"Jack Frost is real?"
I sighed, "Yes, Jamie, Jack Frost is real. As I have told you four times already." I mumbled the last part.
I had been called over to the Bennett's house when Jamie's parents wanted to have a date night. So, I was stuck babysitting Jamie and his little sister Sophie. As usual, Jamie started up a conversation about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, hoping to get good stuff this Easter. I had tried to stay silent during his tirade, but invariably he asked me what I thought on the matter and I said I couldn't care less, and eventually the meeting with Jack slipped out of my mouth and Jamie couldn't get enough of it. It had taken me a while to get him to understand things about Jack Frost, but when I gave him cold hard evidence, almost literally, seeing as he had had that killer sled ride, his eyes glowed with realization and he asked me to clarify five times, totally called it, that Jack Frost was real.
"Can I meet him?" Jamie asked excitedly.
"Well, not today seeing as it's almost nine o'clock and your parents will be home soon. Besides, you and Soph need to go to bed."
"Aaw man," he complained, "Can't I at least go outside and yell his name a couple of times?"
"No you crazy kid, you'll catch cold if you do that, and then what am I going to tell your parents?"
He groaned and got up from the couch, allowing me to herd him upstairs. When he was in his room getting changed, I went back downstairs to grab his little sister and succeeded in chasing her upstairs and tickling her until she was holding her stomach from laughing so hard. I got her changed with teeth brushed and tucked into bed in no time, and then it was Jamie's turn. When I walked in his room, he had a flashlight in his hands, obviously planning on staying up all night to see if he could see Jack Frost.
"If you stay up all night, he won't come. He's on his own schedule and is probably in some other town right now." I took the flashlight away from him and pushed him into bed, complaining all the way, and managed to tuck him in. I could see he was ready to jump out of bed again the second I left the room, so I sat on the side of his bed, looking at him and told him, "Okay look, I'll take you to the pool tomorrow and we can see if he shows up. Sound like a plan?"
His eyes sparkled and he replied, "Yeah." He promptly rolled over and I patted him on the head and left the room. I walked downstairs and turned off the landing light when I reached the bottom.
I only had to wait ten minutes until the Bennetts blustered in, bringing a wave of cold air with them. Their noses and cheeks were flushed from the biting cold wind. As they came in I shivered, and then thought twice about what the cold air meant. Maybe I could see Jack . . .?
I shook myself out of my reverie when Mrs. Bennett came over to the couch. I stood, accepted her thanks, and the fifteen bucks she gave me, then bade them both a good night, put on my jacket and boots, and walked the seventeen paces to my front door. On the way, I paused, looking up at the stars, thinking about a certain boy with white hair and blue eyes.
I chuckled to myself and walked the rest of the way to my front door, not realizing I was being watched by two glowing golden orbs in the darkness.
Jack saw however. He was perched on a telephone pole, having not much to do this early in the evening. His job would come around four in the morning. So while he waited, he decided to watch over Alana and her neighbor Jamie.
He waited patiently for her to come out of the house, and when he did, he planned on swooping down and talking to her, but then he saw the gold dots. They were dots from where he was, but they were glowing, and he thought they were eyes. He wasn't sure though, because he blinked and they were gone.
When Alana was safe in her house, Jack quietly flew down to the bushes. He crept up, his staff raised, then stabbed the bushes with it. The only thing he heard besides the bushes rustling was the sound of malicious laughter resonating from somewhere deep in the shadows.
Jack was unsettled, and flew to a tree outside Alana's window to watch her and make sure she was safe.
I was bullied awake by my parents at around three in the morning. They were shouting something about 'Lights'. I didn't realize what they were talking about until I looked out my window. In the sky, we could see the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights. I dashed downstairs to where my parents were putting on their winter clothing and asked, "Aren't we too far South to see the Lights?"
My mother looked at me, ecstatic, and answered, "Apparently not!"
She and my father were extremely excited and I could feel it flowing off of them in waves, which washed over and affected me as well. We dashed outside to get a better look at the Lights and stood in our driveway gaping at the spectacle above us. The lights flowed like rivers, constantly moving and changing, spiking up like mountains. There were vibrant greens, purples, oranges and yellows; even the rare blue flashed at us.
While we watched, I swore I heard a tree rustle, which was strange because there was no wind, but I paid it no mind: I was too entranced by the Lights. Not five minutes after they started, they were done. They receded back to the North and faded out. Nonetheless, we stood, gaping at the sky in silence for a few extra minutes before we became cold and hurried inside.
Once inside, we shucked our winter clothes and bustled into the living room, sitting on the furniture and relating what we had seen. It was mostly unintelligible stuff about how brilliant it was, yadda, yadda, yadda, but we continued speaking animatedly for at least five minutes. No one could fall asleep for at least another half hour, we were too wired at having seen the Aurora Borealis so we just sat in our respective rooms and stared at the sky, thinking of what we had seen.
When Jack saw the Aurora Borealis, he flew off, rustling the tree behind him.
"Sorry, Alana." He whispered to the figure standing in her driveway with her parents. He flew off to downtown, a back alley and stood there, thinking. Suddenly, two large furry things that were grunting threw a bag over his head and tossed him somewhere.
When Jack peeked out of the bag, he could see funny little creatures in onesies with pointy hats and bells on top. They were muttering to themselves in some sort of language, but Jack couldn't understand a thing they said. When he looked around, coming out of the bag, what he saw filled him with amazement.
He was in a workshop-type place with a huge globe as the centerpiece. There were tiny lights scattered all over the continents, and the globe rotated, so as he watched, he saw Australia, Asia, Europe and Africa, and then the Americas and Australia again. He looked around more and saw flying toys of helicopters, airplanes, even a flying pig, which was strange enough as it was. He saw at least twenty of those large furry things that had thrown him in the bag wandering about, and tons of the weird little creatures with pointy hats and bells.
Jack pulled his feet from the bag and stood up, turning so his back faced the globe, and saw a huge fireplace in front of which were four figures. One very large man all in red with a white beard and tattoos on his arms, one saying "Naughty" the other saying "Nice".
There was a six-foot-tall gray rabbit who would have looked fierce with boomerangs strapped to his back, had he not been delicately painting an egg and having a wicker basket hanging on one arm chock full of more painted eggs.
The third figure was female, but she had wings like a hummingbird and feathers all over her body. She was flitting around, talking to other hummingbird-like things in an extremely fast paced voice.
The fourth and last figure Jack looked at was a small yellow man with a onesie that looked like it was made of sand. His hair was spiky and arrayed around his head like some kid's drawing of the sun. He was hovering a couple of inches off of the floor, his head cocked to one side, seemingly sleeping.
"Good! Jack, you made it. So glad you could come." Said a Russian accent. Jack looked at the speaker and was surprised to see that the red man belonged to it.
Alright, Author's Note: I'm not going to describe what happens at the North Pole because you should all know what happens because you all should have seen the movie. If you haven't seen the movie, then you obviously aren't at this point in the website.