Chapter 1

The Letter

"Why are you so glum?" Abby asked Bernard when she came into his room, delivering, as usual, the best hot chocolate available anywhere in the world. Abby meant it as a joke, but Bernard didn't seem to take it as one. He just shook his head, then put it into his right hand. Abby looked at him quizzically, putting her hot cocoa tray down on the table in the middle of the room.

"O.K." she mouthed, walking over to him. She put out a hand to his shoulder, but before her finger was able to even tap it, Bernard shot up again, who was obviously not expecting her there. "Sorry, Abby." he said, seeing he almost hit her. "What's wrong, Bernard?" she asked, now a bit worried.

"I got into that 'Human-School' project thing. It wouldn't be so bad if I hadn't gotten a girl...in South Texas!" he emphasized the last two words. Abby flinched a little bit. Elves were sensitive to heat (hence their presence in the North Pole) but some elves were even more sensitive than others. Bernard was one of these elves.

Abby stood there as if in thought for a moment, then asked, to help lighten the mood, "Is it your partner being a girl

that's terrible, or is it that it's in South Texas?"

"Both…and more."

"Oh? What would that more be?"

"You know that Santa's wife's about to have a baby. He's gonna need me here."

"Isn't he going to leave Cu-"

"Yes," Bernard hissed, his face screwing up. "That's probably the worst part of it."

Abby smiled at the infamous fighting and squabbling between him and Curtis playing a role even now, in infuriating him, three years after Curtis was taken in on the job as #2 elf. She knew that this was a serious thing for Bernard, but she just couldn't take this seriously herself. "Have you asked Santa to back you out?" she suggested with a smile. Bernard glared at her, angry that she wasn't more sympathetic to what he was going through, but answered her question anyway. "Yes, but he refused. I'm in it for the whole year."

Abby thought it would be best to start actually helping Bernard with his "problem", bit her lip and suggested, "Well then, let's stop looking at the bad points and pick out the good ones. Let's start with her name. What is it?"

"Katie! You got a letter from…Alaska?" her dad called from the bottom of the stairs. At the word "Alaska" and "letter", Katie pulled the earphones from her ever-slightly pointed ears, and slammed the Mac book she had on her desk shut. "The Santa Clause 2" movie could wait for at least the little while that it would take to read the letter. She had seen the movie so much that she could probably leave it running, and she could just start watching from wherever it happened to be. The only other thing that she could do something like that with would be the "Les Misérables" soundtrack, which she had listened to since she was about six years old.

She skipped into the kitchen, where her dad was starting to prepare dinner. "Hey, Dad. Where's my letter?" she asked. "It's over where the letters always are." He nodded in the direction of the side table, where a small pile of mail was sitting, and a white envelope, decorated with red, green, and gold snaking lines around the border, was placed on the top. It read "To: Catherine Michieles", then their address. She picked it up, and read the return address. If it was because it was again asking her if she wanted to go on a student-exchange program with a student in Canada or Alaska, she would have to send it back, as she was homeschooled. But this time, it wasn't from a student-exchange program. Rather, it just read "Alaska," and that was it. No name, nor any other address than that.

Curious of the festive decoration and lack of appropriate address, she went and got a butter knife from the drawer. Unlike her dad, she didn't have the knack of opening letters with her fingers cleanly. She had the knack for brutally murdering the envelope, instead. Once she got it open, she took out a piece of parchment. Yes, it was parchment, not paper. It was too fancy and too thick to be considered just a piece of paper. Getting over that fact and more of the decorative Christmasy border that lined the parchment, she actually began to read the letter itself:

Dear Catherine Michieles, (Katie was impressed. The whole thing seemed to be done in handwritten calligraphy.)

You have been chosen to host a guest from an Alaskan school for one year. After that year is done, you may take the choice of visiting his (Katie noticed the lack of "/her" after this,) school for one year, or declining the invitation. He will give you the address upon his arrival. As said in a previous letter, ("What previous letter?" Katie thought,) once you have sent in the application saying "yes," or "no," there is no backing out. Your partner will meet you at your house on the 28th of December. Once there, he will be sure to burn the slip of paper that contains your address. ("Where the hell did they get my address?") Thank you, and have a Merry Christmas.

Yours sincerely,

S.C.

"S.C.? Who's that supposed to be? Santa Claus?" Katie thought, half feeling like laughing, half like screaming her head off.

"Who's it from, Katie?" her dad asked, chopping up some mushrooms and dropping them into a pan of very hot oil. "Someone named 'S.C.' He said I'm going to host a visitor from some random Alaskan school for a year."

"A year? Wow. If they're going to stay that long, then I'm guessing that you're room is just going to get messy after the first week." Her dad responded, though cutting up something relatively small with a very big sharp knife, paying attention to everything Katie was telling him. Those three things were what Katie loved about her dad the most: 1. That he could deal with the weirdest scenarios with ease and a touch of comedy, 2. That he could multitask like nobody's business, and last but not least, 3. He was an amazing cook.

"But we are gonna have to figure out where they're gonna sleep. In your room perhaps? I could set up the cot."

"A boy sleeping in my room for a year? Are you nuts?" Katie nearly shouted. Her dad's eyebrows went up in the smallest increment possible. "You didn't tell me he was going to be a boy. But where else are we gonna put him? I'll set up the divider in your room so that you can lock it at night."

Katie held back a groan, running her fingers through her dirty-blonde hair. That was one of the flips sides that Katie didn't like about her dad: once he's made up his mind, nothing, absolutely nothing was going to change it. The other thing was he didn't seem to get the uneasiness teenagers these days had about the opposing sex. Especially if they involved things like sleeping in the same room, divider or not.

That started to get Katie wondering, "How old is he? What's his name?" As if in answer to her question, the discarded envelope in her left hand suddenly felt slightly heavier, as if she forgot to take something out of it.

"Weird. I could've sworn that the letter was the only thing in there. Oh, well." she thought. Things like that seemed to happen to her a lot. Much more so since her Mom died. That was the parent that she looked most like, with her spring green eyes, lightly tanned skin, brownish blonde hair, and the two coolest things that she loved about her appearance: her semi-pointed ears and the very small, so small as to the point of nearly being unnoticeable, silver and gold sparkles on her cheeks. She probably wouldn't have loved them as much as she did, if she went to public school, like most kids. Instead, her dad homeschooled her, and as far as Katie knew, doing a damn good job of it too.

But as common as these weird sudden appearances of things that weren't there before was to her, she still was curious as to whatever was still in the envelope. Thankful that she didn't have to open it again, she pulled out another piece of parchment. This one was slightly more beaten up, with no decorations, but when Katie read it, it held the most important information about this whole "Alaskan student" thing so far. It read:

Dear Katie, (she noted the use of her nickname, and saw that this was written in elegant cursive handwriting, not in calligraphy. "Whoever this guy is, he seems to know a lot about me." Katie didn't know what to think about this.)

I'm sorry if you read the other letter first, and were a little bit freaked out. That one's the letter that I have to send in order to be sure that I've given all the information. Unfortunately, that doesn't do its job very well, hence this letter. That letter always leaves out the most important information that you could possibly know about this whole experience…the name and age of the other person. His name is Bernard and he's 16 years old. If you're wondering about last names, I'm not allowed to give it. And don't worry, he doesn't know yours either. He's still going to meet you at your house on the 28th of December, and nothing else in the other letter has changed because of this one. This is kind of an extension. Thank you again, and have a very Merry Christmas.

See you soon,

S. Calvin

"Hmm. S. Calvin. That would be really funny, and weird if his first name's Scott. And on top of that, the boy that's coming to visit is named Bernard. Like in "The Santa Clause" movies." Katie thought as she walked back upstairs to her room, reading the letter as she went. "It would be totally awesome if it were real. But I'm old enough to know that the North Pole isn't real. Yeah, sure elves are real. I'm living proof of that, but not the North Pole."