A crowd of six- and seven-year-olds—whose families were apparently using the Christmas Village for free babysitting—had been insisting on singing an ear-splittingly loud rendition of “Jingle Bells” non-stop for an hour straight.
The parents stuck in line with their own children were slowly wilting, their faces getting pinched from incoming headaches.
“I guess it could be worse,” one dad said glumly, scooping his daughter off Wade’s knee after she had recited her lengthy Christmas list of DIY crafting sets. “It could be ‘The Little Drummer Boy.’”
Wade sort of liked “The Little Drummer Boy,” but then, an hour ago, he had liked “Jingle Bells,” too. No Christmas song could stand up to an hour of this.
“Or ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas,’” the next mom in line added as she brought her son up.
Everyone in earshot shuddered.
“Don’t give them any ideas,” the dad said, with a distinctly haunted look in his eyes.
“Can I do carol-oke after this, Mommy?” the little boy asked as he got a fistful of Wade’s beard.
Wade resigned himself to the upcoming yank, and—yep. There it was.
He was glad the glue was strong enough to hold no matter how much the kids pulled at it, but that was a double-edged sword. It meant they really were tugging at his face, almost like they would have been with a real beard, and ithurt.
“Santa will bring you two more presents this year if we leave right after this and go home and take a nice, long,quietnap,” the mother said.
“I will,” Wade promised.
The boy looked skeptical, but he agreed and started in on his own list, which involved more reptiles than Wade would have imagined.
He eyed the line. It wasn’t too bad right now, since a fair number of kids had insisted on trying out the carol-oke before their meet-and-greet with Santa. Under normal circumstances, this would have been a good time to take one of his breaks—not his hour-long lunch, since it was only ten in the morning, but one of his two fifteen-minute periods of much-needed peace and quiet. It would give him just enough time to get some aspirin from the Outpost. The parents weren’t the only ones with a headache.
But there was no way anyone’s head was throbbing more than Mira’s. Wade had guessed that all-day carol-oke would be rough, especially with the machine on the fritz and the microphone always squawking. And like Petey had said, the machine didn’t have a lot of songs loaded in, which meant this wasn’t even the first “Jingle Bells” marathon they’d been stuck with today. Mira was dealing with a lot.
That was the whole reason he’d prodded Marsh into ordering him to take over the station for a while; he had wanted to give Mira a little relief. Still, his imagination hadn’t come up with anything as exhausting as the last hour.
He might want a break, but Miraneededone.
He finished promising little Sammy a whole terrarium’s worth of Christmas presents—Sammy’s mother seemed willing to agree to any number of pet lizards if that would get them out of there before the next round of “Jingle Bells”—and dutifully posed for the picture. Then he stood up.
That was the cue for one of his more traditionally garbed elves to swoop in. This one was a freckle-faced college student named Milo, who was studying Comparative Literature and liked to stand behind Santa’s chair so he could surreptitiously dosome of his reading without anyone noticing. Wade was happy to play along, especially since Milo, distracted or not, was quick to notice when they changed gears.
“Santa will be back in just a few minutes, everyone!” Milo said, hiding some French novel behind his back. “In the meantime, feel free to have some presents wrapped or drop by the refreshments stand for some holiday treats.”
It was a pretty good deal, honestly. A lot of life involved standing in line, and it would be better if someone always offered you gingerbread or hot chocolate as compensation.
This was where everyone expected Wade to head into the sheltered back areas of Santa’s Village, where you could easily take a shortcut to the Outpost. At the very least, it was a quick way to duck out of sight and chill for a minute or two.
Instead, Wade made a beeline for carol-oke.
Up close, it was easy to see that Mira was at the end of her rope. Her cheery elf smile was in place, but she was seconds away from being a Galadriel who reallywouldtake the One Ring and transform herself into an all-powerful dark queen ... if only it would stop this endless caterwauled performance of “Jingle Bells” in its tracks.
Wade gently touched her shoulder, and she practically folded into him, her face cracking open into obvious distress. Since the kids had just started another round of the song and would keep themselves going for a while, he didn’t hesitate to pull her to the side.
“I’m sorry,” Mira said, dabbing a few tears of frustration away from her eyes. “I’m good with them normally, I promise. It’s just soloud, and the same song, over and over—I tried to get them to switch it up, but they don’t want to do anything else—”
He wished he could wrap his arms around her, but that would just draw attention to her, and he could tell she wouldn’t want that. She didn’t even want to cry in front of him.
“I have to get through this,” she said, raising her chin. “I need the bonus you get for making it through the whole holiday season. Marsh knows it, though, and that’s the problem. And he doesn’t like me.”
She didn’t mention that one of the reasons Marsh had turned on her lately had to be because she’d stood up for Wade’s validity as a last-minute replacement Santa, but Wade knew it was true.
We have caused problems for our mate, his bear said, its head sagging down.We didn’t mean to. Let’s eat Marsh.
