Chapter Twenty – Three: A Visit from Santa

Sasha's POV

After getting back from seeing Allie, I went to go find Bernard. He and Curtis were in Experimentation and Development in the room with the toy cloning machine with Scott. Folding my arms, I raised my eye brow curiously at them, "What's going on in here?" Then something caught my eye, a naked toy replication of Scott. Face-palming, I spoke up again, "Never mind, I don't want to know. Put some clothes on the mannequin before parading him around, will you?"

As I started to walk out, I heard, "We're going to need your help, he's pretending to be Santa while Santa's gone." Resisting the urge to roll my eyes at Curtis' comment, I headed out the door waving my hand in acknowledgement of his words. There were better ways to go about Scott leaving during busy season, this was not one of them. Those two can handle this on their own, I'm not getting involved unless I have to.

"Sasha!" Curtis called after me, asking if I was going to help, only to be silently stopped by Scott or Bernard. After a few moments, Bernard caught up with me.

"I'm not going to ask you to help with him, even I think this is a bad idea and I'm the one who has to convince the rest of the elves that that's Santa." He told me.

"He's plastic." I responded incredulously, "What are you going to tell them? That Scott has a new look he's super fond of and not to mention it to him that it sucks?"

"Actually, yeah."

"You can't lie for shit, how are you going to tell them?"

"I was hoping you would help me prepare a speech for announcement." He responded, "After the speech, I'm letting Curtis deal with him. Between my duties as head elf and the things we need to due to prepare for the baby - Histmas called while you were visiting Allie-"

"We're going to be busy."

"I'll start training Curtis after Christmas to take over for me."

"You sure?"

He nodded, "Yeah, I've had a good run. I'm ready to move on."

Allie's POV

Charlie's art project in the gym practically got him expelled. Principal Newman caught him while he was finishing up. He was the only one to be caught, Danielle who had went with him was nowhere to be seen. Probably took off when she noticed someone coming. If she did, she should have done what I did, not go in the first place. Course if she wouldn't have gone, I would have. If I would have, he wouldn't have been caught, but then I would have had to be stuck with her.

When we went to school the following Monday, Principal Newman had a parent teacher conference with Laura, Neil, and Scott. With the help of Scott, Charlie was able to do community service to get out of his expulsion and Scott would be here up until Christmas Eve to make sure he went through with it. So would I. Not because I wanted to watch over Charlie, what he did was his own choice, but because I actually volunteer for community service for the school. It was one of my extra-curricular activities.

"Hey Scott, how's it going?" I greeted him as I walked into the kitchen when I got back home from school. He had been playing cards with Lucy. "Hi Lucy, how was school?"

Lucy shrugged and put down a card.

"It's alright." Scott answered, "How have you been, Allie?"

I shrugged, "Okay, I guess; I keep busy."

"I know." Scott nodded, "Between the newspaper and tutoring, I'm sure you do."

"I'm also in the drama club, I do tech support for the productions."

"When did that start?" Scott asked.

"This year with the fall play." I answered. There weren't too many clubs that I hadn't been a part of at one point or another. I did everything I could to keep myself busy. The more I did, the less empty I felt.

After a few awkward moments of silence, Lucy was called to help Laura with something in another room. I sat down in the seat Lucy had been sitting in. Speaking up again, I told him, "I heard about the de-santafication. How are you doing?"

"I've been better." He admitted, "I have to find a wife by Christmas Eve while I'm trying to keep Charlie out of trouble."

"I'm here if you need anything." I told him, "I actually do volunteer work for the school too, so I'll be around." Then, a thought struck me, "Scott, if you're here, who's running the workshop?"

"Bernard, Curtis, and a toy clone of me."

'That's not going to go well…' I thought as I put on a closed mouth smile and changed the subject, "So any ideas how you're going to find someone by Christmas?"

"No a one." He answered, "Anything particular you want for Christmas?"

"What I want not even Santa can get me."

"I'm sure there's some way I could help."

"What I want is similar to what you need."

"The only way I can help with that one is if I reached out to Cupid, but something tells me you wouldn't want that."

"No." I shook my head, "I want him to like me for me, not because someone shot an arrow in his butt."