Top Elf

by Caleb Huett

  “Sorry, sir! I’m not the towel boy!” I yelled as I ran toward the hole. “I hope you find one, though!”

  Attached to the edge of the hole was a rope ladder. I took a deep breath and climbed down into the darkness, moving slowly since I couldn’t see the rungs. The hole was only just big enough to fit my body through, so I was squished by gross damp walls on all sides, and everything smelled like a toilet. About ten feet down, I felt the space open up and the floor under my foot, so I stood up and looked around. Even with my eyes adjusted, I couldn’t see anything, so I focused and changed my suit’s color to a dim light.

  The gentle glow revealed not one but two Franks napping in sleeping bags. I moved closer to one of them to light up her face: a rash. I moved to the other one and lit up her face: no mole. I finally understood. I knew there was only one possibility:

  Goldie and Myrle were pretending to be Frank.

  That’s why she was so calm about her brothers losing the racing challenge; now they could cheat together. And since they all worked in the mailroom, they had access to the underground service tunnels at the North Pole. One of them must have snuck in and set up this little camp for the challenge.

  Before I could decide what to do with this information, one of the Franks blinked open their eyes and shouted, “Turn that light off, Frank!”

  I quickly turned my suit’s light off, so we were in complete darkness.

  “That’s not Frank, Goldie. I’m Frank. That’s Myrle.” The other one turned over and faced the wall.

  “I thought Frank just left to go eat. Musta slept longer than I realized. And I’m Myrle! Aren’t you Goldie?”

  “No, I’m Frank.” I heard a rustle as she turned back to face me. “Goldie, I don’t think that’s Myrle.”

  “I know that’s not Myrle. I’m Myrle!”

  “Nah, I mean, I don’t think that’s Goldie or Myrle.”

  “So it’s Frank?”

  “No, I’m Frank! That’s somebody else altogether!”

  “No it isn’t!” I said, trying to fake my voice like theirs. “You think I’m … some kinda twerp?”

  “I think you’re Myrle.”

  “He can’t be Myrle, you idiot! HowmanytimesIgottatellya: I. Am. Myrle.”

  “Fine then: Tell me somethin’ only Myrle would know.”

  I cleared my throat. “One of us has gotta go eat,” I said. “Who cares who it is?”

  “Fine, I’ll go.” Goldie—or Myrle? Or maybe Frank?—got up and pushed past me to the ladder. She climbed up and out, and I waited until she reached the top before I climbed up quickly, too.

  The new Frank was still yawning and rubbing her eyes as she walked over to the benches, so she didn’t notice the other Frank already sitting there. I ran up behind them and yelled:

  “HEY, EVERYBODY, LOOK! THERE’S TWO FRANKS!”

  The contestants gasped. Frank and Frank looked at each other. One of the Franks put her face in her hands.

  Chef crossed his arms and frowned.

  “You buncha idiots.” One Frank advanced on the other. “We had a system!”

  “You’re the idiot. You just came down and told me to leave, Myrle.”

  “I’m not Myrle. I’m Goldie.”

  Not this again.

  “I don’t care who you are! Now none of us are gonna be Santa!” One Frank punched the other Frank in the arm, and then the other Frank pulled the first Frank’s hair. They pushed each other onto the table and sent cookies and milk flying everywhere. Chef came up onstage and used his hand, now a spatula, to push them away from each other.

  “Yer all disqualified.” His hand morphed into tongs, and he grabbed both Franks by their collars. “The rest of yeh, get eatin’! Lunch is at stake!” At steak, I thought.

  I sat back down and stared at the small pile of cookies I still had left. Ramp was snoring, asleep on a pillow of uneaten cookies. Buzz was a few cookies ahead, but even he slowed down around the hundred and fiftieth. Celia had used her suit to build a little chisel and was breaking the cookies into very, very small pieces before eating them.

  I focused and loosened the belt of my suit. I picked up a cookie and stared into its chocolate chips.

  Leave me alone! I imagined the chocolate chip begging. Just put me back down on the plate and let me live!

  Buzz took another big bite and groaned.

  “I can’t!” I apologized. “I have to keep fighting to the end!”

  “Stop talking to the—urp—cookies, Ollie.” Celia shook her head at me. “It only makes it harder. I figured that out—blech—earlier.”

  “Me and macadamia nuts had a thing going for a while,” Kurt interjected, equally loopy. “But in the end, you always have to eat them.”

  Klaus glared over his substantial plate of cookies. “Are you crying?”

  “Everything crumbles. That’s just life, man.”

  I took another bite and felt like I was going to throw it all back up. “I never guessed the hardest thing about being Santa would be all the cookies.”

  “Speak for yourself!” Buzz yelled, too loudly. “This is muscle fuel!!!” He put three cookies in his mouth at once and chomped down on them. “THESE COOKIES AREN’T GONNA BRING BUZZ BROWNIE DOWN!”

  He caught all the big crumbs as they fell and put those in his mouth, too. I looked at my plate. Only ten cookies left. I grabbed a snickerdoodle and broke it into halves, and then quarters, and then gently placed one of the quarters on my tongue.

  “RAAAAUGUUGHHHH!!!” Buzz tilted his plate into the air and poured the final four cookies into his mouth. With a final burst of energy, he crunched like a lawn mower, eating up every bit left on the plate.

  Chef, back from kicking out the triplets, lifted Buzz’s hand in the air with his tongs. “We’ve got our champion! Congrats, Brownie! Free lunch fer a whole year!”

  I let out a sigh of relief and pushed my plate away. Buzz rolled backward off the bench and curled up on the ground. “I’m never eating again.”

  This time, the eating bench was replaced with a huge lit stage, complete with several instruments propped up and waiting in the back. Directly in the center and all the way at the front was a microphone. A bigger surprise, though, was the crowd; most of the North Pole must have shown up for this challenge.

  “What do you think’s going on?” I asked.

  Buzz raised his eyebrows at me. “You haven’t heard?”

  Celia frowned. “Heard what?”

  “Pa-rumpa-pum-pum, y’all!” came a voice. A platform slowly raised someone up from under the stage. The huge crowd behind us, barely held back by Santa’s Secret Helpers, yelled things like NO WAY! and Oh, holy COW!!!

  “It’s LDB,” I said. “The LDB. I can’t believe it. Why is he here? What’s going on?!”

  “Who’s LDB?” Celia asked.

  “Where have you been?!”

  The platform finished rising all the way up, and there he was: LDB. He was a tall, bulky human with dangly earrings that looked like miniature drumsticks. Around his neck was a big thick chain necklace with a small drum hanging in the center of his chest. He already had his arms outstretched like he was receiving the crowd’s cheers directly into his body.

  I couldn’t help it; I screamed a little, too. Celia rolled her eyes at me.

  “I don’t really listen to Top Forty,” she yelled over the noise.

  “Your loss!” I yelled back. She laughed.

  LDB cleared his throat. “Come through, they told me!”

  The crowd responded, “PA-RUMPA-PUM-PUM!”

  LDB was the North Pole music-producer-slash-pop-star. He sang in, rapped in, and/or produced every major track of the last year. (He was known best for his beats. They were very good.)

  “I have the pleasure,” he paused for a moment, relishing the sudden silence, “of telling y’all about the next trial. Y’all wanna hear it?”

  The crowd screamed again, even louder. Someone yelled, “I LOVE YOU LDB!” and LDB yelled back, “COOL, THANKS.” H
e stretched his arms out, palms down, and the crowd quieted down.

  “The third official Santa Trial is …” He paused for a looooong time again, and you could feel everybody even lean forward a little. “A grueling test of your abilities. It’s …” He tapped the drum on his chest with his fingers, and everybody leaned forward even farther. “Gonna drive y’all crazy. In fact, it’s …” He leaned toward us a little, and the whole crowd leaned forward so far that a lot of them fell over. “A singing competition!”

  The crowd went nuts. The eight of us, however, got very quiet.

  “This is why our suits needed to be ‘prepared for anything’?” Buzz mumbled. I didn’t even realize he was standing behind me. “I’ve been prepared for this since I was born.”

  “You perform?” Celia asked.

  Buzz blushed. “Sort of. I’ve taken dance lessons since I was a kid.”

  A realization hit me. “You were in LDB’s music video, ‘Santa Claus Is Coming to the Club.’ You were wearing a mask, but I always thought—”

  “Shhh.” Buzz covered my mouth with his hand. “Just … don’t make a big deal out of it, alright? It’s embarrassing.”

  “Maybe you can help Celia,” I said. “She doesn’t know how to dance.”

  “Neither do you!” Celia protested.

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t stop me!” I waggled my fingers and shook my shoulders. “I’ve got the spirit.”

  “This isn’t a dance competition anyway,” Celia grumbled. “It’s a singing competition.”

  LDB continued explaining, “Each contestant will pick a song to perform, and you, the audience, will judge the winner using our patented Cheer-O-Meter judging system! The louder you cheer, the better they’ll do! Winner gets featured on my next album, but the loser’s out for good. Oh, and I almost forgot …” He banged the drum on his chest, and a group of reindeer in faux-leather jackets and crazy haircuts flew down from the sky.

  One with a bright red Mohawk sat at the drums and used his antlers to hit them. One with very long blue hair sat in front of a piano. The one who had somehow shaped his antlers into the outline of a mouth with a tongue sticking out went up to the microphone.

  Kurt was the first person to start screaming. “That’s Treason 4 the Season!!! I can’t believe they’re breaking their vow of silence!”

  His sleigh team? I’d never seen him this genuinely excited. He jumped up and down and pumped his fist.

  “Play ‘Christmas Chriminal’!” he yelled. I guess because I was closest to him, he grabbed my shoulders and shook me a foot off the ground. “It’s from their first album, which is amazing. They never play live anymore!” He dropped me and I tried to make dizzily teetering look cool and intentional.

  Treason 4 the Season starting playing. Kurt immediately started jumping up and down and thrashing his arms around to the music.

  “He’s never been this sincere about anything,” Celia said.

  I nodded. “It’s very weird.”

  As Kurt started mouthing the words along to a song about snowboarding, Celia scrunched up one side of her face and shrugged her shoulders. “Turns out he’s just been a big fanboy this whole time.”

  They gave us some time to pick our songs, and then one by one we went up and performed. Most of the contestants (including me) sang Christmas carols, of course. They were easy crowd-pleasers, and you could maybe trick the audience into singing along and contributing to your score. Andrea sang both parts of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” which was even more impressive than it sounds. Even I was moved to tears by her very convincing emotional performance of both roles.

  “She really can’t stay!” I explained to Celia with watery eyes.

  She patted me on the back. “I know, Ollie. I know.”

  “But it’s so cold.”

  Next Kurt walked onto the stage, and things got even more interesting.

  “I’m going to be singing Treason 4 the Season’s song ‘I Don’t Care If You Care (That I Care).’ ” He looked terrified, and his hands wouldn’t stop moving. He crunched a candy stick down to nothing very quickly while the band got ready.

  The reindeer with a Mohawk started hammering a beat out on the drums. The one with blue hair started playing an intro on the piano. The singer said, “ONE TWO THREE FOUR.”

  “I know—” Kurt’s voice faltered, and he cleared his throat. “You think that I—” His voice squeaked away, and he stopped completely. After a second, the band caught on and stopped playing.

  “Sorry, guys, I’m just—well, performing with you guys is a dream of mine, and I’m kind of nervous, so if we could … can we start over? Is that okay?”

  The reindeer with a Mohawk hammered out a beat again. The one with blue hair played the same intro. The singer said, “ONE TWO THREE FOUR.”

  “I know you think that I don’t think—” Kurt’s voice hiked up sharply a couple of octaves, and then he kept mouthing words but nothing seemed to be coming out. The band stopped again. Kurt’s face was turning bright red, and he was obviously sweating. He combed his hair back with one hand and fidgeted with the other one.

  “Sorry, I’m so sorry. Just one more time.”

  A hammered beat. A played intro. “ONE TWO THREE FOUR.”

  Nothing came out of the speakers but a garbled noise like a bird trying to scream at you.

  “Sorry, Kurt.” LDB’s voice washed over us. “I can’t let you start over anymore.”

  People in the crowd said, “Aww,” which added a few points to his score, but he definitely lost.

  “Whatever,” he said, and put a candy stick in his mouth. “Who even cares, anyway?”

  Before he could leave the stage, the lead singer of Treason tapped on the stage twice and a guitar rose out of the ground. The reindeer gestured to it, and Kurt stopped.

  “Me?” Kurt asked.

  The reindeer nodded.

  “Are you sure?”

  The reindeer nodded again, but Kurt still hesitated.

  The reindeer leaned over to the microphone. “You’ve got the music in you, bro. Who cares about the competition? Let’s rock.”

  I yelled through the silence, “You can do it!”

  Kurt laughed and nodded, surprised out of his nerves. He picked up the guitar and whispered something to the singer. He cleared his throat.

  “MY NAME IS KURT CLAUS, AND I WON’T BE SANTA BUT I WILL ROCK YOUR WORLD!” He played a few quick chords to open up the real version of “I Don’t Care If You Care (That I Care).” Fireworks flew out of his jacket and in the air spelled out KLAUS STILL WEARS WHITE SOCKS! The crowd cheered.

  “Was that all that was in his suit?” Celia asked.

  “I kind of hope so.” I couldn’t take my eyes away from his performance.

  Kurt was out of the competition, but he didn’t seem too sad about it. Andrea won. We spent the next few hours dancing and relaxing, which was nice for a change.

  A tall, hefty reindeer was waiting for us this time. He was the biggest reindeer I’d ever seen, with little stubby horns but huge, marble-slab hooves. I recognized him immediately.

  “That’s Brutalizer!” I whispered to Celia. “He’s the captain of the Abominable Throwmen!”

  “I know, Ollie. Everyone watches the Reindeer Games.”

  “He’s the toughest reindeer on the team! And the second-fastest flyer!”

  “I know that, too. He was on my draft team last year.”

  Oh, yeah. Celia always won the draft league. “It’s just statistics,” she would say. “And statistics is basically science.”

  “Morning, buds!” The voice coming from Brutalizer’s translator was kinder than I expected. He always looked so scary on the field, like he could kill you with one mean look. He wasn’t making any mean looks at us, just doing the closest thing to smiling a reindeer can do.

  “I’m going to tell all y’all a story.” Brutalizer shrugged his shoulders and look at the seven of us remaining. “I’ve always been pretty big. Being tough and strong came n
aturally to me, you know? And since I was already good at it, it was fun to get even tougher and bigger. But then when I tried out for the Reindeer Games, I got turned away for being too slow.”

  I gasped. Too slow? But he’s always so fast!

  “I tried to be a faster flyer, but I convinced myself over and over that it just wasn’t going to happen. It didn’t come naturally to me, so I gave up.” He kicked off the ground and lifted up into the sky. He did a barrel roll in one direction, then the other, then sped around us in a tight circle. “Took me a while to realize that you have to work twice as hard at the stuff you’re not already good at, but it’s worth it. Now I’m the second-fastest flyer in the Games, thanks to serious practice. Every. Single. Day. Today I’m going to show you what my practices are like.”

  Klaus scoffed, “So we’re just going to sit here and watch you practice?”

  Brutalizer laughed. He stomped on the ground with his hoof twice, and behind him the field came alive. Hoops and steps and targets and balls, some of them on fire, flew up into the sky and formed a course in the air. “You’re not going to watch. You’re coming with me.”

  A team of elves rushed in and started putting a saddle, helmet, and goggles on Brutalizer. They passed each of us a set of protective gear, too. The reindeer explained while he got suited up.

  “I’m going to do my daily flight training, like normal. Your job is to stay on my back no matter what. Anyone falls off—they’re out. Anyone gives up and asks me to stop—they’re out. Up in the air, Santa has to stay in sync with his reindeer. No one knows what’s going to happen once we’re flying, and light speed is very dangerous. Y’all got it?”

  I nodded along with everyone else. I saw one of the spinning hoops light on fire. We’re going to have to go through that?

  “Up first is Ollie Gnome. You ready?”

  I gulped. “Yes, sir.”

  Brutalizer laughed. “Please. Sir’s my father. Hop on.”

  I clambered onto his back and wrapped my hands around the horn of the saddle.