Charlie started his junior year at Sycamore while Ella began her last year at Lakeside Middle School in September 2002. Since then, Ella was noticing that Charlie has been acting strangely. He always goes out with friends and is home late, some of his grades have been marked down, and he has been moody towards her and Laura and Neil. One night after Thanksgiving, Ella was doing her homework when she suddenly felt thirsty. She went downstairs to get a glass of water. Laura and Neil were going out for the night so they told Charlie that he could invite a friend over to the house for a few hours. Charlie invited his friend, Danielle, to the house. Ella got along with Danielle after she met her for the first time last year. The teens were talking in the kitchen when Ella entered. Charlie stopped talking and he hid his climbing gear in his backpack.
"Hey, guys, what are you doing?" Ella asked.
"Nothing, El," answered Charlie. "What are you doing here?"
"Uh, I live here," she joked. "I was just getting a glass of water and going upstairs to bed."
"Oh."
"What are you doing with your climbing gear? You guys going camping or something? Do Mom and Neil know about this?"
Charlie chuckled nervously and told his sister that they were just going out. When Ella asked again what the climbing gear was for, her brother insisted that he and Danielle were just going out. Ella held her hands up in surrender and apologized for her joking around. She got her glass of water and went back upstairs thinking. She had never seen Charlie act so strange before. So, she tried her best to contact Scott with her snowglobe, but he didn't answer.
When Neil and Laura got home, Ella told them what happened earlier. They told her that he was having a teenage phase and would go away eventually. Neil added that he was also having trouble in school. When Ella went upstairs to go to bed, the telephone rang and Laura answered. Neil also saw a figure coming towards the door. It was Charlie. It was not going to be a good night.
Meanwhile at the North Pole, Scott was about to receive the news that would change his job as Santa forever.
Author's Note: Now, we are up to the events in The Santa Clause 2! Yay! I also want to apologize because some of you are probably wondering why I rushed through. I thought it would be alright that if I did a flashforward because it would take too much time to wonder what the Calvin siblings have done after Lucy was born. I wrote a quick flashforward to Charlie, Ella, and Lucy already growing up in the last few years before Scott learned about the Mrs. Clause.
