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  The moment Santa was out of sight, all the elves went bonkers. Nobody—I mean nobody—could believe it.

  “What next? Is he going to move Christmas to February?” one elf grumped.

  “I’m no good at tests!” another cried. “This is so unfair.”

  “I’ll bet it’s rigged so his kid will win,” a third elf complained. “How’s an elf supposed to fit in the sleigh?”

  “They could make another sleigh. An elf-sized one,” Celia said to her.

  The elf scoffed. “But then where would you put all the presents?”

  I pulled Celia away before she could get into a fight about how Santa’s Bag worked.

  Elves were shouting for answers. A dozen elves climbed onto each other’s shoulders to try to reach the balcony. The chorus of old elves who always sang after the July 2nd speech started yelling carols, nervous and off-key. Someone bumped the elf handling the fireworks, so they started to go off in the shapes of snowmen and tree angels too close above the crowd. Some hats were set on fire and quickly put out by snowballs. As the crowd started pushing out of the square, Celia and I had to grab hands to stay together.

  “Why is this happening now?” I yelled to her over the noise of the crowd. She kept her eyes forward, dodging through the green-and-red sea, pulling me along.

  “I don’t know!” she yelled back. The sound of bells jingling on toes and hats was deafening. “Let’s get back to The Workshop!”

  I agreed. I thought that going back to The Workshop would bring back at least a little piece of normal.

  Instead, I found the world had gone all topsy-turvy there, too.

  The Workshop towers above the North Pole even more than Claus Castle. The older elves tell stories their parents told them about when The Workshop was just one little building where a few elves and Santa worked together to make presents for the few nice children who knew to ask for them. That’s hard to imagine now, though, because it’s become the heart of all elven life.

  There are toy factories, sure, but there are also basketball courts and restaurants and cobblers. If you need a quick eggnog to get you through the day, you go to Nog Your Head in The Workshop. If you need a place to hold a meeting to discuss the extra paper needed to produce nine-hundred-page fantasy novels for the kids who read them, you reserve a conference room in The Workshop. And if you’re not sure about the instructions you’ve written on how to assemble a Smelligator (a toy that’s half alligator and half trash can), you go to The Instructionarium so the proof elves can make sure you have the right steps in the right order. Really, anything you could ever need you can find at The Workshop. Most adult elves live in the apartments there, too.

  As Celia and I got closer to The Workshop, we saw a crowd forming at its front.

  “What’re all those people doing?” I asked.

  Celia lifted up her binoculars, then reported, “Looks like they’ve already put up the sign-up sheet for the Santa contest. Klaus, Sally, and Bertrand have already signed it, along with a couple of elves.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  Celia shook her head. “You’re not going to like it.”

  “Tell me!” I insisted.

  “Buzz, for one.”

  I grimaced. Buzz was the only elf in the whole North Pole I didn’t like. He was bigger than everybody and thought he could do whatever he wanted, and mostly what he wanted to do was pick on everybody else. When he felt like working at all, the toys he designed were too dangerous. Last Christmas, we caught him sneaking a bunch of swords into presents for little babies. (Luckily we found them all.)

  If he became Santa, we’d all be in trouble.

  “Other than Buzz, it looks like Gadzooks, the triplets … and some out-of-towners who must have already called in,” Celia continued. “No Kurt, though. I wouldn’t be surprised if he skips it.”

  I got distracted by a cloud of snow spraying up the hill nearby.

  “I think that’s him. Let’s go see!” I tugged Celia along behind me. Kurt didn’t slow down as he approached the crowd, so they parted to let him slide in on his snowboard. He shifted his weight for a hard stop, spraying snow all over the elves in the crowd. The board unclipped from his feet on its own, and he flicked a piece of candy cane from his mouth and crunched it into powder with his toe. Then he pulled another candy cane from a small box folded into his sleeve, stuck it into his mouth, and held out his hand to one of the elves nearby.

  The elf, a little girl with black hair twisted into braids, placed a pen in his palm. He winked at her, then whipped around and signed KURT on the sheet and added a little skull with two candy canes crossed underneath it. He tossed the pen back to the girl, who stared at it with wide eyes.

  “Excuse me, Kurt! Kurt Claus!” An adult elf with long, wavy hair and a microphone came up to him, a camerawoman from NPNN close behind. “I’m Maria Duende, North Pole News Network. You’ve stated on several occasions, quote, ‘Who would even want to be Santa, anyway? What a dumb job. As if I would even want it. Not in a million years.’ What’s made you change your mind?”

  Kurt snorted and moved the candy stick to the other side of his mouth.

  “I don’t want Klaus to win. Duh.” He jumped up into the air and slammed both feet down on the snowboard, where they clicked into place. A vibrating sound rose from the board. Suddenly two little rocket jets turned on, whooshing him back up the hill. We were all covered in the snow he left behind, but I didn’t mind. Kurt is so cool.

  “You heard it here first, folks!” Maria Duende said to the camera. “The Claus family rivalries have already begun!”

  Celia rolled her eyes. She was not the biggest Maria Duende fan. (I knew this because Celia’s game AVOID THE REPORTER WHATEVER YOU DO, NO, SERIOUSLY, SHE’S THE WORST was one of our top sellers, especially within the Duende family.)

  “Can you believe that?” Celia said to me now. “What a jerk.”

  “Maria Duende?”

  “No—Kurt.”

  “I dunno,” I said. “I think he’s kind of funny.” Celia looked at me like I had four arms, so I added, “What? I do!” She shrugged and started walking toward one of The Workshop’s side entrances. I jogged to catch up to her and asked, “Don’t you want to try out?”

  “Of course I don’t. I like working in G&P,” she replied, holding the door open so we could both slip inside. I punched a button to call an elevator. Celia continued, “And I don’t want to compete with everyone. Did you see how all those elves were climbing over each other to sign their names after Kurt’s? This is going to be a total pile-on. And I don’t want be there when the pile-on topples over and everyone gets bruised.” The elevator opened. We climbed in and hit three buttons so the elevator would know how far up, sideways, and forward to go. The elevator dinged, and the door started to close … until a bright piece of metal was shoved between them. The elevator dinged again, and the doors opened back up.

  “Hey, pipsqueaks.” A huge elf, bigger than me and Celia combined, pulled his enormous axe back from between the doors and propped it up on his shoulders.

  “Axes aren’t allowed in The Workshop, Buzz.” Celia held out her hand to stop him from entering. She pointed at a sign in the hallway. It was a picture of an axe with a red X over it that said No Weapons!

  “S’not an axe. It’s a toy.” The edge of the blade was so sharp I could feel it from feet away.

  “A toy?” Celia challenged. “For what kind of kid?”

  “A cool one.” Buzz ignored Celia and walked in, pushing past her without even acknowledging she was in the way. He ran his hand across all the buttons, lighting them all up.

  I groaned. Then I leaned my head back and yelled at the ceiling, “Come onnnnn!”

  “Whoops.” Buzz was smiling, but it was a rude smile. A mean one.

  “Let’s just get the next elevator,” Celia told me. We tried to move around Buzz, but he blocked the door.

  “Seriously?” Celia said. “Buzz, just let us—”

  “Let you what
?” he said in a perfectly innocent voice. “I’m not doing anything!”

  “Get out of the way!” I tried to push him, but he was too strong. He didn’t budge even a little.

  “Only if you sign up for the Santa Trials,” he said.

  That surprised me.

  “Why?” I asked. “We don’t want to be Santa.”

  Even as I said it, I wasn’t sure it was true.

  “I don’t care if you enter, Dollie. But I’m tired of everyone acting like Celia’s the best thing since cookies and milk. I want a chance to show them who’s really number one.”

  Celia raised an eyebrow. “That doesn’t sound like my problem.”

  Buzz shrugged. “Then I guess we’ll stay in this elevator forever.”

  Celia clenched her teeth and blew air out her nose. “Fine.” She spat the word and then moved with such purpose that even Buzz shifted out of her way. “We’ll see you at the competition, Buzz.” He started to follow us, but she snapped her head around to glare at him, and he froze in place. “Have fun on the elevator.” The elevator dinged and closed. We could hear the quiet rumble as it started moving.

  “Are you really going to sign up?” I asked.

  “No. I just wanted him to leave us alone.” She pushed the button to call another elevator. I frowned. If this Santa test had anything to do with brute strength and brute thinking, then Buzz actually had a chance of winning. And if Buzz became Santa, I’d have to do something really drastic, like move to Florida.

  Have you ever tried to build a decent snowman in Florida?!

  Which meant I had to get Celia to join the competition. If anyone could wrangle the Kringle out of Buzz’s hands, it was her.

  “I think you can do it,” I told her. “I think we could at least make sure Buzz doesn’t win.”

  “He’s not going to win.” She said this like Buzz had as much of a chance as a snowman would have making it a whole day in Florida. (I was very worried about this.)

  “You don’t know that!” I argued. “We have no idea what the test is like. What if it’s … axe battles?”

  “It’s not axe battles.”

  “But what if it is?!”

  “Then we’d lose anyway.”

  I crossed my arms and shook my head. Celia was my best friend, but she could be SO FRUSTRATING sometimes. I knew I couldn’t change her mind.

  But I could feel my own mind changing.

  Did I want to stop Buzz?

  Yes.

  Did I think I could?

  No.

  What if it was a really big snowman?

  No. Even if it survived the Florida heat, an alligator would probably eat it. Stop being so worried about this!

  Did I want to be Santa?

  No.

  Or … maybe.

  Maybe sort of yes?

  Mostly maybe with a strong hint of yes.

  Sure, me, but consider this: How about definitely yes?

  Alright. “Yes” it is.

  I had made some stupid decisions in my life. I’d tasted my dad’s booger-flavored ice cream. I’d stuck my tongue to the North Pole (the actual pole, in the center of town). I’d even once tried to be friends with that huge jerk Buzz.

  But more than those, this could have been my stupidest decision ever.

  And yet, I found myself saying to Celia, “You don’t have to sign up … but I’m gonna.” Without looking back, I walked all the way around the building to the front, where the crowd around the sign-up sheet had thinned significantly. I pulled a pen out of my pocket and added my name to the bottom of the list:

  Ollie Gnome.

  Another pen slipped around me and signed under my name, in tight cursive: Celia Pixie. I turned around and grinned at her. She narrowed her eyes at me.

  “I just want to make sure Buzz doesn’t kill you in an axe battle,” she said.

  I hugged her all the way around her arms.

  “I knew you would.” I squeezed.

  She laughed. “Or maybe so I can kill you in an axe battle.”

  I laughed, too, but I couldn’t shake a little nervous worm in my brain:

  What if it isn’t axe battles?

  What if it’s way worse?

  Over the next month, I could feel the whole town waiting for Santa to announce the first challenge. Members of the extended Claus family flew in from all over the country to enter the competition and were all living together in The Workshop’s Ho-Ho-Hotel. I’d never seen the North Pole so busy and full this early!

  According to the gossip, Klaus had begged Santa and Mrs. Claus to take back their decision, but they weren’t budging. Now he was spending all of his free time in the library studying the techniques and skills of past Santas. The other three Claus children didn’t put much energy into preparation: Bertrand maintained machinery around town with Mrs. Claus, Sally worked on designs with us in The Workshop, and Kurt was … well, somewhere. He had a habit of disappearing.

  When the sign-up sheet was finally taken down, there weren’t as many elves on it as I thought there might be. A lot of kids didn’t want to be Santa, or their parents thought it would be dangerous, or they didn’t really believe an elf could run the North Pole. My parents didn’t seem too worried.

  “If that’s what you want to do, then I guess you should do it,” my mom said through pins she held between her teeth. (My mom is The Workshop’s top clothing designer; she always has pins and wires in her teeth and hair.)

  “Can I go now?” my little sister, Polly, whined. She was always having to model for our mom’s kid clothes. “Ow! You poked me!”

  “I didn’t poke you.” My mom winked at me. Polly was always making things up to get out of doing her job. “Just be careful, Ollie. Okay?”

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  My dad stuck his head out from the kitchen, and ice cream dripped out of his red hair into a puddle on the floor.

  “Looks like the competition’s pretty fierce, Ollie Pop. You sure you’re going to be alright?”

  “I’m sure,” I said, even though I wasn’t. “Celia’s going with me.”

  He brightened. “Oh! You’ll be fine, then.”

  I hoped he was right.

  The letter inviting us to the first challenge told us to wear armor.

  “Looks like there will be axe battles,” I moaned to Celia. In the list of the top two-thousand things I was able to do, I didn’t think you’d find either the word axe or the word battle—and definitely not the two of them together. Maybe slam poetry battle, if I was given a lot of time to prepare. Or if axe was used in a pun, like rel-axe-ation. I could maybe win at rel-axe-ation.

  Plus, I didn’t own any armor.

  “It doesn’t say armor; it says protective clothing,” Celia corrected. We were in our personal office in The Workshop. While I read the letter out loud, she was tweaking the code for a rocking horse that gave advice while you rode it. “Protective clothing probably means, like, goggles and long sleeves.”

  “How are goggles and long sleeves going to stop an axe?!?!?”

  “The contest is in the mailroom, not a coliseum.”

  “So they want to make sure we don’t … get paper cuts?”

  “Maybe. Didn’t you work in the mailroom for a while?”

  “Just for a class project. It was pretty boring, cooped up all day sorting thousands of letters.” A thought struck me. “Actually, Klaus was in the mailroom the same year I was. I think they make all Santas start there.”

  Celia nodded. “That’s what I was thinking. We’ll probably be sorting—” She was interrupted by a beep.

  “A HORSE A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY,” the rocking horse whinnied. I laughed.

  Celia did not look pleased. “I’m still working on that,” she said while tightening the bolts and holding down the horse’s silver mane.

  “I thought it was funny,” I told her.

  “You think everything is funny.”

  I frowned. “That’s not true!” (For example, I didn’t think go
ing axe-versus-axe against Buzz was funny at all.)

  The horse beeped again. “THE JOURNEY OF A THOUSAND HORSES BEGINS WITH A SINGLE HORSE.”

  I couldn’t help it: I laughed more.

  “See?” Celia said. (I guess I saw.) “It’s supposed to listen to your conversation and give good advice, but it just speaks up whenever it wants. Plus, there’s this bug where it keeps adding the word horse to everything. I think I’m going to wipe it and start over.”

  I gasped and hugged it around its neck. “You can’t!” I looked at Celia with my best puppy-dog eyes. “That’s not a bug. That’s her personality!”

  Celia frowned at me, her finger hovering above the controls. “It doesn’t have a personality. It’s a messed-up robot.”

  Beep. “HORSE IS NOT MEASURED BY THE HORSES YOU TAKE, BUT BY THE HORSES THAT HORSE YOUR HORSE A-HORSE.”

  Celia and I stared at each other, trying to keep a straight face. After a second, her lip trembled and we both burst out laughing.

  Now it was my turn to say, “See? She’s not a messed-up robot. Her name is Horse, and she’s perfect.”

  “Okay! You win. If you think kids will like her, I’ll submit her as a prototype.” She unplugged Horse, who powered down with a soft, grateful neigh. “I should be working on new games, anyway. She’s just something I’ve been messing with in my spare time.”

  “That’s why you’d be a good Santa,” I pointed out. “You’ve got so many ideas about everything!”

  Celia shook her head. “I almost gave up! You saw that she could be lovable. You’d make a better Santa than I would.”

  “I’m not sure that lovability is something you need protective gear for,” I told her, which was my way of saying that even though I was laughing I was still FREAKING OUT.

  “You’re going to look great in goggles,” Celia replied. Which was her way of saying STOP FREAKING OUT.

  “Aw, shucks.” I helped her carry Horse to the side of the room. “I guess we’re just going to have to win!”

  Her face lit up like she just remembered something.

  “I just remembered something!” she cried. (Told you.) “We’ve got some reject bodysuits from when we made those impenetrable superhero costumes. They got printed with the wrong pictures, but they should protect us from anything—they were built to withstand fire, ice, gum-in-hair, and other natural disasters.” Celia thought for a second, then pressed a few buttons on a keypad on the wall. A clunking noise climbed up from the floor, and a panel in the wall swished aside, revealing a cardboard box in a cubbyhole. She pulled out the box.