Chapter 2
From my observation post in the hall, I said, “I thought this was for little kids.”
Millie, wild-eyed, threw open a closet door. She turned toward Keme, who was rifling through the—ick—commode, and shouted, “Closet is clear!”
“Nothing!” he shouted back, slamming a drawer shut.
“Be careful,” I said, “that’s an antique—”
“Billiard room!” Millie called over me.
And Keme’s answering shout had an almost military crack to it: “On it!”
Together, they sprinted for the billiard room. A moment later, I heard a crash.
“Your point being?” Fox asked dryly.
“Did they get this excited about Elf on the Shelf last year?” Bobby asked. “Why do I not remember this?”
“Probably because you were moping and doing all that tremendously vigorous exercise and trying to pretend you didn’t have feelings,” Fox said.
Bobby isn’t the type to give dirty looks, but he didn’t sound very grateful when he said, “Thank you, Fox.”
“You’re welcome.”
“We didn’t do Elf on the Shelf last year,” I said. “Last year, they set up all of Vivienne’s decorations, but the rest of us were kind of busy—”
“Pining?” Fox said.
“Don’t you have art to do?”
“I am doing it,” Fox said haughtily. “Everything I do is art.”
From the billiard room came a way too aggressive grunt from Keme—he was undoubtedly lifting something heavy, probably for Millie’s benefit—and then, seconds later, a tremendous thud.
“They’re going to knock this house down,” I muttered.
“Do they get a prize or something?” Bobby asked.
“Not everyone is motivated in life by filthy lucre,” Fox said.
“Five minutes ago,” I said, “you were doing that Christmas scratcher and saying, ‘Titi needs a new pair of shoes.’” To Bobby, I said, “There’s no prize. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite of a prize.”
“What does that mean?” Bobby asked. “Does the loser have a consequence?”
“No, that’s what’s so confusing about this whole thing.
There’s no game with Elf on the Shelf. There’s no winning and losing.
They’re not supposed to touch the elf at all, actually.
The fun is that every night, the elf moves somewhere else in the house, and the next morning, the kid—emphasis on kid—gets to find them.
” Glass shattered. “Usually it’s not so destructive. ”
“Wait, so what’s the point? This elf just moves around the house, and the kids try to find him?”
“The point,” Fox said, “is that Santa is always watching. It’s a coercive system—a punitive system—to regulate children’s behavior in an attempt to socialize them into a capitalist regime in which prizes are rewarded for good behavior, and poverty is the result of not toeing the line.”
Bobby looked at me.
“Okay, yes,” I said. But then to Fox, I added, “You’ve been spending too much time with Cyd.”
Fox sniffed. “He bought me a coffee.”
Millie and Keme must have moved their search upstairs because footsteps hammered overhead, interspersed with the unmistakable sounds of giggling.
“What in the world is going on?” Indira asked from the doorway to the servants’ dining room. She wore an apron that was dusted with flour, and her face suggested that the message of the day was quit horsing around.
“Elf on the Shelf,” Bobby said.
Indira said something under her breath that you cannot write on a Christmas cookie and disappeared back toward the kitchen.
“How long is this going to take them?” Bobby asked. “You must have done a really good job hiding it.”
Fox groaned. “You too?”
A surprisingly boyish grin bloomed on Bobby’s face. “It sounds fun. Besides, you can give me a hint. Is it on the ground floor?”
“Oh no,” I said. “No hints.”
“All right.” Bobby frowned. “Let’s see. Hiding things in plain sight is kind of what you do for a living, so you must have picked somewhere good.”
“Technically, teaching college freshmen how to print a Google Doc is what I do for a living.”
“Plus,” Fox said, “he thinks he’s very clever.”
“I am very clever, thank you very much.”
“Somewhere they could look at it,” Bobby murmured, as though speaking to himself, “and not really see it. Where it would blend in, or where their brain would trick them into thinking they already knew what was there.”
“But not anywhere he had to use a ladder,” Fox said. “He hates exercise.”
“I don’t hate exercise,” I said. “I love exercise.” Okay, maybe love was a stretch. “Do you have any idea how many people get hurt around the holidays falling off ladders?”
“And nowhere scary,” Fox said. “Definitely not in the cellar, because last time he had to get toilet paper, he sprinted down there, and I’m pretty sure he held his breath the whole time.”
“Okay, in the first place, that was a challenge. And in the second place, if there are ghosts in Hemlock House—if!—Millie said, like, three of them live in the cellar. And it’s dark down there.” I couldn’t help myself; honesty compelled me to add, “And there are spiders.”
“On a literal shelf,” Bobby said. “Under one of the glass things. You could swap out one of the taxidermy animals.”
“Okay, that’s actually a great idea. Let’s do that tomorrow.”
Disappointment flickered on Bobby’s face. “One of the Christmas trees. You hid it among the ornaments on one of the branches.”
“Bobby, you’re seriously good at this. We should do that one too!”
“What?” Bobby said. “Are you kidding me?”
“I find it a little insulting that you think you could guess so easily where I hid it.”
From above came a rattling series of thumps, and then Keme belted out, “Ooh-rah!”
“Then where is it?” Bobby asked.
I opened my mouth to answer. And then a sneaking tendril of doubt began to worm its way through me.
I’d hidden the elf last night. I’d taken it out of the box.
I’d waited for Millie to go home and for Keme to fall asleep.
And then Bobby had come home early, and he’d been working so much lately, and—
“You have got to be kidding me,” Bobby said.
Another thunderous crash shook the house.
“It’s still in the box,” Fox said. “Isn’t it?”