Christmas Carol & the Defenders of Claus Read online

  Suddenly a strong hand latched onto my left arm. My uncle. I wondered if he realized I had sparked the pandemonium. He didn’t say anything, but I got my answer by the way he looked around, as if someone might be watching. Mr. Upstanding Businessman didn’t want the blame. He pulled me through the crowd, Amelia following quickly behind. I nearly stepped on a rabbit. My uncle had to stop abruptly to avoid the “real-life zebra” that galloped past. Amelia shrieked when the parrot swooped down on her like a feathered dive-bomber, squawking “Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!”

  Within a minute we were outside, the noise from the festival fading. My uncle still hadn’t said a word. I looked at him, trying to read his face, terrified of what he might do to me. But his expression was stone, that whole chiseled thing. He opened the limo door, and Amelia and I got in. Gus jumped out and opened the other door. He was a nice man and talked to me more than Uncle Chris did. “Have fun, girls?”

  Amelia and I nodded but didn’t dare speak. I took off my antler hat, hair drenched with sweat. When my uncle slid into his seat, he looked at me. I braced for a lecture. But his gaze settled just above mine, locking onto my hair. Just for an instant, his eyes went wide. I glanced at Amelia, who was also staring with her brown eyes as big and round as marbles. I instinctively ran my fingers through my hair but felt nothing. My uncle jerked his head forward, staring intently at Gus as the limo pulled out of the lot.

  I looked in a small mirror on the limo door and gasped. Amid the jumble of curls, hanging across my forehead and directly above my green eyes and freckled nose, was a long lock of snow-white hair weaving its way through the bright red. The streak made my head look sort of like the beginnings of a candy cane. Had the shock from the reindeer caused that? I looked at Amelia, who simply shrugged. I sat back and glanced at my uncle, who kept his eyes straight ahead. I desperately wanted him to say something, to explain the craziness that had just happened. But we rode in silence. I sighed and turned to look out the window. I spotted the hot-air balloon floating serenely through the sky, followed closely by a red and green parrot, probably still squawking “Merry Christmas.” I watched the balloon and the bird soar into the unknown.

  I didn’t know it at the time, but with the help of a peculiar visitor about to arrive in Hillsboro, I would soon be doing the same.

  CHAPTER 2

  A “Decidedly Peculiar” Teacher

  Uncle Chris never said a word to me the rest of the weekend, never gave me one of his lectures, never uttered those two dreaded words—“Carol, dear …”—that were always followed by a scolding. “Carol, dear, I really must insist on quiet.” “Carol, dear, you need to improve your grades if you want to get into a prestigious college.” “Carol, dear, please try not to destroy holiday festivals in the future.”

  No, he just shut the door to his study and I didn’t see him again till Sunday breakfast, where we ate in stony silence. Once I caught him staring at me with a quizzical look, but he glanced away quickly, drained the rest of his disgusting kale smoothie, and returned to his study, slamming the door behind him.

  I didn’t see him again till that evening, when two unexpected visitors rang the doorbell. No one ever just stopped by our house—not without an appointment. So I snuck halfway down our spiral marble staircase and listened to the voices echoing out of the living room.

  “She did what?” Uncle Christopher asked, sounding exasperated.

  “She quit, Mr. Glover.” I recognized the voice of Mr. Louderman, who, along with my uncle, sat on the advisory board for Broward Academy, the hoity-toity private school Uncle Chris made me attend.

  “Carol’s teacher?”

  “Yes, Mr. Glover,” came another voice: Mrs. Ridgemont, a rich old bird who wore so much makeup she looked like a circus clown, and who had the annoying habit of pinching my cheek and exclaiming, “Oooooh, freckles,” as if I didn’t already know I had them. “She left me this voice mail,” Mrs. Ridgemont said. I heard her fiddling with her phone, muttering to herself about the “infernal contraption” before she finally managed to play the message.

  The recorded voice of a panicky Miss Arbogast floated up the stairs. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry! But I must submit my immediate resignation.” Her voice grew louder and louder until she was all but screaming. “I have to help him! I have to help the children!” Then the phone clicked to silence.

  “Who is ‘him’?” Uncle Christopher asked.

  “Don’t know,” Mr. Louderman said.

  “And how is she helping the children by abandoning them?”

  “No idea,” Mrs. Ridgemont responded.

  “And you tried to reach her?”

  “Doesn’t answer her phone,” Mr. Louderman said. “Her house is dark, and her car’s gone.”

  My uncle said nothing until Mrs. Ridgemont spoke up again. “There’s more.” She hesitated. “We have a replacement already.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He called me out of the blue offering his services, saying, and I quote, ‘Should any emergencies arise.’ Those were his exact words.”

  “As if he knew,” Mr. Louderman added.

  “His credentials are impeccable,” Mrs. Ridgemont said. “He’s taught at some of the finest schools. But …”

  “But what?” my uncle asked.

  Mrs. Ridgemont lowered her voice. “He’s, uh, decidedly peculiar.”

  That was the last I heard of the conversation. I’d been leaning in, trying to catch every word, when my foot slipped out from under me on the marble staircase. I tumbled down two steps, grunting with each roll, before I managed to grab the rail. But it was enough to alert my uncle to my presence. “Who’s there?” he called, though I’m sure he knew exactly who was there. I sprinted up the stairs, down the hallway, and into the colorful, flashing sanctuary that was my room. I flipped off the lights, crawled under the covers, and listened as my uncle’s footsteps approached my door. He paused there, as if deciding whether I was worth his energies at that moment, and then turned and walked away. I exhaled, pulled the covers tight around me, glanced at my carved Santa, and fell asleep wondering about the fate of Miss Arbogast and the sudden arrival of the mysterious and “decidedly peculiar” new teacher.

  When I walked into class five minutes before the tardy bell, the room was already full. Word had spread quickly about Miss Arbogast’s disappearance, and kids had arrived early, curious about the new guy. But the teacher hadn’t arrived. Or maybe he had. His desk, one of those giant hunks of gray metal that sits flush with the floor and has a hole for the teacher’s legs, had almost nothing on it, except for a single, solitary candy cane. No books, no pencils, no calendars or planners or pencil sharpeners. Just that candy cane, sitting dead center on the desktop.

  One of my classmates, Vincent Cato, who usually made a point of sitting near me so he could torture me, strolled into class right before the bell, always the last to arrive. He stopped in front of me and said loudly, “Holy cannoli, Christmas Carol, what happened to your hair?” Vincent was one of the few kids in sixth grade as tall as I was. He had dirty blond hair, icy blue eyes, and a pointy nose. He was handsome in a cruel way, like a movie villain. Vincent noticed the candy cane. “Did you leave the teacher a treat, Christmas Carol?” Everyone laughed, and my face turned bright red. Vincent had a knack for getting under my freckled skin, and my classmates would never defy him—not wanting to be his next target. So it felt like me against the world whenever I was in school. Thank goodness Amelia had my back, or the daily harassment would have been unbearable.

  The bell rang, and we turned toward the door. Seconds went by. Then minutes. Still no teacher. The class grew louder, and louder, chaos erupting. In the seat next to me sat Amelia, who still seemed to like me despite the fact that I nearly got her run over by a rampaging reindeer and attacked by a psychotic parrot. Amelia was an outcast like me, most definitely different from everyone else. Broward was full of the kids of the rich and powerful (like my uncle). But Amelia’s family was “plain
old middle-class,” as she put it. She was there on scholarship because she was super smart, way smarter than me, or I, or whatever the grammatically correct way of saying that is, which I wouldn’t know but Amelia most certainly would.

  “What do you think the new teacher will be like?” I asked her.

  Amelia was reading, paying no attention to the bedlam around her. She set down her book (To Kill a Mockingbird; Amelia preferred “the classics”), then put her right hand to her temple, concentrating. “Hold on, let me use my psychic powers and I’ll tell you.”

  “Smarty-pants,” I said. “Mrs. Ridgemont says he’s ‘decidedly peculiar,’ whatever that means.”

  “That’s cool,” Amelia said, grinning. “I like weirdos. That’s why I like you.”

  “Mm-hmm. You’re full of them today, aren’t you?” I didn’t mind Amelia’s teasing. We’d been friends from day one, the new kids at Broward when I was eight and she was seven. I’d spent two years in a Hillsboro public school, until my uncle decided I needed “more discipline” and enrolled me in Broward, holding me back a year. I’m not a doofus or anything; I just fell behind after the loss of my parents. That messed me up pretty bad, and it made sense to have me repeat second grade in the much more challenging Broward Academy.

  Amelia had been in a different elementary school, where she learned English in less than a year and her IQ tested off the charts. Her teachers got her into Broward.

  So on that first day of second grade, we both were sitting quietly in the admissions office, both terrified, neither of us saying a word. Amelia clutched what looked like a letter. I snuck a peek and saw Spanish writing and foreign-looking stamps all over the front. She noticed me looking and pulled the letter closer to her chest, eyeing me suspiciously. “Whatcha got there?” I asked and smiled broadly. I can be quite charming, you know.

  Amelia hesitated, looking around as if she thought we might get in trouble for speaking aloud. “A letter that came this morning from my dad,” she finally said. “Wishing me luck at my new school.”

  “Where is he?” I asked, thinking of my own dad, maybe somewhere still out there in the world. I wondered if I’d ever see him again.

  “The Dominican Republic,” she answered.

  “That’s where you’re from?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you live here now?”

  “Yes, with my mom and two brothers.”

  “Why not your dad?”

  “He doesn’t have papers,” Amelia said, sadly.

  “Oh.” Neither of us said anything for a long while. I looked at the letter again. “Can I see?”

  Amelia looked alarmed. “It’s private,” she said. “And it’s in Spanish.”

  “Well, I only know English, and my teachers probably would say I don’t even know that.” Amelia laughed. “I just want to look at it,” I said.

  She hesitated, but then handed me the letter. I turned it over, studying it. “The stamps are really cool.” They were brightly colored and read, “República Dominicana.” Amelia nodded. “Why doesn’t he just email you?” I asked.

  “He does,” Amelia said. “But he says he wants to send me something permanent I can hold on to and think of him.”

  “That’s nice,” I said. I slid the letter out and glanced up at her. “This OK?”

  “I guess,” she answered, seeming to hold her breath, as if I might suddenly tear the letter into pieces.

  I looked at the Spanish script. No one had ever written me a letter. I fantasized about my father, wherever he might be, writing a long explanation of why he had vanished and promising to return someday soon. At the bottom of Amelia’s letter, her father had signed it, “Papi.” Then below that I was surprised to see English words. I read them aloud. “I will love you much eternity. Hugs and kisses and butterfly wishes.”

  I glanced up at Amelia and she looked embarrassed. “He doesn’t speak any English,” she explained. “I think he found that online or something. It’s how he ends every letter he sends me. It’s silly.” She turned away.

  I looked down at the last phrase again. Hugs and kisses and butterfly wishes. The words didn’t make much sense, but they made me feel warm inside. “It’s not silly at all,” I said. “It’s really nice.”

  Amelia smiled gratefully. Her eyes misted a little as I handed her back the letter. We were best friends from that moment on.

  And four years later, I was still sitting beside her, this time waiting for our new sixth-grade teacher. “I’m sure he’ll be good,” Amelia said. “All the teachers here are good. Not like at my old school.” Amelia loved to tell me how lucky we were to have such a tough curriculum. Struggling night after night with a backpack full of homework, I had a hard time feeling lucky.

  Behind me Vincent Cato got out of his chair, bopping me on the head as he strode to the front of the classroom, making the kids around me snicker nastily. “Children, children,” he called out in a squeaky, high-pitched, teacher-like voice. “Let’s behave now.” Amelia and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes. Everyone else laughed. Vincent picked up the candy cane, checked the door for the teacher, and then slowly unwrapped it. Everyone gasped as he took a big bite off the curved end. A pointy stick remained, sharp as a knife, and Vincent thrust it toward me like a sword. I flinched. “Watch out, Christmas Carol!” His mouth was full of candy cane so his words came out garbled. “I’m armdeb and dangerub.”

  “Stop it, Vincent!” Amelia said.

  “Mind your business, nerd,” Vincent responded. He laughed and jumped backward, butt first, landing hard on the desk, his feet banging the front like a gong. He chomped happily on the candy cane.

  Maybe the crunching was why he didn’t hear. Because his back was turned, he couldn’t see what the rest of us did. From under the huge, metal desk, from out of the hole where the teacher’s legs go, slowly rose a skinny, little man with hair as black as shoe polish, and eyeglasses with lenses so large and thick it looked like he was wearing a couple of magnifying glasses that had been glued together. He held a flashlight and a book: The Life of Charles Dickens.

  The class froze, falling silent as the teacher stared at us with an odd expression that wasn’t quite a smile and wasn’t quite a frown. Then came the panic. Kids scrambled back to their seats. Everyone sat up straight. Vincent, who, if you want to know the truth, wasn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier, looked confused, the sharp end of the candy cane hovering near his mouth. He still hadn’t thought to look behind him. He glanced at the door. “What?”

  Before anyone could answer or try to help him out—most kids wouldn’t have bothered; nobody really liked Vincent—the “decidedly peculiar” fellow who was Broward Academy’s new sixth-grade teacher, leaned in close to Vincent’s left ear and yelled, “Boo!”

  Vincent shrieked, “like a five-year-old girl,” as most kids put it when they joyously retold the story. He half jumped, half slid off the desk. His feet flew out from under him. He windmilled his arms to keep his balance but fell hard on the floor, bumping the back of his head on the tile. Meanwhile, the candy cane was launched straight up. The sharp end stuck in the ceiling panel like a dart in a bull’s-eye. Unfortunately for Vincent, it didn’t stay stuck. Had he not been dazed, he might have been able to roll out of the way. But the candy missile fell from the ceiling panel, sharp end first, and caught Vincent square between the eyes. Vincent yelped. The candy cane shattered, and one small bit stuck like a shard of glass between Vincent’s eyes. He leaped to his feet, plucked out the piece and threw it, then ran screaming from the classroom.

  The class was as silent as a crypt. The new teacher, if he were shocked by what had just happened, didn’t show it. A smile played at the corners of his mouth. The kids waited, breathless. I watched him intently, fascinated. I had never seen this sort of behavior in an adult, much less a teacher, much less a Broward teacher. Then he smiled broadly, flashing blazing white teeth. “Good morning,” he said. “My name is Mr. Winters. Welcome to my class.”

/>   As you might imagine, school is not my favorite thing in the world. But when Mr. Winters arrived, I suddenly couldn’t wait to get to class. Trying to guess what weird thing he’d do next was a game I happily could not win. He continued to emerge from under his desk in the morning, flashlight and book in hand.

  On his third day, I slowly raised my hand. Mr. Winters smiled at me, and I was struck by how bright and white his teeth were—like the color of newly fallen snow. If not for those horrific glasses that made him look like an alien, he might have been handsome. “Yes, dear heart?”

  Dear heart? That was a first.

  “Um,” I started to say.

  “Um is not a word, dear heart. Unless you are a Buddhist monk, and then it’s “Ohmmmm.” He held out his hands, palms up, and closed his eyes, chanting deeply, “Ohmmmmmmm.”

  “Um, OK, I mean, uh, I’m sorry.” Mr. Winters opened his eyes and looked at me, palms still up. I was flustered now. I glanced at Amelia, who seemed just as flabbergasted. “I-I-I was just wondering why you sit under your desk like that. Isn’t it uncomfortable?”

  Mr. Winters smiled again. “On the contrary, dear heart. It’s quite comfortable. For one thing, it’s cooler under there, and I find this state you call home unbearably hot.”

  “Where are you from?” I asked.

  He seemed to tense up. His brow furrowed and he frowned. “North,” Mr. Winters said simply. “Where it’s much cooler.” Then he turned to the chalkboard. Amelia and I exchanged puzzled glances. But the questioning appeared to be over.

  The weirdness, however, most certainly was not. Mr. Winters seemed incapable of sitting still. The rare times he did stay seated, he bounced in his chair as if the seat were a frying pan and he was a slice of bacon. Most of the time, though, he wandered around the room, talking, talking, and talking some more, about lessons, life, everything, all while gesturing wildly.