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Sarah Sues Santa – P.J. Leonard

Chapter Seventeen: The Magic of Christmas

After only a few turns through the freezing corridors they arrived at the locked door that they'd met
at the last time. Sarah’s heart gave a jolt. Was he really going to...
He inserted the key into the door, and with a loud click he unlocked it and stepped inside. Sarah
followed.
The thing covered in the white sheet looked even bigger from the inside. It didn't have any clear
shape: bits stuck out here and there, and there was a big dip in the middle.
It wasn't just this thing either. Looking around the room, she noticed that pictures hung to the wall,
except they were covered in white cloth too. It would've made the whole room look bright and clean
if the sheets weren't so dusty and dirty.
Mr. Vekil circled around the big thing in the middle, as though walking around a sleeping monster.
His hands shook. Is he scared? But then he gathered up a fist of cloth and gave a great pull. The
cloth flew aside and Sarah covered her eyes as dust billowed around her. Blinking, she looked at
what lay beneath.
It was a pile of furniture. Sarah had seen lots of rooms full of stacked tables and chairs, and for just
a tiny moment she felt her heart sink in dismay. But then she looked closer. This was not just any
furniture. It all looked...Chistmassy. The biggest thing in the middle was a wooden four-poster bed
with velvety red bedsheets sewn with a snow pattern. There was also a chest of drawers with
handles shaped like pine trees, a writing desk where legs were painted like candy canes, and a
wooden chair with a pair of fake reindeer antlers on the back. But what really made up most of the
pile were the toys. There were toys heaped everywhere: wooden blocks, board games, teddy bears
of all shapes and sizes...but while the furniture looked like it was still in good condition, many of
the toys looked utterly destroyed. Soft toys with arms ripped off, board games without boxes, books
with pages hanging loose in their covers.
Sarah looked at Mr. Vekil, and a lightbulb went off in her head.
"This...this stuff is yours." She said quietly.
"Was," Mr. Vekil added, "When you join an orphanage you don't have your own belongings
anymore. Everything gets shared. Anything you don't want to share gets bullied out of you
eventually. You already know that."
"You were an orphan too?" Sarah scratched her head, "But I heard that you have a family."
Mr. Vekil frowned, "I do. And they are crazy about Christmas. And so was I, when I was your age.
I believed in the magic of Christmas, in the Christmas spirit. In Santa."
Sarah frowned. What is he talking about?
"But then I grew up." He went on, walking slowly around the room, "And I didn't want to celebrate
Christmas that much anymore. I didn't hate Christmas, I just felt like my parent's way of doing
things was too much. All of the big feasts, the presents, the parties from November to January, it
didn't seem to be the true meaning of Christmas.

“So when I tried to do things my own way, when I wanted to put away my decorations in January,
my parents got angry. Really angry. They told me 'If you cannot celebrate Christmas like the rest of
our family, then you are not part of this family.'
"One night, after the fifth day of parties in a row, we had a big argument. Lots of shouting and
crying. Then I ran away. I was only ten years old, so it didn't last long. But when I came back, I
wasn't greeted by my parents with open arms or even another argument. They sent me straight back
out of the door. They had already packed up all of my things. The next day, I arrived at this
orphanage. I never heard from my family ever again."

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