“That’s OK. Let’s just go home.” Sometimes a girl just wants to be miserable.
“Nonsense. When have you ever turned down chocolate chip?”
“I’m not hungry,” I responded, wallowing in my own crankiness.
“Too bad, squirt,” Gus said. “If you don’t want any, then you can watch me eat. I need some sugary goodness.”
I crossed my arms and stuck out my bottom lip. I just wanted to go to my outlandishly decorated room, flip on the TV, and pout. Gus pulled into our favorite spot, the Malt Shop, a restaurant designed like a 1950s burger joint. It had a black-and-white checkerboard floor, candy-apple-red seats, an old-timey jukebox, and waitresses who zipped around on roller skates in their poodle skirts and bobby socks. Elvis Presley’s “Blue Christmas” was playing when we walked in. Boy, did that ever match my mood.
“Two chocolate chip ice creams, please,” Gus said to the teenager at the counter. I was going to object, keep the whole crankiness thing going, but I decided to keep quiet. For Gus’s sake, naturally. I could tell he really wanted that ice cream. I’m nothing if not generous. The boy handed me my cone. I licked the chocolate chip ice cream and shuddered with delight. I followed Gus out the door, trying hard not to show how much I was enjoying the treat. “We’re a little behind schedule, squirt,” he said. “We’ll eat on the way home.” My uncle would be annoyed if we came in late, especially if it was because we stopped for ice cream. Gus was taking a risk doing this.
He opened the limo door, and I smiled at him. He had ice cream in his mustache and grinned back at me. Suddenly, I heard a shriek. Gus whipped his head around. A woman screamed, running across the parking lot toward the street. Ahead of her ran a little boy, maybe four years old, chasing a balloon being blown by the breeze. “Tommy, no!” the mother shouted. But the boy was determined to catch that balloon. Across the parking lot he ran, faster than I could have imagined possible for such a tiny thing. He neared the lot exit, the balloon almost in the street. Cars zipped by. Gus took off. The mother screamed again for her son to stop. But all he saw was his balloon. No one would be able to reach him if he didn’t stop on his own. The balloon blew into the street, bouncing along the blacktop. An SUV came barreling through and just missed it, the wind yanking the balloon into the path of traffic coming the other direction. The boy ran into the road. A pickup truck headed right for him. The mother screamed. The driver slammed on his brakes. Tires squealed.
I watched in horror. My hand clenched so hard that I crushed the cone, the ice cream toppling to the pavement. I closed my eyes, not wanting to see what was about to happen. Something stirred inside me. I heard another scream and realized it was my own. Then there was silence. No, that’s not right. The sound was distorted. I waited for the thump of truck on tiny body, but it never came, just that weird sound. I opened my eyes and was shocked to see that everything was moving in slow motion. Gus still ran toward the child. The mother still screamed. The balloon bounced across the road. And the pickup still headed directly toward that little boy. But all super slowly.
I dropped the remains of my cone and sprinted past Gus. I ran in front of the mother, glancing up to see the terror in her face. I leaped into the street. The truck’s bumper was only inches from the boy and still coming, slowly, but just as deadly. I grabbed the boy, turned, and dove with him back to the grass along the road. My knee banged the concrete curb. The pain was enough to break whatever spell I’d cast, and everything sped up again. The truck slid by us. The drivers behind him hit their brakes. Horns blared. Bumpers crunched. The mother reached us a second later and yanked the boy from my arms, sobbing and squeezing him hard. The boy screamed but appeared unhurt. Gus ran up beside me. “Are you all right?”
My knee throbbed. Blood soaked through my pant leg. I nodded. It hurt like the dickens, but it was only a bad scrape. I could see it through the hole in my khakis.
“How did you … ?” Gus looked back toward the limo, then at the street, then at me. “You were behind me,” he said, and then he noticed my bloody knee. “Are you sure you’re OK, squirt?”
“I’m fine,” I said. Gus helped me up. The mother of the boy nearly tackled me. She pulled me tight against her chest with her left arm, the little boy gripped in her right. He wailed in my ear. “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” the mother repeated over and over.
“You’re welcome, ma’am,” I squeaked out, trying hard to breathe.
People were jumping out of vehicles. The man in the pickup ran over to us. “Ay dios mio,” he said, looking to the sky and clasping his hands together like he was praying. “I so sorry. I so sorry.”
The mother smiled at him. “It’s OK. Everybody’s OK.” I heard a far-off siren. An ambulance? The police? I realized I’d have to answer questions. What would I say? I couldn’t tell them the truth, that I had slowed down time to save the little boy. I couldn’t tell them that there was power within me. I couldn’t tell them that after what I thought was useless training, my pores were wide open.
CHAPTER 5
I Hear Humming
I couldn’t sleep that night, which I guess isn’t surprising. I mean, it’s not every day a girl like me stops time and saves a kid’s life. I spent half the night staring at the ceiling, listening to the grandfather clock down the hall tick the hours away. I replayed the day’s events over and over in my mind. The near tragedy. Gus staring at me with such a puzzled look. The police officer asking questions. The EMT bandaging my knee. My uncle appearing at the scene, studying me as curiously as Gus had, as if he didn’t know me. Mr. Winters showing up but standing off in the distance. I waved, but he turned and walked away. I wondered if he’d be mad. Maybe I had violated some Defenders code, using my power that way. But surely Santa would want me to save a child?
All that aside, something else kept me awake. When my mind finally began to settle and I started to drift off, I heard humming. Faint at first, then louder. It wasn’t any tune I recognized, but definitely a song. I thought maybe it was coming from inside the house, but knew it couldn’t be my uncle. He’s the last person on Earth to be humming. I also knew it couldn’t be any of the staff, because they wouldn’t risk annoying the boss. And when I’d sit up to listen more closely, the humming would disappear. That kept me up half the night, and, finally, out of pure exhaustion, I drifted off to sleep. I awoke at 7:00 a.m., bleary-eyed, the humming gone. I wondered if I was losing my mind.
I wanted to talk to Mr. Winters but would have to wait till the end of the day. And even then, I’d have only a few minutes. It was Friday, the day my uncle picked me up. During class I caught Mr. Winters staring at me a couple of times with a worried expression. He seemed distracted, not his usual jolly, weird self. He hadn’t even been reading under his desk when we arrived. Just sitting in the chair like a normal teacher, which made me worry even more. Maybe Defenders swore an oath to never use their powers to interfere with real life. Maybe it would mess up the future or something. I still had so much to learn about my power.
Finally, the day ended, and I hung around, waiting for my classmates to leave. After Mr. Winters watched the last kid go—it was Amelia, who I’d barely talked to all day, so lost in my own thoughts—he opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again. I’d never seen the man at a loss for words and that scared the daylights out of me.
“Am I in trouble?” I asked.
Mr. Winters had a pained look. “Of course not, dear heart. It’s just …” He shook his head. “How did you do that?”
“You’ve been training me. Maybe it stuck.”
“But none of us could do anything like that so soon. It takes years.”
I shrugged. “I just did it. How did you know, anyway?”
“Defenders sense any nearby use of our power,” Mr. Winters explained. “It was like an earthquake hit when you did that. Tell me how you felt right before it happened.”
“Scared, I guess. I thought I was going to see that little boy die.”
“A
nd what did you do?”
“I closed my eyes and screamed.”
Mr. Winters gasped. “Oh, my goodness.”
“What?” I asked, not liking where the conversation was heading. I thought he would reassure me, not make me feel worse.
“You have more power than we imagined, Carol,” Mr. Winters said. “But I fear that if you’re not careful, it could overwhelm you.”
“I don’t understand.”
Mr. Winters sighed. “It appears your power is not only fueled by the cold and innate ability, like the rest of us Defenders, but also by emotion.”
“And that’s bad?”
“Maybe. The older you get, the more powerful you’ll get, and if you lose your temper or get scared, like when you saw that boy, your ability could consume you.”
“Consume? Like explode or something?”
“I don’t know. It happened once long before I was a Defender. Santa won’t talk about it. But a Defender lost control and simply vanished into thin air.” Mr. Winters made a gesture with his right hand, flicking his fingers open. “Poof.”
A lump formed in the back of my throat. “But I’ll learn to control it,” I insisted. “You can help me.”
“I hope so, dear heart. But soon you may be beyond what I know.”
“What do you mean?”
Mr. Winters thought for a moment. “I’m pretty good at math and can teach it well. But if Einstein needed help with his theory of relativity, I sure wouldn’t be the one to ask.” I heard footsteps down the hall, hurrying footsteps. “We’ll have to continue this later, dear heart. Don’t worry yourself too much.”
Don’t worry? The guy says I might disappear if I don’t learn to control my power and he tells me not to worry! Sheesh. “There’s one more thing,” I said. “I’m hearing humming at night, like a song.”
Mr. Winters’s eyes grew wide. “What?”
“Humming,” I repeated. The footsteps grew louder.
“Oh, my goodness,” Mr. Winters said. I felt a pang of fear. Why did he react that way? But my uncle stood at the door.
“My apologies, kind sir,” Mr. Winters said, leaping from his seat, suddenly back to his weird self. “Do not fault your precious charge for her tardiness. We were discussing math difficulties.”
“Yes, well, thank you for your diligence, Mr. Winters. But I must insist that on Fridays you do not delay my niece again.”
“Of course, of course,” Mr. Winters said jovially. He was once again shaking my uncle’s hand so vigorously that both their bodies bounced. “My deepest apologies.” Mr. Winters winked and gave me a reassuring smile. It didn’t make me feel any better.
I heard the humming at night again that weekend. I thought I was going crazy. In some ways, it was almost soothing, like a mother humming to her child. But it’s hard to feel soothed when you hear humming and no one else is in the room. All you feel is bonkers. I even turned on the lamp suddenly, as if there might be a twisted serial hummer on the loose, sneaking into kids’ rooms at night to hum his crazy songs, and I might catch him in the act. But there was nothing, no one. I was desperate to talk to Mr. Winters, to find out why he reacted the way he did. I asked Gus to take me to school early on Monday. But when I arrived, there was no Mr. Winters. “Out sick,” according to the substitute teacher, a frightening-looking old woman with a giant mole on the tip of her nose that made it look like her body was trying to grow more nose.
“Do you know when he’ll be back?” I asked, frantic. We were only two weeks away from Christmas, so maybe he had to report to the North Pole. But surely Mr. Winters wouldn’t just leave without some sort of explanation, without saying goodbye. How could he just abandon me like that?
“I’m sure I wouldn’t know, young lady,” she snapped, the mole seeming to quiver on the end of her nose. “I’m not psychic.” Psycho maybe, I thought, probably unfairly. But she didn’t need to be so hateful. And she was just as nasty the rest of the day. After a weekend of no sleep and worrying I was losing my mind, and now panicked about Mr. Winters’s abrupt disappearance, I’d had enough. When I sneezed and the teacher yelled, “Quiet!” I snapped. Let’s just say it was not my finest moment.
“I can’t help sneezing, you Old Mole Nose!” I yelled. And I slammed my fist on my desk in a rage. What I said was terrible enough, but that wasn’t the worst of it. Hitting my desk created a weird air disturbance, like some sort of invisible wave. The blast knocked Old Mole Nose backward on her rolling chair, and she slammed into the chalkboard. The pull-down map snapped upward. And when it did, the map string caught the back of her hair and yanked it off her head. She wore a wig! Amelia put her hand to her mouth in shock. Most of the class was too stunned to laugh. Except Vincent, of course. He cackled and whispered, “You’re in for it now, Christmas Carol.” Old Mole Nose felt the top of her bare head. She shrieked, leaping out of her chair and pointing at the door. “Principal’s office, young lady! I’ll have you suspended. I don’t care who your uncle is.”
I wasn’t angry anymore. I was frightened. I could have really hurt her. Was this the power Mr. Winters worried would consume me? I gathered up my books and walked, in silence, out of the classroom. I didn’t want to look at Old Mole Nose, or Amelia, or anyone else. I didn’t want to go home and face my uncle. I didn’t want to be a Defender and have these strange powers I couldn’t control. I didn’t want to be who I apparently was. I needed to talk to someone. I needed a friend. And I’d been so distracted by all that was happening to me, I realized I’d neglected Amelia for the past week. I hadn’t once invited her to my house after school. And at lunch that day, I’d practically ignored her, so much so that Amelia snapped, “If you’re going to be such a gloomy stick-in-the-mud, I’ll find better company.” So the one person who could make me feel better had stormed off.
Walking down the empty hallway toward the principal’s office, feeling miserable and more alone than I ever had, I looked up. Standing in front of me, silhouetted against the light from the front windows, stood Mr. Winters, the person I feared had abandoned me. I stopped. I wanted to be angry with him for not being there that day when I needed him most. But I was so relieved that I ran to hug him. Before I could, however, he stopped me with the look in his eye. “The time has come, dear heart,” he said quietly. “Santa needs you.”
Then he turned and hurried down the hall. I hesitated, terrified to take that first step, knowing it would change my life forever. I looked around to see if anyone was watching. I was alone. I took a deep breath, dropped my books, and followed him.
Ready or not, I was now a Defender of Claus.
CHAPTER 6
Making a Pole Vault
I barfed the first time we made the “Pole vault.” That’s what Mr. Winters called our trip to the North Pole. I still don’t get how it works. Something about bending time and space, the curvature of the earth, traveling a straight line instead of along a curve. Whatever. It made me puke.
We executed the Pole vault behind Broward Academy, out of sight of any witnesses. Mr. Winters took my hands and said, “Hold on!” I closed my eyes, opened them briefly to see the world around me stretched and bent all at the same time, closed them once more, and then when I opened my eyes again, we were standing at the North Pole. I immediately deposited the remains of my fish stick/tater tot/green bean school lunch in the snow. Lovely. Mr. Winters patted me gently on the back as I bent over. “Happens to all of us, dear heart.”
I wiped my mouth and looked around. Snow covered everything, weighing down the green pines, piled high on every building, burying mysterious objects that formed large lumps in the landscape. We stood in front of a huge log house, plainly built, but inviting. A soft light glowed in the windows. A pine wreath with red ribbons hung on the front door. A mailbox with the name CLAUS stenciled in red letters stood at the end of a walkway to the house. I wondered who in the world delivered Santa’s mail; I’d have to ask about that later.
To our left stood a giant structure that looked like a
barn. The snow was trampled in front, and I wondered if that was where the reindeer lived. It was bitter cold. My breath steamed in front of me. But just like in New York, it didn’t bother me much, even though I wore only a red, short-sleeved shirt and white pants. As I watched Mr. Winters approach the front door, my heart raced. I couldn’t believe it. I was standing at the North Pole! Where Santa Claus lives! His house looked just like I’d imagined, all homey and welcoming, as if its doors would open to anyone. But did I truly belong here? I felt paralyzed, nervous, even a little frightened.
“Come inside, m’lady,” Mr. Winters called. The sound of his voice made me jump, and suddenly it was as if someone had started a movie in my brain. The snow, the cold, those words—they triggered something. I heard my mother’s voice calling from the front door of our snow-covered house in Syracuse, “Come inside, Carol!” I remembered Dad running past Mom and stomping through the deep snow, scooping me up and laughing, my mother just shaking her head and going back into the house. “You see that, Angel Butt? Mean old Mommy wants us to go inside.” And I smiled, remembering the silly nickname my father always called me. I remembered the two of us making snow angels and Dad shaking the snow out of his white-streaked red hair, the hair I now knew signified what he was. We stared up at the gray sky, knowing Mom would have two cups of steaming hot chocolate inside, marshmallows floating like tiny buoys. I remembered tearing into my gifts on Christmas morning, opening the package with the beautifully carved wooden Santa, while my parents watched and smiled. I remembered setting that Santa on the table next to my bed, looking at it every night before I fell asleep. I remembered what it was like to be five and feel safe and have two people love you more than anything in the world. It all came back to me in a rush, and my eyes welled with tears. Mr. Winters looked at me. “Are you OK, m’lady?”
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