Here is a work of fiction as a holiday gift to you, the loyal readers of the North Shore News.
Part 1 ran in the paper Dec. 10 while Parts 2 and 3 ran together on Dec. 24. For those who really don’t like it, I’ve attached a gift receipt. Merry Christmas!
CHAPTER 1: The Shaky Note
The two brothers raced down the snow-covered walkway and skidded onto the street, their boots surfing the frozen pavement.
Gaining traction, they ran towards the bus stop as fast as they could, excited to show Rose their matching elf costumes.
Their dad walked slowly behind, keeping a watchful eye on his cellphone. It was the last day of school before Christmas, and the boys – separated by two grades but nearly identical in height – had both been cast as wise-cracking security elves in the school’s play, a holiday stage adaptation of the beloved Christmas movie, Die Hard.
The fact that Sam, a second-grader, had a speaking part of any kind was a minor miracle considering he’d barely spoken more than two words in his life to anyone who wasn’t his mother, father, or younger brother, Theo. That, however, was before they met Rose.
Truth be told, if Sam had his way, they never would have met Rose at all. Four months before, on Theo’s first day of kindergarten, Sam had warned his little brother not to talk to the weird lady in a wheelchair who was always sitting on her porch right across the street from their bus stop.
“She talks funny and she smells like a skunk,” Sam whispered to Theo. “The older boys say she does weed.”
The boys reached the bus stop and Theo kept on walking, confidently marching across the road and up the steps of Rose’s house.
“Stop. Stop!” Sam whisper-shouted, but it was too late. Theo, a friendly rooster in a family of silent hawks, walked right up to the Rose, sniffed deeply and smiled.
“Hi, I’m Theo. My brother says you smell like a skunk and do the weeds. I do the weeds too! Me and my mom picked weeds for two hours yesterday. I got so hungry!”
“They do give you the munchies,” the woman said, her twinkling eyes contrasting with her otherwise hunched appearance.
“My brother is mean. You smell like coffee. And lemons.”
“And just a bit of gin!” Rose said with a smile.
Sam slowly crept onto the porch, trying to stay invisible as he pondered how he could fetch his younger brother away from this woman.
“Your older brother, he has a good heart,” Rose said quietly to Theo. “And I’m a good judge of hearts. Do you know why?”
“No,” said Theo.
She held up her arm, curled her fist into the shape of a mouth and wagged her thumb up and down like a hand puppet.
“Because I’m a ventricle-ist!” she said, bursting into a laugh. The boys were silent. “Or maybe I’m just a dummy.”
At that, both boys snickered.
“I tell you what,” she said. “If you come up here every morning and say hello, I’ll tell you a joke every day.”
“OK!” said Theo. Sam said nothing, grabbing Theo by the collar and yanking him down the stairs just as the bus pulled up.
As they walked down the aisle of the bus, looking for a seat that they could share, a bruiser of a fourth-grader named Nolan punched Sam in the shoulder.
“Welcome back, dork!” he said. Theo, trailing behind his brother, puffed up large.
“Don’t do that!” Theo said, getting close to the boy’s face. Nolan, four years his elder, laughed at Theo, but then glanced at the brothers and leaned back in his chair.
Sam and Theo sat down two rows back. “What’s a dork?” Theo whispered to Sam.
Rose watched and chuckled as the bus pulled away. One day later she was back on the porch to meet the boys before their second day of school.
“What do you get when you cross a wolf with a bunny?” she asked after Theo sprang up the stairs.
“I don’t know,” said Theo.
“Just a wolf,” said Rose.
As the school year progressed, Rose kept her word, greeting the boys every single morning with a joke. She continued even when her voice stopped working and she was left to write out all her jokes on a piece of paper. Sam was now fully involved, reading all the jokes to his brother. At first the writing was strong, but by December it was a scribble that Sam could barely make out.
“Bad news,” she faintly scrawled one day in mid-December. “The doctor told me I have cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. That’s life, I guess. At least I don’t have cancer.”
The boys didn’t understand, but Mom laughed and cried at the same time when they showed her the note.
Finally, it was the day of the play, and the two little elves raced up Rose’s stairs.
“Yippee Ki-Yay Mothe-” Sam started to yell, stopping abruptly. The porch was empty.
“Where is she?” Theo asked, big tears starting to roll down his cheeks. He’d never experienced a single day of school without first saying hello to Rose.
Sam knocked on the door but there was no answer. The bus pulled up and the boys raced away. As they flew down the stairs, Sam noticed an envelope tucked into the railing.
“To Sam,” it said on the front. He grabbed it and ran onto the bus, sitting down next to Theo, who was still sniffling.
He flipped over the envelope and saw more writing.
“Do not open until just before your play,” it said. It looked like Rose’s handwriting, but Sam thought there was something odd about it. Suddenly it struck him. It was her alright, but this was no scribble. Her writing – it was strong again.
CHAPTER 2: Lost and found
Sam turned the envelope over and over in his hands as the school bus crunched through the snow.
Beside him sat his younger brother Theo, rubbing away tears with the ruffled sleeve of his elf costume.
“Why didn’t Rose meet us at the bus stop today?” seven-year-old Sam whispered to Theo. “She’s been there every day.”
“She’s gotta be dead,” sniffled Theo, 5. “She’s old. Like, 40! And she was sick really bad.”
“But this note,” said Sam. “How did she write this note?”
“Open it!”
“I can’t! She said not to open it until our Christmas play starts.”
The brakes of the bus squealed as they pulled up in front of the school. Just then Nolan popped his head over the seat in front of the boys.
“Why you crying? Wrinkly old girlfriend die? Gross.” He reached a pulpy hand over the seat and snatched the letter out of Sam’s hand, slithered down the steps of the bus and sprinted off across the playground.
Sam and Theo, momentarily frozen in shock, burst out of their seats and down the aisle, shoving past other students as they yelled after the escaping bully.
“Halt!” yelled a booming voice, stopping them cold. Hans, the driver, stood up, his head of long white hair scraping the ceiling of the bus as he stared down at the brothers. The boys stood stunned, not only because of his imposing size, but also because he hadn’t been their driver for more than a month. When they got on the bus that morning they were so distracted that they hadn’t noticed their old driver was back.
“You boys vill valk on zis bus,” he said slowly, his thick accent of some European origin adding to his menace. “Und you vill not be pushing over ze ozer children.”
The boys nodded in terror, then walked very quickly down the steps. Once on the playground they ran. Stopped. Looked. Ran. Stopped. Nolan was nowhere to be seen. Now it was Sam who started to panic.
“The letter … I need to … Rose is gone … how will I?”
The bell rang. Theo tried to give Sam a hug but the older boy’s body just went limp. Theo ran off towards his classroom, glancing back when he reached the door to see Sam standing in the middle of the playground. Alone.
Throughout the day Theo fidgeted at his desk, unable to focus as thoughts raced through his head. On top of everything, he had the school play – an elementary adaptation of the Christmas classic, Die Hard – that afternoon, and he was the only kindergartner who’d been given a speaking part. At least he’d have Sam there beside him – they were security elves who were supposed to tell jokes to the crowd.
The noon bell rang and Theo hustled to the drama room where the crew and actors were frantically preparing for the show. The play was set to begin right after lunch, with the whole school there to watch along with hundreds of parents. But where was Sam? Theo ran all over the room looking for his brother but couldn’t find him anywhere.
“One minute!” said Ms. Rockwell, the director. “Quiet! Places!”
“Ms. Rockwell!” shouted Theo. “I can’t find my brother!”
The teacher knelt down beside Theo and took his hand.
“He’ll be here,” she said. “But if he doesn’t come, you have to go on by yourself, OK? You know all the jokes, you can do this by yourself. You don’t need him – you’re the funny one!”
The lights in the room went dark, and Ms. Rockwell raced towards the stage, leaving Theo staring after her in the dark. The little boy wandered over and watched as the play began, a tall Grade 6 striding onto the stage as John McClane in a dirty white tank top. McClane sang: “Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. Oh what fun it is to fight, and tell bad guys Yippee Ki-Yay!”
In the lobby on the other side of the school, far from the lights and laughter, Sam sat crying underneath a huge Christmas tree. He’d hunted after Nolan all day but couldn’t find him anywhere. As he sat, growing more disconsolate, he stomped his foot down, shaking the tree, and something fluttered down onto the ground in front of him. It was the note from Rose! He tore it open.
“Sam, you’re the strongest boy I know. Your brother needs you. You can do it.”
At the bottom was a postscript. “If you see Santa at your school, don’t trust him. … Now go!”
Sam sprinted off towards the gym. At that moment Theo was walking onstage, his joke routine meant to lighten the mood following John McClane’s cringe-worthy encounter with a floor full of broken glass.
Theo stood and looked out at the gym. The blood drained from his face as he discovered just how many eyes were looking back at him.
“Chilly,” he stammered. “2:30. … A little horse.”
He’d forgotten all the setups, remembering only his punchlines. The silence in the gym was vast. Theo looked like a boy about to be sucked into a black hole.
Then a voice called out from the back of the gym. “What’s a snowman’s favourite food?”
Theo recognized the voice, but couldn’t see where it came from.
“Chili,” he said shakily. Some members of the crowd giggled. Now Theo saw him. It was Sam, running onto the stage.
“What’s the best time to go to the dentist?” Sam shouted.
“Tooth hurty!” replied Theo, drawing bigger laughs.
Sam stood beside his brother, reached down and grabbed his hand. Theo squeezed back, hard.
“Why couldn’t my pony sing in the Christmas concert?” he asked. Theo waited a beat, his eyes shining.
“Because he’s a little hoarse!”
The crowd laughed and cheered the boys. For the second time that day, Theo hugged his brother. “Thank you,” he whispered in his ear. Sam hugged back, hard.
“I got the message from Rose,” Sam whispered in Theo’s ear. “She wanted me to tell you something.”
Theo looked up at Sam, his eyes wide.
“Merry Christmas, little brother.”
“Merry Christmas Sam.”
(Author’s note: the story should probably end here. If you’re satisfied with this, then go pour yourself an eggnog, heavy on the rum, and wait for Santa to come. The good Santa, I mean. But if you’re looking for a little more Die Hard, here you go, you crazy cowboys. Merry Christmas.)
CHAPTER 3: The war on Christmas
From behind them came a booming voice.
“Ho ho ho!” Sam watched as Santa sprang up the stairs on the side of the stage. “Very funny, little boyz!”
This was not in the script, and as Santa strode quickly towards them, Sam remembered Rose’s warning. He grabbed Theo and ran the other way. Santa broke into an awkward sprint, and was just about to reach them when a hand reached onto the stage and swiped his feet, sending Santa sprawling to the ground and his sack flying into the air. From down below a young boy leapt onto stage, jumped on top of Santa and yelled: “Grab him! Help!” The boy, now sitting on top of Santa and smushing his face into the ground, looked up at Sam and smiled. It was Nolan.
The crowd gasped – Santa’s sack had flung open and there, sitting in the middle of the stage, was a bundle of dynamite attached to a ticking clock. 10 – 9 – 8 – 7 …
In a flash someone appeared from the shadows, grabbed the bomb and raced out a side door onto the playground. Three seconds of silence followed. Tick. Tick. Tick.
Then … BOOM!
Flames blew the door in, and a cloud of smoke wafted up into the night air.
In the panic that followed, Nolan yelled as he struggled with Santa. Sam raced over and kicked Santa right in his droll little mouth. With Ms. Rockwell and John McClane now on hand, the four of them pinned Santa down.
“I read your note,” Nolan said to Sam. “I was looking all over to give it back to you but couldn’t find you. I put it in the tree hoping you’d find it.”
“Thanks,” said Sam. “I didn’t find it. It found me.”
The shadowy figure, stained black from the blast, staggered back through the gaping hole in the gym wall and collapsed onto the stage, pulling off Santa’s hat and beard to reveal Hans, the bus driver.
“You’re under arrest, Hans Gruber.”
“Who are you?” Hans croaked.
“I’ve been tracking you for years, Hans. My name is Agent Noelle Rosenblum, FBI.”
“Rose!” said Sam and Theo in unison, jumping on their old friend. “You’re alive!”
“Easy boys,” she said weakly. “That blast took a lot out of me. But you’re safe, and that’s all that matters.”
More police arrived and dragged Hans away, while paramedics loaded Rose onto a stretcher.
Sam and Theo’s father was watching the scene intently.
“So you’re Rose?” he said. “It’s great you’re alive, but why did you pretend to have cancer? And Alzheimers? And why did you watch that guy for three months instead of arresting him right away? And why did he want to blow up a school? And why didn’t you tell anyone else about this crazy plan? And you’re FBI? What are you doing here? This is Canada.”
“Too … weak … to … answer,” said Rose, shooting the dad a look. She leaned in closer to the boys.
“You be good to each other,” she said. “Together, you’ll rule the world.”
Her eyes gently closed.
“Boys,” she said as the paramedics started to wheel her away. “What did the cat say to the reindeer on Christmas Eve?”
The boys looked at each other and shrugged.
“Meow,” said Rose. She raised a thumb at the boys.
“Yippee Ki-Yay, little brothers. Yippee Ki-Yay to us all.”
