North Pole Reform School

by Admans, Jaimie

  “Well, for example, the man with the sign on his lawn? The sign was for his four-year-old granddaughter. She loved it and begged him to put it up early in case Santa got so busy that he missed her—”

  “Just as an aside, that would never happen,” Navi interrupts. “We have a huge team of elves to make sure that Santa doesn’t miss a single child.”

  “Yes, thank you, Navi. As I was saying, the man’s granddaughter was so upset when it went missing that she cried until he went out and bought a new one.”

  “How is that my problem?” Luke asks. “He didn’t have to buy a new one. He could’ve made up some story that Santa had already noted it down or something. He could’ve made a new one himself with a bit of cardboard and a marker pen. I don’t see how a man having to buy another obnoxious sign could’ve ruined Christmas. And I only took that sign in November. It isn’t Christmas yet. How can you say I’ve ruined that man’s Christmas when it’s another three weeks away?”

  I can’t help but think he has a point.

  “The man couldn’t afford to buy a new sign. He lived on a basic pension and could barely get by. The sign was a treat for his granddaughter, and because you took it, he had to buy another one, which he couldn’t afford.”

  “Again I say, he did not have to buy another one. He could’ve made one, he could’ve told the kid a story about it, hell, he could’ve told the kid’s parents that he couldn’t afford one and made them buy it if it meant that much to the kid.”

  “The man died, Luke. The man died because he spent another forty quid he couldn’t afford on the sign for his granddaughter. Because of that money going, he couldn’t afford to pay his heating bill, and he couldn’t afford as much food as he needed. He caught a cold which turned to pneumonia and he died in hospital last week.”

  There’s a collective gasp around the room.

  “Jeez, that’s…” Luke starts but he’s lost for words. “I’m sorry, I really am, but you can’t blame his death on me. I’m sorry he died, but no one made him buy another sign. If you want anyone up here for ruining Christmas, maybe you should be looking at the criminal shops that charge forty quid for a sign like that. Plus, you say he caught a cold. Anyone can catch a cold. I didn’t go over to his house and sneeze on him. You do not get to stand there and tell everyone that I killed a bloke when it’s not my fault.”

  “No one’s blaming it on you entirely. You are correct in that there were many contributing circumstances, but when something like this happens, it’s usually because of a domino effect and it was you who knocked over the first domino, Luke.”

  “Maybe you should get his family up here for not caring enough about their dad to check on him, or for just expecting him to pay for signs to keep their kid happy when they should have known he couldn’t afford it.”

  “It does seem a little bit unfair to blame just Luke for that,” Joe says. “Shouldn’t you be going easy on him because he’s one of your own kind?”

  “I’m not one of them,” Luke snaps. “And I’m not responsible for the death of that guy.”

  “It’s not just one person, one house, that you’ve stolen decorations from.”

  “You telling me I’ve killed more people? How about everyone else here? Are they all responsible for killing people too?”

  “We’ll get to them in a minute.” Tinsel’s voice softens. “We’re dealing with you at the moment. Luke, no one’s saying you killed a man, but you have to be aware your actions can have indirect consequences.”

  Luke shrugs, but I can tell this has upset him.

  “There are others too. You took a sleigh and reindeer from a house on Alwood Road. That decoration has been passed down through the family for generations. It belonged to their dad who died in the summer. This was the first Christmas they had put it up without him. It was very important to them, and they are incredibly upset that it’s gone missing.”

  “So let me go and I’ll go and get it from the hedge I stashed it in and give it back. Hell, I’ll even knock on the door and apologise if you want. I don’t know what you want from me. I’ll stop stealing decorations, okay? I’ll go and get them all and put them back and I’ll never do it again. Happy now? Can I go?”

  “It’s not that easy, Luke. You’re just saying that because you think it’s what we want to hear, not because it’s what you think is right or because it’s what you genuinely want to do.”

  Luke huffs.

  “The answer is for people to stop putting the decorations up in the first place,” Joe says.

  “People are entitled to do whatever they want on their own property. You all know that. If they do something that really bothers you, like the neighbour’s house was obviously bothering Luke and his family, you should have talked to them quietly about it or even complained to the council.”

  “Oh yeah, have you seen the state of local councils lately?” Luke asks. “It would have taken them three years to get back to me and then they would have responded with ‘that’s out of our jurisdiction, sorry’.”

  “Even so, there’s a right way and a wrong way to go about things,” Navi says. “And these aren’t the only cases. Every decoration that Luke has taken has had some effect on the people they belonged to, not all of them as major as the man who died, but they have still had Christmas changed for them in some way.”

  Luke sighs.

  “This is why you’re here,” Tinsel says gently. “All of you have done something that has upset Christmas for other people. No one is saying that Luke killed a man, none of you have, but you have all been part of, directly or indirectly, ruining someone’s Christmas, and we’re here to change that. You’re here to learn that everyone is entitled to enjoy Christmas in their own way, whether it be with one Christmas tree and spending time with family or whether it’s with gaudy decorations on the lawn. Just because you don’t like Christmas, you can’t force that on other people.”

  “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 on
ly 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.”