by Tom Fletcher
Brenda had positioned herself in front of the mailbox when Gregory walked up to mail a letter. As he was about to reach up and pop it into the slot, Brenda’s voice stopped him.
“Good morning! That looks like a letter to Santa. Am I right? Why don’t you allow me to mail that for you so you can get on with your Christmas shopping?” she said in such a sickly-sweet voice that it almost made William’s ears puke.
“Oh, that’s very sweet of you, my dear,” said the boy’s mother, completely fooled by Brenda’s act. “Go on, Gregory dear. Give the nice girl your letter and say thank you.”
“Thank you,” Gregory said uncertainly as he handed over his letter, then disappeared around the corner with his mother.
That’s when William saw her do it. Once Gregory was out of sight, Brenda carefully and precisely tore open his letter. Then she pulled out her school pencil case, which she’d been hiding. She quickly used Wite-Out to cover Gregory’s address, blew on it…and blew on it a bit more, until Gregory’s address had disappeared. Then she started scribbling something on the boy’s letter!
What an evil, horrible thing to do, thought William. His blood was boiling. If he could have, he would have jumped out of his chair and chased Brenda Payne down the street. She’s up to something. I can’t let her get away with it! he said to himself.
“Dad, I want to mail my letter…erm…alone…by myself,” William said.
Mr. Trundle looked at the pretty little girl at the mailbox, then smiled to himself.
“OK, William, I get it,” said Mr. Trundle with a smirk. “Don’t want Daddy cramping your style, eh?”
William rolled his eyes at how uncool his dad sounded, then wheeled himself toward the mailbox while Mr. Trundle stayed back and pretended he wasn’t with his son.
“Hey!” William said quietly to Brenda, suddenly feeling more like his old self.
“Well, look who it is…Wheely William! Are you allowed out in the snow in that thing? Wouldn’t want your wheels to get all rusty,” Brenda said with a sickly-sweet smile.
“What did you write on Greg’s letter?” William demanded.
“Oh, this?” Brenda said innocently. “It’s nothing really, only my BEST PLAN EVER!”
William stared at Brenda, who was calmly using a glue stick to reseal the envelope of Gregory’s letter.
“You see, Wheely, last year I was a little disappointed at the lack of presents in my stocking on Christmas morning. You may be surprised to find—I know I was—that I am on the Naughty List, apparently!”
William wasn’t surprised at all.
“Well, this year I’m not taking any chances, even though I’ve been a good girl this year…at least I think so….But just in case Santa—if he’s even real!—thinks differently, there are plenty of Goody Two-Shoeses in this town who’ll most definitely be on the Nice List. So I came up with a plan.” Brenda did a merrily evil skip around William’s wheelchair, like she was some sort of crazed ballerina dancing to music in her head. “It’s rather genius, really. If I simply put my address on the goody-goody Nice Listers’ letters, then all their presents will go to my house instead of theirs!” she said matter-of-factly, as if it were completely acceptable. “Brilliant, isn’t it? Why struggle all year to be good when I’ve got a whole town of kids to be good for me, leaving me free to do whatever I want!”
William had heard enough. His face had gone purple with anger, as if he were about to explode in his chair, when a jolly voice called merrily from halfway down the street behind him.
“Everything all right, Willy?”
It was William’s dad!
Willy?
WILLY?!
His dad had actually just called him…WILLY!
In front of Brenda Payne!
William almost died right there on the spot. His dad’s pet name hit him like a truck carrying twenty tons of fresh embarrassment, and William felt as if he were drowning in it.
Brenda looked like she was about to burst with delighted evilness.
“Did your dad just call you…Willy?” She giggled quietly.
“Dad!” William groaned.
“What? You’re not at school now, Willypoos. Technically, I’m not breaking my promise!” called Mr. Trundle cheekily from his spot halfway down the street.
“Willypoos? Oh my goodness, oh my goodness, that’s brilliant!” howled Brenda, with genuine evil tears of evil laughter in her evil eyes. “How have I never thought of that! Just you wait until we get back to—”
“You can’t get away with stealing people’s Christmas presents,” interrupted Willypoos…I mean, William. He thought that maybe bringing her attention back to her plan might distract her from this Willy nonsense.
“Wanna bet?” snapped Brenda sharply.
“I…I’ll…I’ll tell on you…,” began William, but even as he was saying the words, he realized how awfully silly and immature they sounded.
“No you won’t, Willypoos…not unless you want the whole entire school to know your daddy’s little secret name for his special little boy!”
William stared at her.
Brenda smiled back.
There was nothing he could do. She was going to get away with it. He quickly tucked his own letter to Santa up his sleeve, making sure there was no way bum-faced Brenda could get it.
“Well, I’d better be going. I’ve got my address on enough nice kids’ letters in there now to give me a good stockingful…or two…or three!” said Brenda, slipping Gregory Pee-Pants’s letter into the dark slot of the mailbox. “Have a nice day…Willypoos!”
As she skipped off down the street, she waved happily to Mr. Trundle and called out, “Merry Christmas!” before disappearing around the corner.
Mr. Trundle quickly joined William at the mailbox, rubbing his hands together to keep them warm.
“She seems nice and friendly,” said Mr. Trundle. “Is she your friend?”
“No! She’s definitely NOT my friend,” snapped William, but something in the way Mr. Trundle smiled knowingly to himself made William think his dad didn’t believe him.
“Go on then, son, pop your letter in and let’s be going!” said Mr. Trundle, eager to get out of the cold air.
William pushed Brenda and her evil plan to the back of his mind and tried to enjoy the moment of mailing his letter to Santa. It was always an exciting thing to do. But something felt different this year, and—oddly enough—it had nothing to do with Brenda.
William suddenly had the strangest feeling that he was being watched.
All the tiny little hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stood on end, and even though he was wrapped up in lots of lovely warm layers, he found himself feeling a bit shivery.
It was a most peculiar sensation.
“Aren’t you going to mail your letter, William?” said Mr. Trundle. William put the cold, shivery feeling to the back of his mind as Mr. Trundle lifted him out of his chair and held him close to the shadowy letter slot, which sat open like a hungry mouth, waiting to be fed.
William gently popped his letter inside, and from the soft sound it made, he could tell that the mailbox was very full—probably with letters from all the other Nice List children in town whose envelopes now bore Brenda Payne’s address!
As William got comfortable back in his chair, there it was again, that feeling that someone was watching him. His eyes scanned the street around him.
“What’s the matter, William?” asked Mr. Trundle, trying to see what William was looking at. But William couldn’t see anyone else around. He could see all the way up the street back to their house, but there was no one there. The street was completely deserted. He must have been imagining it.
“I felt like someone was watching me…but…it’s gone now,” said William, and so they left the mailbox and continued their walk to the museum. But perhaps William s
hould have paid more attention to the tiny little hairs on his arms and the back of his neck, because those hairs never lie. When those tiny little hairs stand up on end and make you go all shivery and goose bumpy, you can be sure of one thing: someone is watching you.
What William had failed to see when he popped his letter through the dark rectangular letter slot were two old, pokey eyes looking back out at him from inside the mailbox.
Someone was there.
Someone was hiding inside it.
Someone was definitely watching William!
“The mail is here!
The mail is here!
Get off your bottom—
It’s that time of year!
Wipe out the sleep,
Pop on your specs,
Give the nice ones a tick
And the rotters an X!”
“Thank you very much, Snozzletrump!” called Santa as he slipped his extra-large bottom into his squishy letter-reading chair for another day of letter reading.
Things were getting rather busy in the North Pole, and so they should—it was December, after all. Letters were flying in from around the world, and the very old, very crooked Christmas tree was sprouting magic bean pods left, right, and center, up and down, and every which way you can imagine. The farmer elves were sowing the snowfields daily, and the mining elves had started their first round of digging for toys.
The consumption of half crumpets had doubled in the last week alone and was showing no sign of slowing, as you can see from this handy Crumpet Consumption Graph:
The Christmasaurus was spending most of his time watching the Magnificently Magical Flying Reindeer on their nightly practice flights around the North Pole airspace. He stared at them and daydreamed wonderful flying dreams in his small little dinosaur brain while the rest of the North Pole was busy preparing for Christmas.
There was one thing, though, that was about to put a wrench in the plan. That thing was a letter, and that letter was from William Trundle!
Santa opened the letter, which was on top of the towering pile that Snozzletrump had just plopped on his desk, and read it aloud, as he always did. “Dear Santa, for Christmas this year I would like a lot of things that you probably can’t give me, but a dinosaur would make me very happy! Merry Christmas…William Trundle.”
There was no response at all from the ancient old Christmas tree. Santa frowned and read the letter aloud a second time, and then a third. He scratched his beard and tried again. But no matter how many times he read the letter, the old Christmas tree never sprouted any bean pods at all! Maybe it was because the letter was so vague?
“What sort of dinosaur does this young William Trundle want? A real one? Impossible! No child would ask for that. A toy dinosaur, then? A stuffed dinosaur? A remote control robo-dinosaur? The possibilities are endless! What do you make of this, Snozzletrump?” asked Santa as he took a sip from a cup of warm melted candy-cane juice.
Snozzletrump had heard Santa read the letter over and over again. “It sounds like this kid’s down in the dumps. That’s the opinion of Snozzletrump.”
Santa screwed his face up at such an awful piece of elf poetry, which was definitely not up to Snozzletrump’s usual standard. Santa sighed, held the letter in his large, flubby hands, and took in a deep, calming breath through his white beard. His sky-colored eyes closed and rolled back in his head, and after a few seconds, he knew everything there was to know about William Trundle. This was another one of Santa’s special powers.
Suddenly, his brain was full of William’s life. He now knew about William’s family, about William’s accident when he was little, his wheelchair, his love of dinosaurs, and just how rotten life had been lately.
“Oh dear, this is a tough one,” said Santa. “This boy needs something really special this year.”
At that moment Santa stood up, and in one massive swoosh of his jolly-fat arms, he cleared everything away from the giant, messy workstation in his room.
“Sprout! Spudcheeks!” he called, and the two elves seemed to pop into existence from out of nowhere, right at Santa’s side, their mouths full of buttery crumpet halves.
“What took you so long? Fetch me my tools, please. I’m going to make this one myself,” said Santa very seriously.
The look on the elves’ faces was one of disbelief and pure delight.
“HOORAY!” they cried in harmony. It wasn’t very often that Santa hand-made a present for someone. It happened only very occasionally, in exceptional circumstances—but when he did, those presents were always far more beautiful and special than any present that the elves dug up from the ice.
He once made a rocking horse for the queen of England when she was a little girl, which he enchanted so that it came to life every Thursday night.
Another Christmas, he made a toy racing car for the prince of Peru, who was a very naughty prince—almost on the Naughty List every year—but instead of putting him on the Naughty List and forgetting about him, Santa enchanted the racing car so that it got smaller and smaller each time the young prince misbehaved! If he didn’t stop being so naughty, it would eventually disappear completely, and so the naughty prince stopped being naughty! Santa was very clever like that.
The two elves sprinted out of the room and a few seconds later reappeared at Santa’s doorway, carrying a huge tool chest on their backs. It was overflowing with springs and cogs, bibs and bots, thingamabobs, and all sorts of gadgets that only Santa knew how to use.
“Now go and tell the Christmasaurus that I need him at once, please! Hop to it, elves—we don’t have all day!” said Santa, eager to get started.
“Yes, sir, right away—
We’re heading out the door!
We haven’t got all day
To fetch that festive dinosaur!”
chirped the elves as they danced out of the room to fetch the Christmasaurus.
Moments later, they came riding in on the back of the Christmasaurus (the elves loved to ride on the Christmasaurus’s back!), whose tongue was flapping happily out of his mouth, eager to find out why Santa needed him so urgently.
“My dear Christmasaurus, we have a job to do, and we have to do it right!” Santa said importantly. “I need you to stand here for me and be very still, because I am going to make a toy dinosaur, and I’m going to make it look like you!”
The Christmasaurus’s eyes widened in wonder at the thought of seeing Santa make a dinosaur! He’d never seen Santa make anything before. He climbed onto one of Santa’s worktops, put his big dinosaur chin in the air, straightened his back, and extended his long, snowflake-patterned tail, trying to look like the perfect dinosaur model.
“First I’ll need my extra-magnifying, super-zoom, au-toy-magic ogle-goggles!” Santa said as he strapped some brass goggles onto his head. The watching elves giggled as the goggles made Santa’s eyes look like two giant baubles.
“Gloves!” he cried. Sprout and Spudcheeks quickly slipped two heavy leather gloves onto Santa’s hands, and he started sifting through his tool chest. He had every toy-making contraption that had ever existed, and a few that didn’t exist too! Long stuffing sticks for stuffing things, bendy-wendy things for bendy-wending things, flappy-happy things for making happy-flappy things. You name it, Santa had it…and if you can’t name it, he probably had that too.
And so as the December snow fell heavily at the windows, Santa got to work. It wasn’t easy. In fact, it was the hardest thing Santa had ever made. He worked all through the night until Starlump and Specklehump brought him breakfast—pancakes with a side of waffles, Santa’s favorite—and then worked some more.
All the elves crowded around to watch the master at work as the Christmasaurus sat as still as a statue in the warm glow from the fire. Santa chiseled and sawed, chopped and sewed, and didn’t take any breaks. He only managed to stay awake by repeatedly dri
nking venti-sized coffees from the North Star-bucks coffee shop (with extra toffee-nut syrup and a splash of fresh reindeer milk).
Finally, Santa unstrapped the thick goggles, which left big dark rings round his eyes.
“I think we’re finished,” he said with a warm, proud smile, and he turned his creation around so that the Christmasaurus and all the elves could get a better look.
The crowd of elves gasped (in beautiful harmony) as they saw the finished toy dinosaur. They thought it was the most amazingly beautiful toy Santa had ever made. And it was. It really was.
The Christmasaurus shook out the pins and needles from his legs and hobbled over until he was face to face with Santa’s masterpiece. He was nose to nose with the most perfectly detailed toy he had ever set eyes on. It had soft, leathery skin with incredibly detailed stitching in Santa’s own red cotton thread. Santa had used two large golden buttons for its eyes, and for its stuffing he’d cut a hole in his own quilted flying coat and poured in half of the wonderfully fluffy, double-duck feathers. (Double-duck feathers are the best stuffing feathers for anything, because as soon as you stuff them in they double, making it double-stuffed and double-fluffy!)
Finally, to create the snowflake pattern on the toy dinosaur’s back, Santa wobbled to the window, opened it, and scooped up a handful of real, un-meltable North Pole snow. North Pole snow is one of the most beautiful substances on the planet if you can stop it from melting…and Santa can! He gently sprinkled the flakes over the back of the stuffed dinosaur, and as they settled there, the elves applauded in amazement.
The stuffed dinosaur was an almost perfect replica of the Christmasaurus. For some of the elves with poor eyesight, it looked as though there were two dinosaurs in the room!
For the Christmasaurus, this was the closest he’d ever come to looking at another dinosaur. For the first time in his life, he could imagine what it would be like if he weren’t on his own. If he weren’t so different.