North Pole Reform School (12 page)

“Luke, don’t.” I snort.

He shrugs and shoots me a grin.

“Don’t worry, Rudolph has special instructions to always do
that as far as Joe is concerned.” Winter laughs.

CHAPTER 18

We don’t tell anyone about our morning with the
reindeer. It feels special and I want to keep it to myself. Luke just laughs
and rolls his eyes.

“I’m glad you had fun,” he says.

We’re still together for toy-making duty that afternoon.
Navi directs us to the biggest factory in the main square with the advice that
a chain is only as strong as three frogs in a palm tree.

Most of the places here surprise me when I walk in. This one
doesn’t. If you have ever seen a Christmas movie set in the North Pole, you
have seen the toy-making factory. There are lines and lines of elves. Some at
conveyor belts, some sitting at desks with wooden hammers, some driving
forklift trucks from one spot to another. It’s organised chaos with a
soundtrack of Chilly Chunes Radio, which I immediately recognise as it blares
out through the sound system.

The elf who greets us inside the door frowns at us. “I hope
you’re better workers than the other ones we’ve been sent from your group.”

“Ah, yes,” Luke says. “Do you have a lot of ducks here?”

“None at all, but one of your lot seemed to think we were
hiding them all over the place. You’re not going to start unwrapping boxes to
look for ducks, are you?”

“I’ll try to contain myself.” Luke beams at her.

The elf mutters something unintelligible and directs us to our
duties. Luke is sent to the conveyor belts and I watch as another elf comes
along and starts explaining things to him. The first elf herds me over to an
empty desk and hands me a wooden hammer.

“These two will explain everything,” she growls before stomping
away.

The elves at the desks on either side of mine suddenly
squeal in delight.

“Ooooh, a human,” one of them squeaks.

“How exciting,” the other one says.

“I don’t think she thought so.” I nod towards the elf that
just walked away.

“Oh, pay no mind to her. That’s Frosti. Frosti by name,
frosty by nature, that’s what I always say.”

“Personally I think she’s still ticked off that she has to
share her name with a snowman.”

“I’m Peppermint.” The one on the right leans over and shakes
my hand. “That’s Eggnog.”

Eggnog leans over and shakes my hand too. “We’re sisters.
Peppermint and Eggnog, just like the traditional Christmas drinks, see?”

I nod. One thing I have noticed is that elves are very fond
of shaking hands.

“What’s your name?”

“Mistletoe,” I tell them begrudgingly.

“Oooooh, how lovely!” They squeal in unison. “Just like one
of us.”

“That’s half the problem,” I mutter under my breath. “It’s
just Misty.”

“Mistletoe is much nicer. Just like a proper elf.”

“I’m not an elf. Mistletoe is bloody embarrassing in the
real world.”

“This is the real world too,” Eggnog says. “Just not the
same version of real that you’ve grown up with.”

I suppose so. I hadn’t really thought of it like that
before. I’m still not sure this is real. It could be some elaborate dream.
Maybe I’m in a coma and this is a coma dream. I realise that in all the days
I’ve been here, I have only been accepting all this. Not believing in it.
Accepting it because there is no other explanation.

“Break’s over,” Peppermint says as the other elves at the
desks of the line I’m in start moving.

I pick up my wooden hammer, still unsure of what I’m
supposed to do with it. I have a quick glance around for Luke, but he’s leaning
over a conveyor belt and concentrating, so he doesn’t see me.

I notice Eggnog’s eyes are on me though, and I try to ignore
her.

The elves in my row are each doing something to a single toy
and then passing it on to the elf next to them, who does something else to it
and then passes it on again. It looks like a well-oiled operation. More toys
have started their journey down the line, and by the time it gets to
Peppermint, I can tell it’s a wooden train. She fixes the axles and wheels onto
it and hands it over to me.

“Now, Mistletoe, all you have to do is join the carriages
together. Take a wooden dowel”—she pulls one out of a bowl sunken into my desk
that I hadn’t even noticed before—“and put it through the two holes, then
hammer it in. Then pass it on to Eggnog. She hand-finishes the filing and sends
it on to be painted.”

I know I’m slow and probably holding up this operation, but
I do as I’m told.

“Well done.” Peppermint praises me before the next train
comes down.

It’s not exactly exciting work, but it’s not difficult. You
barely have a moment to yourself before the elf next to you hands you yet
another train. There must be thousands of them in this room alone, because
there are many more rows of elves doing the same as we are doing. I realise the
trains are coming from the conveyor belt where Luke is working, and I look
around for him again, but he’s still busy.

“So where do all these toys go?” I ask.

“They’re for the children, of course,” Eggnog says.

“What, all of them?”

“Well, we don’t really need to keep a thousand toy trains at
the North Pole.”

“No, I mean, do all the children get a wooden train? Even
the girls?”

Peppermint giggles. “Oh, of course not, dear. We make lots
of different toys. It just happens that trains are on the agenda today.
Tomorrow we could be making dolls or stuffed animals.”

“Oh, right. And Santa delivers these toys on Christmas Eve?”

“You must’ve been studying,” Peppermint says.

“Of course he does,” Eggnog cuts in.

“But why?”

“Because he’s Santa,” she says like it’s the answer to
everything.

“And why do you do it? Do you get a good wage for working
here?”

“Oh, elves don’t need wages, dear,” Eggnog says.

“Seriously?”

“Of course. Why would we need wages?”

“To live on? So you can buy food and drink and other fun
things.”

“Mrs Claus feeds us. We have everything we need right here.
We don’t like to get involved with money like you humans do. We find it only
complicates things.”

I guess I can’t argue with that. For the first time I
realise that there are no shops here. I hadn’t really thought about it before,
hadn’t really considered the elves’ shopping habits, but they’re right. This is
the first time I’ve heard money mentioned since we got here.

“So where does Mrs Claus get her food from?”

“Well, you’d have to ask her that.”

“How about you? Don’t you ever, I don’t know, want a snack
when the kitchen isn’t open?”

“The kitchen is always open, my dear. Even if Mrs Claus
isn’t there, she leaves plenty of snacks for any elf who wants something.”

“But don’t you ever wish you could just go into your own
kitchen in your apartment and get something without having to put on your coat
and boots and trudge through the snow to the kitchen?”

“We enjoy walking. It’s nice to get out and socialise.”

I look around the factory. “Isn’t this social enough?”

They both let out a shriek of laughter. “We sit next to each
other, and we live together. We love doing this, but it’s just a job. Our
friends work in other departments, so we only see them outside working hours.”

“But how do you pay for things? Say you want to have a meal
with your friends. Don’t you have to pay?”

“Pay?” They laugh again. “Pay for food?”

“Mince pies cost money in our world.”

“Mrs Claus feeds us out of the goodness of her heart. She
would never expect to get paid.”

I admit that I can’t quite get my head around this. Surely
the only reason to do a menial job like this is so you can earn money to enjoy
life when you’re not at work. “How about things like your cable TV and
Internet? Don’t you have to pay for them?”

“Only Santa has the Internet in his headquarters. We have no
need for it. And we don’t get cable TV up here—we only have the North Pole
channels.”

“So we’ve discovered,” I mutter.

“Isn’t it simply wonderful? We can watch Christmas movies
every day of the year. And if we ever want a change, we can put the Chilly
Chunes music channel on. Don’t you just love it?”

“Not quite the term I’d use.”

“Oh, you humans are a riot. How can anyone not love
Christmas movies?”

I decide to ignore the question. “So why do you do it?
Really?”

“Do what, dear?”

“This. Why do you come here every day and stick bits of wood
into handmade trains if you aren’t getting paid for it?”

“Because it makes people happy.”

“Who? Not you, surely?”

“I don’t mind it too much. I like to keep my hands busy.”

“We do it for the children,” Eggnog says. “To make them
happy on Christmas morning.”

“But why? I don’t understand why you would come here every
day and do this when the people you’re doing it for are a bunch of snotty,
ungrateful buggers who probably don’t even believe in you.”

“Is doing something for the benefit of someone else really
such a foreign concept to you humans? No wonder you ended up in the reform
group.”

“No, of course not, but—”

“Elves do a lot of selfless things for other people. Life
isn’t all about you, you, you.”

“I didn’t say it was. I just don’t—”

“Some children don’t have anything else, did you know that?”

I shake my head.

“Some children wake up alone on Christmas morning. Some
children don’t have a family who loves or cares about them. Some can’t afford
food or drink, never mind presents. Some have illnesses that mean this could be
their last Christmas. It means the world to them to find a present under their
tree. You may have a blessed family life, but not everyone is like you. For
some children, this present might be the only sign they have that someone cares
about them. You moan and complain and consider yourself hard done by because
you have to share a room with your sister for a week and wear a sweater that
someone has painstakingly knitted for you even if it’s not exactly fashionable.
You complain because your relatives care about you enough to want to spend the
holidays with you. You’re a very lucky girl, Mistletoe. It’s just a shame that
you’re the only one who can’t see that.”

I swallow hard. I feel humiliated and ashamed.

“I’d never thought of it like that before.”

“Christmas is a very special time,” Eggnog says. “It means
so much to many people. It’s not okay that a few select people ruin it for
others. That’s why we have the reform school. You have to understand how much
Christmas matters to some people.”

I nod but don’t say anything. I feel a bit stupid actually.
She’s correct, of course. What right do I have to complain about my Christmas
when there are people out there who have nothing?

It makes me feel like a spoilt little girl, and I continue
putting dowels into train carriages silently.

The elves sing along to the radio. “Blue Christmas” comes on
and Peppermint and Eggnog do a well-practised duet. Everyone stops what they’re
doing to clap.

I look around and see that Luke has stopped to clap too. He
salutes me with a wink as everyone goes back to work.

It makes me smile.

“You like him,” Eggnog says.

“No, I…”

“I can tell,” she says. “You keep looking at him.”

“And now you can’t stop smiling,” Peppermint adds.

“I just…”

I do though. I do like him, but this isn’t exactly the time
or the place.

The elves are looking at me expectantly.

“We’ve been spending a lot of time together. They put us on
the same schedules, so we’ve been together every day.”

“And why do you think they did that?”

I shrug.

“Tinsel and Navi don’t do anything without a reason.”

“He’s the elf boy, right?”

“How do you know all this stuff?”

“Well, firstly, we work in a factory. Gossip is our
lifeblood around here,” Peppermint jokes. “And secondly, that hat doesn’t
exactly hide his ears.”

“He hates his ears. He thinks they gave him a hat that
purposefully makes them more obvious.”

“Tinsel and Navi don’t do anything that doesn’t have a
reason behind it,” Eggnog repeats. “If they’ve put you and Luke together, then
they’ve done it because you’re meant to be together. Maybe you’re meant to help
each other. Elves have very good perception. Even if they themselves don’t know
why yet, you’re together for a reason.”

“I don’t know how you can say that. I’d never seen him
before we came here. There’s no way we are
meant
to be anything.”

“He clearly likes you back.”

“Really?” I ask, blushing because I can’t help the grin that
breaks across my face.

“We elves notice things. You might not have noticed, but
Luke has spent this afternoon looking at you just as much as you’ve been looking
at him. Think about that, Mistletoe.”

I have been thinking about it. About Luke, I mean. How can I
think about anything else when the only time we’re not together is at night?

He’s cute, yes. But it’s more than that. At first I thought
it was just a shared dislike of Christmas and being the only two people of our
age stuck in this place. I feel something with him that I haven’t felt with
anyone before. But then I start thinking that it’s
only
because we’re stuck here together. Maybe I’m just projecting my feelings onto
him because he’s nice and there’s no one else here. Would it be the same in the
outside world? If we weren’t stuck in this situation together, would Luke have
even looked twice at me? I doubt it.

And it can’t go on. One day, very soon I hope, we’re going
to get out of here. He’ll go back to his life and I’ll go back to mine, and
I’ll probably never see him again. I don’t even know where he lives. He could
live on the other side of the country to me.

When we get let off wooden-train-making duty, we walk to the
dining hall with all the elves from the factory, so I don’t get a chance to be
alone with Luke.