North Pole Reform School (6 page)

“But isn’t that what they’re doing to me?” Luke asks
wearily. “By making me look at singing, flashing decorations, aren’t they
forcing their way on me and trying to make me enjoy Christmas rather than
leaving me alone to get on with it quietly?”

“But they’re not harming you.”

“Firstly, that’s debateable, and secondly, I’m not harming
them either.”

“We’ve just been over this.”

“I don’t care,” Luke mutters. “Now you’ve made me feel like
complete shit, why don’t you move on to someone else and make them the bad guy
for a change? What’s Misty done that’s so bad, huh? She killed someone too?”

Tinsel and Navidad turn their attention to me.

CHAPTER 9

Tinsel consults the clipboard again. “Mistletoe,
what have you done to bring yourself here?”

“It’s Misty,” I say again, not that anyone seems to be
listening to that. “And I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t done
anything. I haven’t stolen any decorations and I haven’t killed anyone. I hate
Christmas, and let me tell you, if your name was Mistletoe and your dad worked
as Santa in a shop and your birthday was on Christmas Eve, you’d bloody hate
Christmas too.”

“And what have you done about it?”

“I don’t know,” I say. Because I honestly don’t. More or
less.

I mean there was that little incident last week, but they
wouldn’t have brought me here over that.

“This is another example of not realising the affect that
your actions have on others. Your mum and dad try so hard to get you involved
in their Christmas celebrations and you always rebuff them without a second
thought. You don’t realise how much that upsets them. Spending Christmas as a
family is really important to them, and it hurts them when you lock yourself
away in your bedroom and hide.”

I roll my eyes. “Everyone does that. Besides, it’s never my
bedroom, it’s always my sister’s room, because I have to give up mine for
whatever annoying relative we have staying over the holidays.”

“Of course that’s not the only reason you’re here,
Mistletoe,” Tinsel says. “There’s the small matter of the fire in your school
last week.”

“Then you’ve clearly got the wrong person, because you said
we were here for deliberately ruining Christmas, and as I repeatedly told the
teachers, my parents, and the paramedic crew who came to treat the injured
children, it was an accident.”

Joe bursts out laughing so hard spit flies across the room.
He laughs at the most inappropriate things.

“An accident caused by careless actions on your part.”

“I didn’t intend for it to happen. I just didn’t think. It
was an accident, therefore you should let me go because I haven’t deliberately
tried to ruin anyone’s Christmas.”

“As we’ve been trying to get across, this isn’t just about
deliberate actions, it’s about thoughtless ones. Now, it’s a good thing that
none of the children were more seriously injured in the fire, but you’ve
certainly gone a long way to ruining their Christmases.”

“Oh please, their parents will probably buy them extra toys
because they got a bit singed and they’ll get the sympathy vote from everyone.
They’ll probably have the best Christmas ever. Who could say no to a burned
child?”

“It’s slightly more serious than a bit singed,” Tinsel
scolds me. “One of the little boys will have to go back to the hospital to have
the dressings on his burns changed every single day from now until after the
new year.”

I shrug. It’s not that I don’t care about what happened, but
it was an accident. “Personally I think the teachers should be blamed. Clearly
they should be teaching children not to go near things that are on fire.”

“From what I understand, the children were only trying to
rescue the fairy from the top of the tree.”

“The tree which was
on fire
.”
I hold my hands up. “Obviously they should have been taught better.”

“This is exactly why you’re here, Mistletoe. Both you and
Luke have done everything
but
accept responsibility
for your own actions. We’ll get to the others in a minute, and I have no doubt
they’ll do exactly the same thing. You are blaming the teachers when it was you
who made a mistake. Luke is blaming the old man, the family, the granddaughter,
when it was no one but Luke who took that sign.”

“But we didn’t know what was going to happen,” Luke
protests. “If I’d have known the old guy was going to die I’d have left the
sign there. If Misty had known kids were going to get burnt she probably
wouldn’t have set the tree on fire.”

I smile at him for not using my full name. “I didn’t set it
on fire, it just happened. Our class had a free lesson so a teacher asked me
and a couple of other girls to help them put up the infant school’s Christmas
tree. The teacher got called away, so we finished up. The others left and I had
to put the finishing touches to it, namely plugging in all the lights. This was
a huge tree and there were like ten sets of lights strung around it. I plugged
them all into an extension lead and left. Next thing I know there are sirens
everywhere and fire engines breaking down the school gate. The tree had caught
fire, some kids tried to bloody climb it while it was on fire, and the bloke
who came to investigate said it was because of overloading the plug socket.”

“Well, that sounds like any number of things could be to
blame, like old lights and not enough plug sockets, and no one there to tell
her otherwise. And where were the teachers when the kids tried to climb the
burning tree? It seems very unfair to blame her entirely for that,” Luke says.

I can’t help but smile at him again for sticking up for me.

“But once again, she’s part of a domino effect that could
have been avoided if she hadn’t been angry, rushing to get done, and careless.”

“Why were you angry?”

“Because I bloody hate Christmas. What’s the point in making
us lug this tree and all these decorations out of the staff room and spend a
whole afternoon setting them up when school finishes a week before Christmas
anyway? The teachers always, always, call on me to help with Christmas stuff
because of my name and they know what my dad does for a living.”

“Understandable,” Luke says.

“You’re all here to learn to accept responsibility and
respect for the meaning of Christmas.”

“This is like some sort of
Christmas
Carol
bullshit,” Joe says. “Where’s Tiny Tim?”

“It’s not bullshit, Joe, and we don’t like to use that kind
of language around here.”

“Well, you’ll just have to get used to it. You kidnap me in
the middle of the night, you can expect me to use a bit of bad language.”

Navi rolls his eyes and Tinsel tuts. “Okay, moving on.
Emily, care to tell us what you’ve done to ruin Christmas this year?”

“Lot of ducks at this time of year, are there, love?” Joe
taunts her.

“Shut up,” she tells him.

I actually agree with her. He’s very annoying.

“Okay,” Emily starts. “I hate Christmas for many reasons but
mainly because something bad always happens at Christmas. Always. I mean, I
know I have some issues, I’m sure you can all see that already, but something
bad always happens at this time of year. Last Christmas my cat died. The one
before that my mother broke her leg. The year before that my washing machine
shorted out my electricity, and I had no power for four days. The one before
that my boyfriend broke up with me. My grandparents have been in a car accident
on Christmas Eve, my hamster died on Boxing Day, and that’s just an example of
what December usually brings with it. Christmas is a magnet for bad luck, so
this year I decided to do something about it.”

“Maybe it’s the ducks,” Joe says.

“It’s not funny. Do you know that more and more people are
eating duck for their Christmas dinner these days? The ducks are particularly
vengeful at this time of year.”

I barely manage to stifle my giggle, and I hear Luke snort
beside me.

“What did you do about it, Emily?” Tinsel says, trying to
defuse the situation.

“Well, I thought I could cancel it. Even as I’m saying it
now, I realise how stupid it sounds, and I’ve been running around like the
Grinch trying to cancel Christmas for the whole village. I ripped down all the
Christmas lights, I set up a mailbox for kids to put their letters to Santa in
and then I threw them all in the bin, I offered to post people’s stacks of
Christmas cards and I posted them down the drain instead, I cut down the big
tree the council put up by the bus stop, and I’ve been out at night pouring
buckets of water on the roads so they turn to ice.”

“That’s brilliant.” Luke laughs. “Wish I’d thought of that.”

“You’re not helping, Mr Wyatt,” Navi informs him.

“Yes, Emily has caused some havoc too,” Tinsel says. “But at
least she seems to realise that what she’s been doing is stupid, which makes
her a step further than you and Mistletoe.”

“No, no,” Emily says. “I was just stupid to think it would
work. It’s not like people are going to stop celebrating Christmas just because
a few cards didn’t get there.”

“Do you know how many people have fallen on the ice you
created, Emily?” Tinsel asks.

Emily shrugs.

“Five, and two of them were little old ladies, and three of
them broke bones. One will be in hospital for the entire festive season with a
broken hip.”

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t intend to really hurt
anyone, I just wanted to make people realise that Christmas isn’t this magical,
wonderful time that everyone seems to think it is.”

“It can be if you let it,” Tinsel says.

Emily rolls her eyes.

“And you, Hugo? What have you been doing to ruin people’s
Christmases?”

“I hate Christmas,” he says. “My mum and dad would still be
alive if it weren’t for Christmas. I hate seeing it everywhere. I hate people
being all happy and celebrating when I’m so sad because they aren’t here.”

“And what do you do about it?”

“I never intended to hurt anyone, but I just hate the
constant reminders. I don’t want to celebrate Christmas, I don’t want to
constantly be shown happy families when my family is dead because of Christmas.
I hate the idea of people celebrating and being happy when I’m not, and I hate
having to constantly look at Christmas stuff when I don’t want to, so I break
it.”

“You break it?” Joe asks him.

“I smash it up. All of it. I don’t want it shoved in my
face. I don’t want to walk around the shops and see snowflakes and trees and
hear Christmas songs everywhere, so I smash it up. One of my grandma’s
neighbours put up this whole nativity scene in their garden, and I hated having
to walk past it every day, so I jumped over their fence and kicked it until it
broke. It made me feel really good.”

“And what about your grandma?”

“She still celebrates Christmas,” Hugo says. “I mean, she
doesn’t put a tree or decorations up anymore because I don’t want it, but she
still has boxes of them up in the attic.”

“What about the damage you’ve caused? Has that affected
her?”

“She had to pay for some stuff,” he admits. “The neighbours
made her pay for the nativity scene and a couple of shop window displays that
I’ve been caught for.”

“But she can’t afford that, can she?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. She never talks about money with
me.”

“What about Christmas? Don’t you think she might like to
celebrate Christmas still?”

“Can’t you give the poor boy a break?” Emily interrupts.
“He’s lost his parents… that would mess anyone up.”

“Yes, we understand that,” Tinsel says. “But he’s hurting
other people, including his grandma who has given up everything to look after
him. That’s why he’s here, to learn that his actions, although understandable,
are selfish and have an effect on others.”

“I don’t get why she still wants to celebrate Christmas
anyway,” Hugo says. “Her daughter died because of it. It’s not something to
celebrate. It’s just a constant reminder of what everybody else has that I
don’t.”

“But that doesn’t make it okay for you to damage other
people’s property just because it’s there.”

“It shouldn’t be there. It’s not fair because not everybody
wants to see all the Christmas crap all the time. Other people have no respect
for me by putting it there. They don’t care about people who might not want to
see it.”

“Hugo…”

“Christmas took my parents away. I hate it and I wish I could
make it go away. I don’t want to know about happy families and joy to the
world. I want to curl up and die!” Hugo is yelling now.

Emily has put a comforting arm around him again as he
quietens down after the outburst.

“Moving on,” Tinsel says quickly. “Last but not least, it’s
your turn, Joe. Do you know why you’re here?”

“Not a clue, love. Best explanation I can come up with is
that someone is playing a very sick joke on me.”

“We’ve been over this, Joe. It’s not a joke. Everything
that’s happening is one hundred percent real.”

“I still think I’m dead,” Hugo pipes up. “I hope I am.”

“Joe, what have you been doing that ruins people’s
Christmases?”

“Nothing,” he says smugly.

“You’re a courier, correct?”

He nods.

“So it’s not you who deliberately drops parcels at this time
of year? Because we saw you playing football with a parcel marked Fragile just
last week.”

Joe shrugs. “So I drop a few parcels. Find me a courier who
doesn’t. People want shit delivered then they can deal with it. They shouldn’t
be so lazy, they should just get off their arses and go out and buy all their
bloody presents. The parcels I have to deliver in December wreak havoc on my
back.”

“That’s not the only reason you’re here, Joe. In fact, we’d
already selected you as a potential reform candidate this year before we even
noticed your behaviour in your job.”

“Why?” Joe asks. “I haven’t done anything. I don’t go around
smashing up decorations or setting trees on fire.”

“It’s different for you actually,” Navidad says. “It’s not
so much about any one incident as it is about a culmination of years of
thoughtlessness. Perhaps you could tell us what you do over the festive
season?”

“Since my wife divorced me, I go and visit my brother. I
don’t intend to stay but I usually end up getting too drunk to drive home, and
have you tried getting a cab on Christmas Day? Bloody impossible, so I end up
staying with him and his family. It’s only out of pity though—they don’t want
me there, none of them do, but my brother feels guilty that he’s all happy families
with his wife and kids while his brother is all alone in a grotty flat as he
calls it. Posh bugger, he is. He invites me for Christmas dinner out of pity,
even though I don’t need it, I’d be much happier to stay in my flat and drink
my way through Christmas, but then I feel guilty for letting him down. It’s a
vicious circle.”