by Caleb Huett
“How did you know which storage unit they were in?” I was amazed.
Celia shrugged. “I’ve got a really good memory.” She paused. “Oh, wow.”
“What?” I asked.
She held up one of the suits. My mouth fell open.
“Oh, wow.”
“That’s what I’m saying.” She sighed. “It’s the best we’ve got, though.”
We had to be at the mailroom long before our usual wake-up time the next morning. I braced myself for laughter as we walked toward the small crowd of contestants gathered around the doors, but it was so dark no one could see our suits from far away. The doors were still locked, apparently, so the other Santa hopefuls were doing last-minute stretches or talking nervously among themselves. On the outside, the mailroom warehouse was pretty boring: a huge gray rectangle. On the inside, it would be an ocean of stamps and children’s handwriting.
“Nice outfits.” Kurt, leaning against a candy-striped street light away from the crowd, was the first to see us. He was wearing a full-body brown jumpsuit under a new leather jacket, a bright red one with CHRISTMAS CHRIMINAL stitched into the back. He laughed—or at least I thought it was a laugh. Whatever you’d call a tch noise released through a sneer.
“Thanks, Kurt!” I yelled, too loud. I was determined to stay positive.
Bright lights came on around the entrance of the mailroom. Kurt ran a comb through his coiffed black hair and kicked off of the pole.
“Guess it’s time to go,” he mumbled. He took the piece of candy cane out of his mouth and rubbed the saliva off in the palm of his hand. Then he tucked the cane into the box in his breast pocket. “You comin’, kittens?”
I followed him. Celia’s eyes were staring hard at the ground. If she had stayed there longer, I’m pretty sure her glare would have melted snow. She hurried to catch up with us.
As we approached the crowd, more than a few people turned and snickered at us. Under the powerful lights in front of the mailroom, our outfits were uncomfortably obvious: I was wearing a skintight superhero suit covered in pictures of babies cuddling with puppies, and Celia’s was covered with kittens wearing bows on their heads. And then, of course, we both had big goggles on our foreheads.
“Check out the superdorks!” Buzz called from somewhere in the middle of the crowd. Laughter bubbled up from the elves.
Stay positive. Stay positive. Stay positive, part of me thought.
I am positive that I want to destroy Buzz and turn him into death glitter, the other part of me thought.
What color is death glitter? a third part was wondering.
Probably like red, black, and a dark purple, the first part suggested.
I ended up shouting, “At least we’re prepared!”
The big elf shrugged. He was wearing a denim vest and shorts. That was it. He was ignoring the letter’s advice on purpose, of course. I also saw he was wearing a belt with two big holsters, one on either side, but I couldn’t make out what was in them.
I looked around the crowd while they blinked and rubbed their eyes under the light. Klaus, Sally, and Bertrand were off to the side, away from the crowd, in matching outfits that looked like the sort of thing you’d wear at a boot camp. Bertrand’s was too big, and the long sleeves hung over his hands. Sally was reading The Merry Mailroom Manual, her eyes flitting quickly across the last few pages before she ran out of time. Klaus paced and lectured the other two about strategy.
“The mailroom is a key part of the Christmas process,” Klaus explained. “The Wish Generator only picks up verbal wishes, so the mailroom—”
“Helps us get power from all wishes, even the ones kids are embarrassed to say out loud.” Sally waved the book at him. “I know. I read. And Bertrand knows more about the Wish Generator than you do, Klaus.”
Bertrand nodded. “I’ve input thousands of letters into it myself!”
“Yes, but I’m the only one of us who has worked in the mailroom before, which means I’ll be the leader. It’s more difficult than you think. For example, it’s not actually in perfect alphabetical order, and …”
I moved away and stopped listening. Several other humans stuck out above the crowd of elves, all extended Claus family. I had seen some of them around town the past few days, but Maria Duende was flitting about and asking them to identify themselves like they had just arrived. She shoved right past us—the camerawoman nearly knocked us over—and stuck her microphone in the face of … well, definitely the strangest sixteen-year-old I’d ever seen.
“Ah, yes, I’m Ramp Claus,” this very strange human explained. He stroked a long white beard that reached down to his knees. His back was stooped over with a hunch. He had very baggy pants sagging slightly off his hips, and when he shifted his legs they looked very, very skinny. On top of his head, a dark black toupee rested awkwardly between his ears. He was also wearing sunglasses even though it was hardly bright out.
“Nice to meet you, Ramp!” Maria Duende had on her biggest, brightest, reporteriest smile. “The contest rules state that you must be sixteen or younger to enter. How old are you?”
Ramp leaned in to the microphone and cleared his throat. “I’m, hm, well, I’m sixteen.” There was no hint of a joke on his face. “Just had my birthday last week.” The reporter’s smile faltered for a second. Then she returned, bright as ever.
“That’s a very long white beard for a sixteen-year-old!”
“It runs in the Claus family, you know. As luck would have it, I’ve got my birth certificate right here.” He pulled a rolled-up piece of parchment out of his pocket and handed it to Maria Duende. She opened it. “And also an extensive, illustrated family tree that explains exactly how I’m related to the Claus family.” He pulled out another, larger scroll and handed it to her. “And moreover, I have numerous anecdotes about how well I know the family. Why, one time—”
“That won’t be necessary.” She glanced over his paperwork. “This does seem to be in order. Do you mind if I ask: Why the sunglasses?”
Ramp grinned. He was missing several teeth.
“Why, because they are hip and cool! I am always fly, as the kids—uh, as … we say. You know—kids like me. Just like me. A kid. In fact, just the other day, someone pointed right at me and said, Look at that kid!”
Celia raised her eyebrows at me. “Can you believe that guy?” she whispered.
I wasn’t sure what to say. He definitely didn’t look like a kid to me—but then again, if he was a kid, you had to feel sorry for him, looking like that. And also—I squinted at his face—something about him looked familiar.
“Maria Duende said his birth certificate looked real, so …” I trailed off. Celia shrugged. The front doors opened, and a tall, broad reindeer sauntered out with a sour expression in his eyes and a tired tilt to his antlers. He wore a military-style hat covered in medals that signified his service in many, many Christmases. He also had a red nose.
As we all hushed and watched, Rudolph snorted, and the reindeer-language translator around his neck piped a monotone robotic voice across the crowd.
“What a sorry bunch of Santa wannabes,” the voice droned. “I’ve seen all sorts of Santas in my time, and they all looked more capable the day they were born than any of you lot.”
“Why is he being so mean?” I whispered to Celia, and then immediately knew I shouldn’t have.
Rudolph’s ears swiveled toward me before his head did. “Did I sound like I was done talking, wannabe?” he shouted by raising the volume level of the voice. Otherwise, it stayed monotone.
I shook my head vigorously. His hooves started clopping toward me, and the crowd parted so he could bring his snout right up to my face.
“Well? Did I?”
“Uh, no. No, sir. No, Rudolph, sir.”
His nostrils flared, and his nose grew bright.
“What’s your name, wannabe?” The robot voice got quieter as he approached, which actually made it scarier.
“Ollie, sir. Ollie Gnome.”
“Gnome. I see.” He turned his body around—a slow process for an old creature with four legs—and the volume of his voice rose again. “Well, thanks to Gnome, you’re all running a lap around the mailroom. Now.”
Klaus, who was standing at the front of the crowd with Sally and Bertrand, bristled.
“Before the test?” he protested. “That’s almost two miles!”
Rudolph bobbed his head in a nod. “Thank you, Klaus, for reminding me.” He shifted his head, a gleam in his eye. “Make that TWO laps! NOW! Everybody MOVE!”
We all took off running. Several other competitors pushed me, mumbling something about ruining their morning. Celia patted me on the back.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “He would have made us do this no matter what.”
I wasn’t sure anybody else thought so. An elf in a light-up vest ran ahead of me, and the lights on the back spelled out THANKS FOR NOTHING, JERK. He was even shorter than I was, and the vest was tiny, so it took a while for all the words to scroll past. Afterward, he turned around and ran backward.
“Did you see what it said?” he asked.
I sighed. “Yes, Luther. I saw it.”
“I meant it!” He stuck his little tongue out at me and then ran ahead. Luther’s kind of rude, but he’s mostly harmless. I thought about saying something back, but a snowball smacked me in the side of the head.
“Nice one, Dollie,” Buzz jeered. I pushed to run ahead of him, but he caught up easily and tripped me with his foot. I stumbled into Ramp, who pushed me up.
Ramp shook his head as I regained my balance. “Bunch of whiners, if you ask me,” he said. “In my day, I had to run all the way to and from the candy store, full sack of candy on my back, uphill both ways. Never broke a sweat!”
Celia narrowed her eyes at him. “When was your day?” she asked.
“Wednesday,” he responded immediately. “My day was last Wednesday. I’m in the best shape of my young life! Bring on the running, I say. Don’t worry about upsetting the nose-beast, kiddo.”
“Uh, thanks,” I said. “I think?”
We weren’t the quickest (we were competing against humans, whose legs were, you know, longer) and we weren’t the slowest (we were competing against humans, who spend more time thinking about running than actually running), but we slowed down when we realized Ramp was falling way behind.
“Are you okay?” Celia was able to walk alongside his jog. He was wheezing pretty badly.
“Never better!” He barely finished the words before he was coughing. Celia and I exchanged a look, then set ourselves up on either side of him, giving him some support. It made us a lot slower, but made him a lot faster. We carried most of his weight around the rest of the way … and ended up the very last three to cross at the end.
“Thank you,” Ramp mumbled between ragged breaths while we turned the final corner. “You’re the best friends a sixteen-year-old boy could hope for.”
Rudolph shot us a look that made it clear we had taken too long.
“Well,” the reindeer said, “it looks like we have our last team.”
“Team?” I looked around. Other contestants had sorted themselves into groups of three.
“You three are all that’s left. You’ll be braving the mailroom together. Gather around!” The teams tightened up into a circle around Rudolph. As he spoke, he paced around the inside of the circle.
“As you may know, all Santas start in the mailroom. Normally you have several years working here to prove you can handle the pressure, but since Santa has decided to throw everything out of whack this year, we’ve had to find ways to speed up the process.”
While he explained the challenge to us, I glanced around at the other teams. Klaus, Sally, and Bertrand had joined together—one of the older two had probably carried Bertrand. Buzz was on a team with Kurt and one of the Claus cousins, a very pale girl with short red hair and freckles. I recognized, also, a team of three elves who had been working the mailroom since before I was there: Goldie, Frank, and Myrle. They were triplets, two boys and a girl, and always wore the same clothes, so you could never tell who was who. Today, they were wearing the typical mailroom uniform, a light blue jumpsuit.
An older elf was walking around the outside of the circle with a huge stocking, handing out hats that looked just like Santa’s. Another was passing out something small to each team.
Rudolph went on: “Once you’re in there, your goal is to sort as much mail as possible. To aid in keeping score, you each have a different stamp to label the letters you sort.” I tested the stamp on my hand—it was a picture of Santa on a beach, lounging under an umbrella and drinking something cold through a straw.
Celia whispered to me, “The mailroom uses traditional stamps with a wooden handle, but there’s a mechanism inside releasing ink to make sure it never dries out. I did some research when I found out we were coming here.”
“I understand a few of you have worked the mailroom before,” Rudolph acknowledged. Klaus looked especially smug at this. The triplets smiled, glancing at each other. “Well, you can forget what you think you know. This mailroom is nothing like what you’re used to. So don’t get too comfortable.” Klaus’s face fell. I honestly felt bad for him; it must have been rough, to suddenly be competing for a title you thought you’d already won. “And that’s not all!”
The door opened again. A big wheel squeaked over the floor inside, then crunched the snow as it rolled out in front of us. Atop the wheel was a giant human child—or at least something that was maybe trying to look like a human child. It had the one big wheel instead of legs, thin metal arms, and hands that looked like one of those grabber-claw toys. It had a huge steel head with a bright, smiling face painted on it. Its mouth was flat and opened like a ventriloquist dummy’s.
Everyone looked immediately creeped out by this monster … except for Rudolph. He continued, “In the field, Santa has to be able to avoid detection at all costs. Even a brief encounter with a human child can throw off his finely tuned delivery schedule.”
The elf that had been passing out hats changed into a big yellow suit that covered his whole body. He placed the Santa hat on top of his head, over the suit, and the child-bot instantly noticed him.
“Is that you, Santa?” it asked without moving its mouth. Its voice was quiet and sweet, like a little girl’s. “Santa, it is you!”
The child-bot’s mouth dropped open, and flames poured out of it, enveloping the elf. After a moment, the child-bot stopped. Instead of a hat, there was a small pile of soot on top of the elf’s suit. The elf unzipped it, stepped out, and gave a thumbs-up. He was sweaty but fine.
I was suddenly very glad we had worn the super-suits. As long as we didn’t get blasted in the head, we’d be okay. I glanced at Buzz. He didn’t look nervous at all, the jerk. Kurt, too, was smirking. They were the only ones in the whole crowd who didn’t look surprised. Even their third teammate looked uncomfortable.
“That’s the game,” Rudolph finished. “Stamp it, sort it, don’t get caught. Only half of you will make it forward according to how much mail you sort. You can leave at any time, but you have to leave in two hours. Starting in three … two …” He paused. All the teams got even tenser than they’d been before. “Almost forgot. Lose your hat and you’re out. Even if your team wins. Hats on!”
There was a quiet shuffling as everyone put on their Santa hats.
“One.”
The doors scraped against the ground as they swung open. We were one of the last teams to rush inside, since Ramp couldn’t really move at much more than a hobble.
“Sorting mail?” Ramp croaked as we neared the door. “Why, if that’s all it takes to be Santa, I’ll be holding that Kringle in no time!”
Celia and I exchanged a look. He had no idea what the mailroom was like.
“The mailroom is way bigger than—” I started, but Celia cut me off with a look that said, Let him see for himself. When we stepped through the door, he did.
We all did.
The mailroom was dark. Very dark. This was the first immediate difference from normal. From what we could see, there were overhead lights hanging from the ceiling at equal intervals all the way up and down the warehouse that left big patches of darkness between spots that were very brightly lit. We could hear the squeak of the child-bot wheels moving around, but none of those awful machines were visible to us at the entrance.
We couldn’t see very far into the room because there were thick walls, probably around fifteen feet tall, forming three different paths into the mailroom. To our left and right were mountains of mail with mailbags lying in a heap between them. Some teams were still scooping mail into their bags, lagging behind others who had already run into the maze.
I checked the perimeter walls: The mail slots were still there, so at least that was normal. There were slots up and down the mailroom’s tall walls all the way back. Each was connected to a tube that sucked the letters underground and then redistributed them to the proper departments at The Workshop, Wish Generator, or Claus Castle. On the far wall of the mailroom were slots for every individual citizen of the North Pole as well; the tubes would take mail directly to our houses or apartments.
There was a lot of mail here.
A LOT of mail.
And not a lot of time.
Celia took charge. “We’ll have to open the letters and figure out where they go as quickly as possible. Ollie, you should do that, since you’ve done it before. I studied the mail-slot organization last night, so I can make sure we get to the right departments quickly.” Celia kept her voice down, to avoid attracting child-bots. She looked to Ramp, who was scooping letters into a bag. “Ramp, we have to keep from getting burned, so you’re on child watch.”
