Tracy
Sound came to Tracy first—muffled tinkling that made her think someone was talking to her, but she couldn't hear the person through all of the static buzzing in her head. As she rubbed the sleep from her eyes, she realized the static wasn't in her head. It was coming from the black speaker that hung in one of the corners. “Frosty the Snowman” was playing, and the lyrics danced through Tracy's mind.
The second thing that came to Tracy was her injuries. She remembered jumping from the roof as those things chased her and the terrible pain that had shot through her arm. Now, her arm was encased in a yellow sleeve that wasn't anything like the cast she'd gotten in 3rd grade after jumping off of her swing set, playing Superman. This cast felt like it was made out of jelly. When she touched it, a tingly feeling shot through her bone, chasing away the pain. There was no bandage on her forehead. It didn't hurt either, although there was a small amount of dried blood clumped in her hair.
But how had she ended up in what appeared to be Santa's dressing room?
She tapped her pointer finger against her chin as her scientific mind whirled into high gear. They had wanted the boy to fall back asleep, so she assumed they'd made him see sugar plums. What if they had wanted to make her afraid, scare her away so she'd go back home? That's why they had showed her trolls and wolves. She shivered at the memory. They hadn't expected her to get hurt, and when she did, Santa gave them no choice but to bring her to his house and bandage her up. That had to be it!
Once Tracy had all of that figured out, she felt a lot better, especially since being at his house meant she'd be able to gather even more evidence for her experiment. With that in mind, she sat up on the overstuffed red couch and pressed her palms against her eyelids once more to make sure she wasn't dreaming. No, this was more than a dream. It was a dream come true! She was in Santa's dressing room complete with a Christmas tree shaped armoire and a gold framed mirror mounted on the wall opposite her.
Around the mirror hung at least a dozen motivational posters. Some of them were the same ones her English teacher had displayed in her classroom with captions like, “Teamwork: Many hands, many minds, one goal.” Others looked like they had been custom made for Santa, like the one with him placing a pink bicycle under a tree that said, “Christmas: You're doing it right.” Tracy laughed as she pictured Santa chanting, “Go, Team, Go!” as he put on his hat every Christmas Eve.
The room had one window and if she had any doubt about where she was, it was erased as she looked through the glass into the surrounding forest. Nestled between two pine trees, there was a candy cane striped pole with a sign that read:
North Pole
Population: 2 humans, 582 elves, 8 reindeer
Snowflakes the size of cotton balls floated past the window, blanketing the ground in a perfect layer of ice. Tracy was enchanted. She had never seen snow and desperately wanted to see what it felt like. She tried to lift the window. At first, it didn't budge because she could only use one hand, but then she put her shoulder into it and raised it high enough to stick her fingers under it. When she did, the scene on the window fizzled into static like a broken TV. Tracy jumped backwards, letting the window slam shut. The snow returned, same as it was before.
“What the—”
She ran her fingers along the ledge, and in the right hand corner she found a thin wire painted white to match the rest of the ledge. That wire connected to one on the window. She lifted the pane again, breaking the connection between the two wires. The scene fizzled just like before. This time, she kept lifting the window. It was heavy, but she got it high enough where she could turn her head sideways and get her left eye close enough to the crack to see outside. And she saw…
Nothing. No snow. No lights. There was a forest, but it looked nothing like the enchanted landscape she had seen through the window. No evergreens, just tall, bare trees that felt like they were crowding the building, reaching for it with giant claws. An icy wind rushed through the crack, and Tracy dropped the window again.
More illusions? What was going on? This was no longer holograms for the benefit of people peeking out their windows. This went deeper than any of that.
She grew a little frightened, but not enough to cry or panic. She just kept reminding herself that being at Santa's house was like being the first man on the moon. She had to think like a scientist. It had been a warm winter. Maybe they hadn't had any snow and the scene on the window was just to help Santa get in a Christmas-y mood.
She went to examine the rest of the room. There was a table beside the couch with an origami-looking reindeer lamp. The dim light shined down on a few photos of Santa and his wife. One shot was taken at the beach with Santa wearing an old fashioned red bathing suit and holding a surf board. It was just like the post cards they sold in all of the tourist shops back home. That bit of familiarity settled Tracy's thoughts.
She moved on to the armoire. Before she touched the brass door knob, she pulled four items from her neck pouch: cocoa powder, a white index card, a paintbrush, and tape. She used the items to lift a smudgy fingerprint from the knob. She didn't know what information Santa's fingerprint would give her, but it didn't hurt to have it.
Once her evidence was stored safely in the pouch, she twisted the brass door knob and pulled it open. Inside, hung three identical Santa suits. That all seemed pretty normal, but what stood out was the tag inside the collar. Tracy had expected it to read something like, “Sewn with love by Mrs. Claus.” Instead it had a name stitched in sparkly green thread: E. Higgens. It reminded her of how her mother had sewn a label that said “T. Tam” into all of her clothes last year for summer camp.
Who was E. Higgens? Was he the one who made the coat? Elf Higgens?
Tracy reached into her pocket for her phone. She needed a picture of this. When the phone wasn't in her pocket, she began to panic.
She ran back to the couch. “No! No! No!” she said while tossing the candy cane shaped throw pillows onto the carpet and digging between the couch cushions. “No! Where is it? Where is it?” She sunk down onto the sofa, her bottom lip trembling as she knew where it had to be—shattered in a million pieces on the little boy's driveway all the way back in Florida.
“No,” she whispered into the chocolate scented air.
She flopped back on the couch, wondering if she had any hope of completing the project without her phone. Those pictures were at the heart of her project. Her eyes drifted once more to Santa's photos on the table.
Maybe she could take those photos with her. Or maybe…Tracy touched her finger to Mrs. Claus' chubby smile, and an idea settled in her mind. Santa obviously wasn't home, but maybe his wife was.