Top Elf Read online

  For Jack, Willow, Jacy, and Rianna

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  -29º Fahrenheit is the best temperature in the world. I know this for a fact because -29º Fahrenheit is the temperature on the most perfect day in the world (Christmas) at the most perfect place in the world (the North Pole).

  That’s where I live. (At 11 Pipers Piping Drive.)

  It’s also where I work. (In the Games & Puzzles department of The Workshop.)

  AND it’s where I eat my dad’s homemade ice-cream sundaes. (He’s an ice-cream designer, so I try a lot of experimental flavors. Say “yes” to Pine Nut, “no” to Pine-Sol, and probably don’t try Pining for a Lost Love. It tastes like chocolate, but also like tissues.)

  I’ve got brown hair with a little bit of red, and blue eyes with a little bit of green, so my parents say I’ve always had a little bit of Christmas in me. My skin would maybe be as white as snow if I didn’t have so many freckles. Oh, and I’m an elf! Elves come in all shapes, sizes, and colors, because elves come from everywhere. Yes, we’re a little shorter than humans (okay, about two feet shorter, fine—why are you so worried about how tall I am?), but we’re just as good at most things and better at some. The only reason we seem like we can’t get things off of shelves is because humans build their shelves too high. We can get everything off of the shelves we make, and you don’t see us bumping our heads against the ceiling all the time.

  Most people don’t know this, but Christmas really starts on July 2nd, the middlest day of the year. On that day, the current Santa Claus gives a speech to all the elves and Clauses living at the North Pole. Before the speech, everyone spends their time inventing and planning. Santa Claus designs new suits and sleighs, maps out new Christmas routes to make sure he gets to all the new babies, and updates our Naughty/Nice database. Mrs. Claus does the business planning and keeps the whole town running by doing maintenance and repairs on the Wish Generator. The elves—

  Okay, I’m just going to get this out of the way: SOME ELVES ARE DENTISTS. Of course they are. Every place needs dentists. At the North Pole, that job, like most jobs, falls to us. We cook all the food. We build all the houses. We even test all the video games. (It’s work! Really!) The only humans that even know about the North Pole are members of the Claus family.

  I’ve lived here since I was born. Like most elves from around here, I learned mapomatics, toyology, list-erature, and Santa Studies in The Workshop from an early age. This year, when I turned eleven, I started work in Games & Puzzles (or G&P, as we like to call it). I’m still learning every day, but it’s about the things I want to learn about, like how much glitter makes a fairy doll’s wings sparkle just right. (Two handfuls, and then a third handful to put in your own hair.)

  At G&P, I spend the first half of the year coming up with ideas and submitting them for approval. (The only reason you don’t have a catapult that launches sprinkles is because the Elf Council said we’d get grumpy letters from parents, even though I told them that was exactly the point.) After July 2nd, I work together with my friends in the department to build our best ideas in time for delivery on Christmas.

  On this particular July 2nd, as we waited for Santa’s First Big Speech, everything seemed normal. Everyone at the North Pole crammed into Peppermint Square, just like they always did. Claus Castle’s balcony was decorated with the usual bright, colorful flags and a candy-striped carpet just for the occasion.

  There was only one big difference this year:

  Santa was late.

  I was pretty sure this was a HUGE PROBLEM.

  “Santa’s never late,” I panicked to my best friend, Celia. “Something’s wrong!”

  “You’re just being paranoid,” Celia told me. “This isn’t Christmas Day, Ollie. He’s allowed to be late.”

  Celia’s the best inventor at G&P, even though she’s my age. One time we were stuck in a house with nothing but a pad of paper and a pencil, and in just two hours, she came up with five different board game ideas that got made into presents that year. There was DITTO!, where you sat in a circle with your friends and yelled words at each other until two people yelled the same word and won. There was M4Z3M3NT, where somebody played as a computer that tried to trap players in an endless puzzle maze—this was Celia’s favorite because she never lost. My own favorite was FOR GOODNESS SAKE, which had you team up with your friends on a quest around the board doing good deeds until a unicorn in the center of the board decided you were worthy and opened its mouth to blow confetti all over you. (While Celia was coming up with all these games, I drew a really great picture of a reindeer on a surfboard wearing sunglasses that ended up on my mom’s fridge, so I don’t think I did too badly myself.)

  Celia was usually on top of any game. But this wasn’t any game—this was SERIOUS CHRISTMAS BUSINESS.

  “What if Santa fell asleep at the computer and switched all the naughty and nice kids?” I asked her. “What if his beard got stuck in a door? What if every nice kid is on the naughty list AND his beard is stuck in a door?”

  Celia looked at me like my noggin was full of eggnog.

  “Maybe he overslept.” She reached up and adjusted her safety goggles, which were often holding her big cloud of curly black hair away from her brown forehead. “You always get nervous about the first speech.”

  “I’m only nervous because I love Christmas SO MUCH! How can you not be nervous?”

  “Because it’s our job. Christmas always happens the same way every year.” She yelled so I could hear her over everyone talking at once. “There’s nothing to worry about. It’ll be just like always!”

  I tried to believe her, and bounced on my toes while I stared at the balcony. It was hard. (The believing part. I’m one of the top three bouncers of all time, easy.)

  “Saying Christmas is always the same is like saying chocolate tastes the same way every time!” I protested. “Or that puppies are always cute! Or that rocket ships are always awesome! Or that dinosaurs are always a little bit too scary for me—”

  “All those things are true,” Celia pointed out.

  “Yes, but it doesn’t make them less perfect.” I crossed my arms and looked down my nose at her. (Well, she’s a little taller than me, so I looked up my nose at her.)

  She poked my nose with her finger, and I sneezed.

  “Bless you,” an old elf woman yelled over the noise. I said thanks, then went on.

  “You know how exciting it is—you’ve been seeing it your whole life! We’re gonna get more letters from kids! We’re gonna get to sing carols! And we’re gonna be busy all the time! I know you love making stuff, too.”

  Celia grinned. “I do love making stuff.”

  I pointed to the balcony. “Look!”

  I felt like I was going to blow into a million pieces of confetti, and then all those pieces were going to fly into the wind and spell out I LOVE SANTA. You know that first second of warmth right after your whole body has been cold from head to toe? Seeing Santa feels like that. He’s better than a rock star. Better than getting out of school early. And the best part was that I got
to see him like this every year.

  Two elves in formal clothes (reds, greens, little bells on the ends of their shoes and hats) marched out onto the balcony of Claus Castle and played trumpets to signal the arrival of the Clauses. I loved this part of the tradition, when we got to see the whole family waving to us from the Castle, starting with the children and ending with Mrs. Claus and Santa.

  Klaus came first. He was fourteen, the oldest of the Clauses’ four children. We all knew he would inherit the title of Santa one day—he always dressed in red-and-white suits to make sure we never forgot. He sometimes seemed harsh when you first met him and didn’t make much time for fun because he was busy working as hard as he could—although in his case, “work” involved making demands, not toys. A lot of people said he walked around like he was wearing peppermint underpants. And then there was his name, which even ordinarily nice people laughed at. I mean, Klaus Claus? (He never had a hair out of place or a wrinkle in his suits, though, which I found very impressive.)

  Sally Claus was next in the line. She was a year younger than Klaus, and walked onto the Castle balcony without looking up from her book—Will You Merry Me?: An Introduction to Cheer Theory. I knew Sally a little better than I knew the other Claus kids because she was always sneaking over to G&P to tinker with toys and grapple with gift wrap. Klaus didn’t like to get his hands glittery, but Sally wasn’t afraid to have a little tinsel under her fingernails. She also wore really big, goofy glasses even though she probably didn’t have to.

  Kurt, the third of the Clauses, was a year younger than Sally, only a year older than me, and you could always recognize him because he always had the end of a candy cane dangling out of his mouth. He wore a leather jacket (on top of his two or three regular ones—it was super cold) and snowboarded everywhere he could—including now, onto the Castle stage! We couldn’t help but laugh at this entrance, and he acknowledged our laughter with a tiny bow. Almost everything he did was a kind of joke … although I wasn’t sure that Santa and Mrs. Claus found him as funny as I did. Or Klaus—as Kurt strutted into place, cool as an ice sculpture, Klaus’s glare was up to Heatmiser standards. If being a Claus was a career for Klaus, it was the most extra of extracurricular activities for Kurt. (Most of the older elves had nicknamed him “The Escape Claus.”)

  Bertrand was the youngest of all the Clauses, two years younger than me. He had a tendency to get lost in snow drifts and to sneeze at the worst possible times. (Like when he was wrapping kids’ presents, which could make unwrapping them really messy.) But he had a great attitude and an awesome brain; he usually stayed happy even when his big brothers were picking on him, and was good at finding clever ways around problems. I once saw him make shoes with retractable platforms that extended so he could reach a cookie jar on the top shelf. Plus, he always wore little butterscotch bow ties, so I couldn’t help but like him.

  After the Claus kids were all assembled on the Castle balcony, they split into pairs. Klaus had to guide Sally to her spot, since she refused to look up from her book until the chapter was completed; Kurt kept stealing Bertrand’s hat and holding it too high for him to reach, but Bertrand was laughing and having fun jumping for it. Not long after they found their places on either side of the balcony, Santa and Mrs. Claus came out to a louder blare of trumpets.

  Mrs. Claus was thin and covered in soot—she had just come back from working on the Wish Generator and hadn’t even changed out of her yellow jumpsuit. Her hair was tied back in netting to keep it from falling everywhere, but she smiled really big, like she didn’t even notice she was dirty. She always seemed more at home that way.

  Santa looked just like everyone thinks he does: big white beard, long white hair, huge red suit with white trim. The hat resting on his head was sleepy and perfect, tilted just so. His cheeks were cheery and red, his smile was wide, and you could feel his jolly all the way across Peppermint Square.

  “HO, HO, HO!” A microphone in one of Santa’s buttons boomed his voice all across the square. All the elves went dead silent, waiting for what came next: “MERRY CHRISTMAS!”

  The whole square erupted into cheers and applause. Celia and I started chanting “Santa! Santa! Santa!” and soon the whole crowd was chanting, too. Santa made a motion with his hands to bring the volume down, and everyone got quiet again. He cleared his throat.

  “I know you’re excited for this year. I’ve got a little feeling this is going to be the best Christmas ever!” We all cheered again. He said this every year, and it never stopped being true. “But today, I’ve got a special announcement.” His face changed to something more serious, and Mrs. Claus patted him on the back, still smiling. The children looked surprised. They were glancing at each other and shrugging; Sally even looked up from her book.

  “I wonder what this is about,” Celia whispered to me, scrunching up her eyebrows and frowning. “Maybe you were right to be nervous.”

  That was not what I wanted to hear. My heart started to beat louder than reindeer hooves on a metal roof.

  “I don’t want to be right!” I told her.

  I looked forward again … and couldn’t believe my eyes.

  There was a faint hiss, and the front of Santa’s suit split open from the side, swinging around until it was two half suits holding hands with each other. Inside was a mess of wires, blinking lights, toys sticking out of pockets … and a skinny man in a red-and-white-pinstriped suit.

  I had never seen Santa out of the Santa suit before. Based on the gasps of the elves around me, they hadn’t, either.

  Without his Big Red Suit on, he didn’t look nearly as jolly. Underneath was a business suit: all crisp lines and sharp angles. His puffy cheeks and gentle smile looked out of place on top of a thin body making quick, nervous gestures.

  Celia looked at me with wide eyes, and I returned the look with an even wider mouth.

  Santa reached around and popped the microphone button off the front of the Big Red Suit. He held it up to his mouth.

  “Is this working?” The speakers made a loud screechy noise, and everyone cringed and covered their ears. He shifted the way he was holding it, and the noise went away. “How about now? Is that better?” Some of the elves in the front gave him a thumbs-up.

  “As you all know, this is my twentieth Christmas as Santa.” Some of the adult elves around mumbled about how surprised they were it had been that long. (Adults are always surprised that they’re old, and the older they are, the more surprised they seem to get.) “Before that it was my father before me, and his father before him, all the way back to the original Kris Kringle Claus, who gave us this.” From his pocket, he pulled out a glowing blue snow globe without a base. Or at least I thought it was a snow globe. The gasps were even louder this time.

  “That’s the Quantum Kringle!” Celia whispered to me. “The engine for his sleigh.” She handed me her binoculars so I could get a closer look. It was a sphere just like a snow globe, but the snow inside was swirling on its own in the shape of a beautiful white galaxy. Even far away, through the binoculars, I almost felt like I could fall into it. It was so beautiful, so big, but held safely in something so tiny.

  “I didn’t know it was really real,” I whispered. No one but the Santas had ever seen it, as far as I knew. Not even his family knew where he kept it on the 364 days that weren’t Christmas. It was the North Pole’s most guarded secret.

  Hubbub and shock rippled throughout the crowd, and Suddenly Serious Santa went on with his Super Surprise Speech. “With this magical device, my ancestors have delivered presents to children all around the world. It can push a sleigh faster than any other engine ever invented, and to this day, we don’t know how to make another one. It’s a lot of power for one person to hold.” Santa juggled it back and forth in his hands. One hand slipped, and he made a face as it fell toward the ground. Then he caught it smoothly and grinned at us: It was a joke. Celia laughed, nervous. I was having palpitations—I wasn’t sure how much of this my elf-sized heart could take.
r />   “Why is he showing it to us?” I asked Celia.

  Celia shrugged. “I dunno. But it’s got to be a good reason.”

  Santa continued, “My wife and I have decided that keeping this power in our family is unfair to you, unfair to the world, and unfair to Christmas.” The crowd’s mumblings grew louder. The Claus children continued to seem as surprised as the rest of us, and Klaus looked especially distressed. “So this year, we will be having a competition. You are all invited to participate. The winner will be trained personally by me and will inherit the Kringle when I retire.”

  “What?!” I didn’t mean to say it out loud, and clapped my hands over my mouth right after saying it. The crowd had suddenly gotten very quiet, so my one word traveled pretty far. I saw some people shake their heads in amazement.

  Klaus was angry. He ran back inside the Castle, shoving one of the trumpet elves out of his way. Kurt had the opposite reaction, laughing loud, as if this was suddenly the best day of his life. Sally looked terrified. Bertrand was hard to read because I could only see his eyebrows over the banister. Mrs. Claus gathered the three remaining Claus children together to listen until the end.

  Santa, meanwhile, smiled down at us.

  It was his Delivering Presents face. So it was like he was delivering us a present.

  I wasn’t sure it was a present. Could anyone be Santa? It seemed crazy. But Santa was saying it, and he didn’t look crazy. He looked calm, like he had thought about this for a while. I wasn’t sure what to think, but I trusted him.

  “Sign-up will be outside The Workshop,” he announced. “Any elf or member of the Claus family may enter, from anywhere in the world. Those brave enough will undergo a series of rigorous, dangerous, and one-hundred-percent-Christmas-y challenges until we narrow down a single winner to inherit the Quantum Kringle.” He raised it above his head again, with a flourish. “You must be sixteen years or younger to enter. Terms and conditions may apply. Thank you, and merry Christmas.” Santa turned to walk away, and his suit closed and walked itself inside after him. After a moment, his family shuffled in, too.