Christmas with the Calvins

Chapter Thirty-Eight

"What's up?" Scott demanded from Curtis once Jessie and Lucy disappeared upstairs.

"The Toy Santa's gotten completely out of control!" Curtis burst. "He's locked up the elves, shut down the workshop. He thinks everybody's naughty, AND HE'S GONNA GIVE THE WHOLE WORLD COAL!"

"Well how come Bernard didn't come to tell me this?" Scott asked. He'd been gone for almost a month, surely in that time Jess and her husband had fixed things.

"He's under house arrest!" Curtis explained. He then went on to tell Scott all about the coal mining and how he and Jessica had barely escaped Toy Santa's clutches. "You have to come back with me and save Christmas!"

"I can't!" Scott groaned. "I'm out of magic! I don't have any magic left!"

"You don't have any magic left?" Jess gasped as she joined them downstairs once more. "So that means that you didn't..."

"We don't have time for that right now!" Curtis snapped. "You're still Santa until the end of Christmas this year. That means we need you to get back up to the workshop quickly."

"But how? If I don't have any magic, I can't just pop back up there."

"Don't you have Comet?" Jess remembered. Together the three of them raced out into the backyard where Comet was lazily lounging. To their shock the mythical reindeer was surrounded by candy wrappers. He was laying in the snow looking sickly.

"Comet! Look at me!" Scott scolded. "What are you doing? You're not suppose to eat sugar! It's bad for ya." The reindeer snorted in response. "What do you mean you didn't eat this? Who did?" The reindeer made a bleating noise that caused Scott to scoff. "A squirrel? Yeah well get this, you've gotta fly all of us back to the North Pole, tonight!"

"Dad, that's not going to work." Jess stepped forward. "Look at him, poor thing can barely stand up."

"Have either of you got a better idea?"

"Maybe if I stay here." She suggested. "You and Curtis could take the jetpacks back. I'll stay with Lucy, Mom, Neil, Charlie...spend my last Christmas with them. You two go back home. Save Christmas, come back for me when you can. Or send Bernard once he's sprung."

"That's not a half bad idea." Scott agreed. "Alright Curtis, get the jetpacks."

"Yeah, that's not going to work either." Curtis sighed. "We were kind of in a hurry when we left the North Pole. We could only grab two of Quintin's new test jetpacks. Let's just say their maiden voyage wasn't exactly successful. They're broken."

"What am I suppose to do? grow wings?" Of course Santa couldn't grow wings, but they knew someone who could.

Somewhere in the house they found a nice long piece of string. They tied one end of the string to Scott's front tooth and the other to the doorknob of Neil's home office. Scott braced himself as his daughter swung the door wide open before slamming it shut. Nothing happened. Scott's tooth was still firmly

+rooted in his mouth. The slamming door however, woke Laura and Neil, who came downstairs to investigate the commotion.

"What's going on down here?" The sleepy psychiatrist asked. Jess, Curtis and Scott quickly explained the situation, and Neil told them he had an idea. Five minutes later, Scott was standing at the top of the stairs with a front tooth tied to a toaster that was gripped in Neil's hands. The others waited nervously at the base of the stairs.

"Are you sure about this?" Laura questioned her husband.

"What? The old toaster trick? When we were kids we used to do this all the time to try and earn extra cash!" Neil told them excitedly. Jess couldn't help but smile. It was nice to see the childish side of her step-dad. Even if it was only for a moment. "Works every time!" Neil tossed the toaster down, and Scott tried his best to hold on to the railing. But he lost his grip and went tumbling down the stairs with the toaster still tied to his tooth.