

This was it! She was about to do something off— something wrong. I could
feel
it. The girl nodded and Marge smiled her tight smile, grabbed up one of the metal tins full of money, and scurried away toward the escalator.

My mother had told me that when the till reaches eight hundred dollars, the workers always bring the money to the mall office to be put in the safe. My heart sank slightly. Here I thought my instincts had caught Marge in the middle of something devious and I was wrong. So much for my supersleuth career.

But the moment Marge got to the bottom of the escalator, she looked over her shoulder, then ducked
around
it instead. My pulse started to race. Where was she going? What was she doing with all that money?