“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Really. We’re all taking the bus together.”
“All right. I can’t fit everyone into the car.”
“Yeah … well … I’ve got to go.”
It was a cold day and the bus took forever to arrive, since it was on a Sunday schedule. In my seat, gazing out the window, I wondered about the costume I would be wearing.
It had to be a uniform of some kind, not a costume. I remembered that last year the people who took the pictures of the kids with Santa wore identical blue slacks and white shirts. That was probably what Ms. Cerasi had meant.
When the bus finally arrived, it was five to ten. I dashed through the mall entrance, running toward the Winter World platform. The mall was still coming to life. Most of the stores were gated, though you could see salespeople inside.
Winter World was now complete and it looked great. Brightly painted castle towers stood around the platform. Santa’s throne was positioned in the front doorway of the castle. Automated reindeer were placed here and there, their heads moving. Holidays songs played from speakers hidden somewhere in the castle. Winter World was enclosed by a gold fence.
Santa wasn’t on his throne yet, but a big sign announced his arrival. SANTA ARRIVES TODAY! it declared. HOLIDAY PARADE AT ELEVEN! FREE GIFTS! BALLOONS! HALF-PRICE PHOTOS!
Eleven! I thought, panicked. I had to get moving. Frantically, I checked around for someone to supply me with my uniform.
“Young lady,” someone called. A woman was coming toward me from a nearby store. It was the unfriendly receptionist from the day before. “You’re a helper, aren’t you?” she asked. I nodded and she handed me a large white shopping bag that was stapled shut on top. “Hurry and put this on,” she instructed me. “You’re going to assist in the Welcome Santa parade. Report to the front mall entrance once you’re dressed.”
The bag was huge and a little heavy. What kind of outfit was this? “Where do I change?” I asked.
“The female employees’ lounge beside the ladies’ room on the third floor.”
Even though I was curious about the costume, I was too anxious about being on time to stop and check it out. I took the elevator to the third floor, found the rest room, and spotted a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. I felt very cool going in there, as if I were someone important.
The pink walls of the room were lined with lockers. Two tables sat in the middle. A soda machine and snack machine stood in a corner. A ladies’ room was on the right.
“Hi!” a voice cried. I turned and saw Angela, wearing only a bra and slip.
“Hi,” I replied with a smile. “You got the job too. Great!”
“Yeah, I really need it. Let’s see your costume.”
I ripped open the bag and was so startled by the sight inside that I jumped back. “What is that?” I exclaimed.
Angela started laughing so hard she had to lean against one of the tables for support. “Your face!” she gasped. “I wish I had a camera!”
I crept back to the bag and peered inside. Two huge eyes stared back at me. It was a head. I lifted it from the bag. Under the big eyes was a button nose and a wide smile. “What’s it supposed to be?” I asked.
“An elf,” Angela told me cheerfully. She reached into the bag and pulled out pointed green slippers, a green tunic, and a pair of green tights.
“An elf,” I echoed in disbelief.
“Didn’t you know what job you were applying for?” Angela asked.
“Well, I knew it was for a helper.”
“Yeah, Santa’s helper. Didn’t you notice that everyone applying for the job was on the short side? Look at me. Without heels, I’m a shrimp.”
Standing there in her bare feet, Angela did look shorter than she had the day before. I guess I’d been too nervous then to pay attention to the other people around me.
“Don’t look so upset about it,” Angela said with a laugh. “This is the best job in the world. You get to hang out with cute little kids. Imagine if you were a salesclerk or a stock girl. Then you’d really be working! This is fun.”
She was right, of course. But all I could think about was the embarrassment. What if someone saw me? Thank goodness for the elf head. At least I’d be able to hide inside it. If anyone found out I was doing this, I’d die of humiliation.
No one could every know about this — not Kristy, not Dawn, not Logan. Especially not Logan! Sure, he’d be nice about it and not tease me too much, but every time he’d look at me he’d see this goofy, grinning elf person. Not exactly romantic.
“You’d better put that thing on,” Angela said as she pulled on her own tights. “You don’t want to be late for the parade.”
There was nothing to do but put on the costume. I stuck the elf head under my arm and started for the door. “Wait!” Angela cried. “You have to put that on in here. Ms. Cerasi told me no one can be seen in half costume. It’s a big no-no.”
“Okay,” I agreed. I didn’t want anyone to see me anyway. I lowered the mask over my head, and adjusted it so I could see out the screen located in the elf’s big smile. Then I headed for the door and banged into a locker. “Ow!” I cried.
Angela hurried to me, wobbling slightly under the weight of her mask, which was like mine but with a slightly different face. Clasping my shoulders, she steered me toward the door: “It takes some getting used to,” she said, her voice muffled by her mask.
No kidding! My side vision was almost completely cut off and I couldn’t see anything directly under me.
We stumbled through the mall, banging into guard rails, people, each other, and anything else we couldn’t quite see. Not only was my field of vision narrow, but the head itself threw me off balance, tipping first to one side, then to the other as it slid along my shoulders. And my pointy elf slippers were a bit big, with smooth soles that slid on the polished floor.
The mall was beginning to fill up. Kids we passed shouted to us excitedly as we waved, which was fun. “Hey, look — it’s Dopey! Two of them!” a kid shouted to his mother.
We waved again as we stepped into the elevator.
“Dopey is exactly how I feel,” I muttered, pressing the down button.
“Aw, lighten up.” Angela laughed. “This is a blast.”
By the time we reached the front entrance we were walking much more steadily. We entered a large tent that had been set up in front of the doors. Inside, we met three more elves. I assumed they were guys since I hadn’t seen them in the dressing room. Ms. Cerasi was there. “Elves, you’ll carry Santa’s sled,” she instructed us in the same no-nonsense tone she’d used during my interview. The five of us lifted a plywood sled with an open bottom. It wasn’t very heavy.
“Wait,” said a man in a Santa suit. “I have to get into the sled.” We lowered the sled so he could step inside.
He was a great-looking Santa. He had a genuine long white beard, not a fake one. He didn’t seem to be padded with pillows either. He was an authentic old, fat guy with twinkly, happy eyes.
“Where are my reindeer?” Ms. Cerasi asked.
Three tall, slim people in full reindeer costumes, complete with huge antlers, pranced into position in front of the sled. Various other fairies, dancing candy canes, nutcrackers, and ornaments took their places.
Angela leaned toward me, holding her mask in place. Her voice sounded faraway from behind the screen. “We’re lucky. A lot of these people were only hired to work this one day.”
“Yeah, lucky,” I agreed, even though I wasn’t so sure. When you’re trying to hold a job secretly, you don’t want one that requires you to stand in the middle of the biggest mall in the area.
A recorded blare of horns sounded. “All right, everyone, march!” Ms. Cerasi commanded, holding open the tent’s flap.
I took a deep breath and started walking. The moment we emerged from the tent, the crowd of people who’d assembled began to cheer.
And that was how I began my secret life as an elf.
T
hank goodness my parents had given me permission to stay home from school on Monday. Dawn and Jeff’s flight was due in and they knew I’d want to meet the plane.
As it turned out, though, I was completely exhausted from my first day as an elf. You wouldn’t believe how my neck and shoulders hurt. My legs, too. All day I’d had to squat to eye level with kids who were nervous about seeing Santa.
Really little kids (three years old and under, mostly) aren’t always sure they want to get so close to the strange man dressed in red. Some of them have never even seen a man with a beard before, so that alone is weird for them. They cling to their parents. But the parents — some of them — are determined to get a picture of their child on Santa’s lap, so they keep urging the kid to go see him.
Instinctively, when I see a crying child, I want to help. So I kept stooping down to comfort them and make them stop crying.
I personally didn’t care if they went to see Santa or not. But Ms. Cerasi did. And I got lucky. Just as Ms. Cerasi was cruising by, coolly checking on how things were going, I set a kid down and he said (loudly) to his mother, “The elf is my friend, Mommy. I see Santa now.”
Way to go, kid!
For the first time, Ms. Cerasi beamed a smile my way. “Well handled,” she said. “I see you do know children.”
From behind my mask, there wasn’t much I could do in response but wave and nod to her. But privately I was grinning.
“What’s wrong with your neck?” Sharon asked.
Her question startled me. I wasn’t rubbing it or anything. “Nothing. Why?”
“You keep rolling your head,” she explained.
I hadn’t realized I was doing that. “I must be a little stiff from sleeping.”
“Oh … well … hurry and eat. We have to get to the airport,” she said.
The ride to the airport takes about two hours in morning rush-hour traffic. It went fast because I snoozed in the backseat. When I awoke, Dad was parking in the airport lot.
Inside the terminal, we checked the flight schedule, then hurried to the gate where Jeff and Dawn’s plane was arriving. “Dawn! Dawn!” I shouted as soon as I spied her in the crowd of deplaning passengers.
She turned and shot me that great smile of hers. Her teeth seemed especially dazzling. And, as she approached, her eyes appeared somehow bluer. It was probably because she was tanner than the last time I had seen her. Her hair looked blonder too.
Dawn and Jeff first hugged Sharon, who squeezed them tight. Then Dawn turned to me. “Mary Anne, hi.”
It was an odd moment. I lunged forward to wrap her in a hug — and she jumped. “Oh, sorry,” she said, and laughed uncomfortably. “I wasn’t expecting that.” She recovered instantly, then hugged me. But it felt awkward. Forced, in a way. It left me with an uneasy feeling.
Next, I hugged Jeff, who seemed the same as ever — easygoing, slightly gawky, friendly. He was a smidge taller than at Thanksgiving, but otherwise he seemed unchanged.
“Anybody hungry?” Dad asked.
“I can wait until we get home,” Dawn replied. “Can we go to Cabbages and Kings?” she asked, naming her favorite health food restaurant in Stoneybrook.
“Absolutely,” said Dad. “We’ll get your luggage and head back right away.”
On the ride home, Dawn seemed quiet. She talked a little about Vista, her school. At Vista the eighth-graders are in the same building as the high schoolers, and I could tell she was impressed by the older students.
“I’m not sure I like that arrangement,” Sharon said.
“Oh, it’s really cool, Mom,” Dawn insisted. “By the time you’re in eighth grade, you’re really too old to be hanging around with sixth- and seventh-graders anyway.”
“Mary Anne doesn’t mind it,” Sharon argued.
Dawn looked to me for confirmation. I thought of Jessi and Mallory, who are in sixth grade. And Claudia has been in seventh grade until recently. “It doesn’t bother me,” I admitted.
The expression on Dawn’s face was difficult to read. It wasn’t an actual frown. It was more as if she were studying my face and coming to some unflattering conclusion about it. “Oh, well,” she said after a moment. “Everyone’s different. But I love being with the older kids. It’s so much more interesting to me.”
Jeff jumped in with stories about the surfing lessons he’s taking at the beach near where they live. His stories made Sharon so worried that she forgot her worries about Dawn in high school.
During our lunch at Cabbages and Kings, I felt as though I couldn’t connect with Dawn. For one thing, she wasn’t making eye contact with me. It’s almost impossible to feel close to someone when he or she won’t look you in the eye. Dawn was just holding everyone in a kind of group gaze, which unnerved me. I desperately wanted that connection back.
This was Dawn, my best friend, my stepsister. The person I’d been looking forward to seeing. Maybe she was just tired, I told myself. After all, I hadn’t just taken a six-hour flight. She had. Or perhaps something was on her mind that she’d confide in me when we were alone.
I clung to that thought for the rest of the afternoon as Dawn continued to seem friendly but distant.
We went to the BSC meeting together and everyone showered her with affection and questions. Again, I had that left-out feeling, but I blamed myself for being childish. I wasn’t Dawn’s only friend. Everyone else was excited to see her, as well. I couldn’t expect her to pay special attention to me.
That night, though, I figured my time had come. I finally had her all to myself. As we got ready for bed, I wandered into her room. “So,” I said, stretching out on her bed. “How’s everything?”
She was unpacking, putting clothing into her dresser. “I told you, great,” she answered.
But I wanted the real story, not the public, parent-approved version. I wanted to hear about boyfriends, girlfriends, parents, everything. Sure, Dawn and I spoke on the phone all the time. But the phone isn’t as personal as talking alone and face-to-face. This was a moment I’d looked forward to for a long time, and it was going nowhere. “Anything exciting happening?” I tried again.
“Lots of things, but nothing really amazing,” she replied. “How about you?”
Oh, nothing, I’m an elf, I thought.
At that moment, I might have told her about my job, but since she wasn’t sharing anything, I didn’t feel like sharing either. Instead, I told her about the Santa-Hanukkah-Kwanzaa Town fund-raiser. No one had mentioned it during the meeting, since we’d all been busy talking to her, and the phone had rung constantly with clients requesting sitters.
I thought she’d have a million questions about our project. Instead, she just smiled an amused little smile. “You guys are always helping someone,” she commented lightly.
“Don’t you and your friends do things for anyone else?” I asked defensively. I didn’t like her tone of voice. What was wrong with helping people?
“Things are different where I am,” she said. “We’re more laid-back. Not so gung ho.”
“Oh, excuse me,” I said sourly.
She realized she’d offended me and smiled apologetically. “Come on, Mary Anne. You know how my school is. It’s not like we don’t care. We just did a Save the Whales project. The seniors actually took boats out in the ocean so people could observe the humpbacks, and they donated the money they made to the Whale Foundation. It’s just that we do things in a more casual way.”
The way she kept using the word we really bugged me. We were we — she and I. Or Dawn and the BSC. She and a bunch of “laid-back” high school kids weren’t we.
At that exact moment, I suddenly couldn’t stand being in the room with her. The urge to shake her until she became the old Dawn again was almost overwhelming. “Good night,” I said, sliding off the bed.
“Mary Anne …” Her voice stopped me as I reached the door.
I turned toward her. “What?”
“I think what you guys are doing for the kids is great. Honestly.
I’m just tired, I suppose.”
My angry feelings melted. “Sure. You had a long day.” Dawn would rest and the next day would be better. The old closeness would return and everything would be okay.
Only it didn’t return and everything wasn’t okay. In the morning, she seemed just as far away.
My zooming new schedule didn’t help matters. I was scheduled to work on Tuesday after school.
That morning I’d told everyone I was going to the mall to work on the BSC fund-raiser. “I’ll drive you there, Dawn,” Sharon said. “Then you can join your friends.”
“I don’t really feel like it,” Dawn replied. (Inwardly I sighed with relief.)
“You probably still have jet lag,” said Sharon.
“That’s probably it,” Dawn agreed.
Annoyed as I was by Dawn’s lack of desire to spend time with my friends and me, it was a lucky break. What would I have done if she’d wanted to meet us? I suppose I could have told her my secret, but I wasn’t in the mood.
I arrived at the mall in time to change with the earlier shift of elves. The “ancient gnomes,” Angela called them, giggling mischievously. It might not have been a nice thing to call them, but it was hard not to laugh. Most of the day elves were retired people. They were great with the kids, but they didn’t do a lot of sprightly dancing around the way Ms. Cerasi wanted us to.
During my shift, I had several close calls. Mrs. Rodowsky, one of our regular clients, showed up with her four-year-old son, Archie. All the while he was in line, Archie kept staring at me. Had he recognized me? It was possible. I’d sat for his brothers and him just the week before. Could he see me through the screen? I kept turning my big plastic head away from him.
After he’d finished visiting Santa (whose real name was Marv Howard), Archie made a beeline for me. I froze, not knowing what to do or say.
“Mom, doesn’t this elf look like my Dopey doll?” he said excitedly.
Whew!
I waved and danced around in as sprightly a way as I could manage, considering I felt I was going to faint with relief. Archie hugged me and I patted his head.