A brunette elf toys with the safety goggles hanging around her neck. “I agree. Santa Patrick is the best so we need to try our best. No excuses.”
I glow hearing this. But it only stokes my wonder about what they’re working on. My hands grow clammy with intrigue.
The first elf lets out a big sigh. “You’re right. Let’s get our coffees to go, huh, folks?”
I’m about to stop them and ask for clarification when my phone lights up on the table with a booming ring. All the elves turn around. Red-faced, I avert my eyes and answer the call without thinking.
Veronica’s face takes up the screen. With her hair pulled back, her eyes are unobstructed, full-up with incredulity. In the distance, a seagull squawks. She must be at the beach, on the trip I’m not there for. My stomach plunks with FOMO.
“Where the hell have you been?!” Veronica shouts. Her words bounce around the café, making me even more embarrassed. I slip in tiny, wireless earbuds, thank the baristas for their service, and step outside.
My eyes scan the streets, searching for the gaggle of elf laborers, but they’ve already disappeared.
“Hello?” Veronica’s voice chimes bright and frantic in my ears. “Earth to Quinn. You ghost me, you text me, I call you, and now you’re frozen? Literally? Wait, what are those snowcapped mountains in the background? Why are you all bundled up? Where the hell are you?”
This barrage of questions is exactly the reason I was avoiding everyone back home. I can tell the truth, but she probably won’t believe me. However, I started this conversation, so I guess I have to try to make her.
“Remember when I told you I dropped my phone in the toilet and that’s why your Find My Friends app pinged me in the Arctic?”
“Yes,” she says, squinting at me with apparent confusion.
“That was a lie. That’s where I’ve been for the last eight months. At the North Pole.”
“On some sort of expedition?”
My eyeline is fixed ahead at where I’m walking, not down at the phone. She’s probably getting a whole lot of double-chin and giving me a whole lot of scrunched-face confusion. “Not exactly. We are sort of, kind of working here…”
“You mean on a ship?” she asks.
“No.”
She clears her throat, practically demanding my undividedattention. I stop to sit on a cleared-off bench. “There’s no civilization there, Quinn. It’s moving ice! The only way that would be possible is if magic existed.”
Summoning all my conviction into a single stare, I look right into the lens of my iPhone camera.
“Quinn, we spend half our days as second-grade teachers telling our students that unicorns and fairies and ogres aren’t real. Don’t tell me that magic is real because if magic is real and you were living and working in the North Pole, then that means—”
I continue to stare.
She shakes her head vehemently. “No, nuh-uh. I would sooner believe you were out there as geologists, oceanographers, meteorologists, cartographers, or atmospheric physicists than I would believe you were”—her voice drops to a whisper—“Santa.”
“Well,I’mnot Santa,” I say. I’m far enough on the outskirts of town that only a few elves pass by. None of them slow down or stop. They all smile or wave and then carry on their way. Thank God. I’ve got a frazzled friend screaming at me through the phone, “Quinn Muller, what do you mean?”
I have no words with which to answer that question, so I flip to the rear-facing camera and show her the North Pole.
She cycles whip-fast through the many stages of disbelief, including denial and bartering and fragmented logic. She half convinces herself I’ve converted to acting and I’m on the set of a movie in Canada somewhere. “Are you the gay Lacey Chabert?”
Eventually, I’ve had enough of her nonsensical babbling, so I head straight for the reindeer stables. A bunch of her questions garble together in my ears, intermingled with sporadic static.
Once I reach the fence, I turn the camera to face me. “I’m going to show you something incredible, but for the sake of my very sensitive eardrums, please keep your reaction to a minimum. Remember, you’re in a public place.”
“Whatever. As you wish. Show me.”
Timing it perfectly, I flip back to the rear-facing camera right as Vixen shoots off into the sky, does a few laps with golden orbs trailing behind her, and then lands gracefully back on her hooves. On the screen, Veronica’s jaw hangs open. At least she’s quie—
“Holy shit!” I’m shaking from the sheer volume such a short woman has produced. Shock rattles every one of my nerve endings awake. “Okay. I’m sorry. That was a lot. I’m packing up my stuff. I’m going back to the motel. I’m going to call you again, and so help me, if you don’t pick up, I will find a way there. Boat, plane, I don’t care. You’re going to tell me how the hell this happened andwhyyou didn’t tell me sooner.”
After I promise to pick up, she ends the call.
