Elf Wanted: A Romantic YA Christmas Story Read online

Elf Wanted:

  A Romantic YA Christmas Story

  By Rusty Fischer, author of A Town Called Snowflake

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  Elf Wanted

  Rusty Fischer

  Copyright 2014 by Rusty Fischer

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  This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, places and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.

  Cover credit: © Peter Atkins – Fotolia.com

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  Elf Wanted:

  A Romantic YA Christmas Story

  “Elf wanted. Festive flair is a must! Ability to say ‘Happy Holidays’ with a straight face – a hundred times per shift – mandatory. Come prepared for fun, friendship and flexibility… and bring your elf ears! Experience bussing tables secondary to a self-starting people person.”

  The ad sits, folded into a tidy square, next to my resume on her desk.

  “So, what made you come in and apply today?” she asks, a friendly smile on her face. She’s pretty. Older, but pretty, gray streaks in her black hair, maroon glasses on her slender face.

  “I need a job?” I half-say, half-ask. Thinking it might be cute, hoping my desperation doesn’t show through my smiling veneer.

  She nods with a tight little smile. “I’ll stop you right there,” she says, still pleasant, but her eyes a little darker now, her tone a little shorter. “Bussing tables at Holly Day’s isn’t exactly glamorous, Toby, but it’s more than just a job.”

  “You’re right,” I say, quickly. “I know that, of course. But… you asked me why I’m here and it’s because I need a job. Badly.”

  If only she knew how badly. If only anyone did.

  I let it hang there, black sneaker kind of tapping up and down on the floor of her office. It doesn’t look like an office; more like someone’s cozy den.

  There’s a flickering fireplace against the wall, fake, but still pretty cool, and snow globes all along the mantle. There’s a small Christmas tree on her desk, colored lights blinking, and a cluster of framed drawings of Santa Claus centered on the maroon painted wall behind her.

  She smiles again, and pushes her glasses a little farther up her nose.

  “You’re right,” she says, nodding, as if she’s made some kind of a decision. “Of course you are, and that’s just the point of Holly Day’s Diner. We’re all here for different reasons.”

  She rises, then, without even glancing at my resume – not that it’s much of one anyway – and I stand, afraid she’s about to dismiss me. Instead she offers a hand, cool and dry as I shake it.

  “Congratulations,” she says, looking twice as pretty – and half as old – when she smiles. “Welcome to the Holly Day’s Diner family, Toby.”

  “That’s it?” I ask as her hand slips away gently.

  “Well,” she says, more cautiously now. “We’ll give it a try tonight and, if you can keep up with our Merry July-mas Celebration, and you earn your candy cane, then yes… that’s it.”

  I want to ask more – so much more – but she’s already brushing past me and toward her office door. “Grace can show you the ropes for the next hour or so, until it gets really busy, but then you’re on your own.”

  “Grace Halpern?” I ask, pausing as she opens the office door for me.

  Her face brightens. “Yes, why?”

  I shrug. “Nothing, I… we… go to school together.”

  “Perfect,” she says, simultaneously patting me on the back and gently nudging me out into the busy kitchen. “Then I won’t have to waste time introducing you.”

  As if on cue, I see Grace limping around the corner from the dish room, tendrils of red hair poking out from beneath a green felt elf cap. When I turn back to thank Ms. Day, her office door is already closed.

  “Toby?” Grace asks as we huddle in the narrow kitchen hallway. “You’re who Holly was interviewing just now?”

  I nod, smirking at her cap. She catches me and says, “Laugh it up, stud, but all the busboys at Holly’s wear one.”

  “Seriously?” I ask as I follow her onto the restaurant floor.

  “Seriously,” she says, floating casually through a couple dozen tables surrounded by Christmas trees. No lie, they are everywhere. In every corner, near every waitress station, over by the cash register and two on either side of the hostess stand.

  “Haven’t you ever been here before?” she asks when she turns and catches me, still standing where she left me, mouth agape and blinking lights reflected in my wide eyes.

  I shake my head and catch up with her. “I drive by it all the time,” I confess as she opens up a stock room door between two bathrooms, “see the lights in the windows and the blinking sign, but… no, why would I?”

  There is Christmas music playing overhead, I suddenly notice. Soft, but noticeable. No words, just instruments, like you might hear in a library. Or an elevator.

  She shrugs, hands me a red and green tip apron with “Holly Day’s Diner” printed on the front, a green vest, size-XL, and an elf hat slightly bigger, but just as dorky, as her own.

  “Lots of people come here for birthday celebrations, graduations, engagements, you’d be surprised.”

  I glide into my vest – it’s a little snug around the shoulders – and then slip on the hat. She smiles, pushing thick black glasses up her nose. “What’s this ‘Merry July-Mas’ stuff?” I ask, adjusting the hat though I know no matter what I do, it will never look cool.

  I nod to a sign behind her on the wall. “On the 25th of every month,” she explains, handing me a couple clean dish rags, a spray bottle full of something blue and a round tray, “no matter what month, we celebrate Christmas. So, in April, it’s ‘Merry Spring-Mas.’ In February, it’s ‘Merry Valentine-Mas.’ In October it’s…”

  “Merry October-Mas, I get it.”

  She shakes her head, grinning. “No, no, get it straight: it’s ‘Merry Halloween-Mas’!”

  “Good lord,” I say, because... gheez. Holiday overload, much?

  She nods and says, “I know, it takes some getting used to.” Then she looks me up and down. “Which I guess is why I was surprised to see you here tonight. I mean… don’t you want to work for your Dad at one of his car dealerships?”

  I look away and grit my teeth. “It’s hard to work for somebody you’re not even speaking to.”

  When I look back at her, she’s watching me and our eyes meet and hers seem a little sad behind the glasses. “So…” she says, moving on from the awkward silence brought on by my answer. “The gig is really simple: you clean the table off, you wipe it down, you bring the tray to the dish room, you empty it, you come back out here and look for another table to clean off.”

  I smirk and nod toward the little candy cane pinned to her tip apron. “Is that the candy cane I have to earn to get the job?”

  She smiles. “I know, it seems weird but Holly is big about family. Like, she wants us to call her Holly…”

  “But only if you earn your candy cane,” I interrupt.

  She sees the sarcasm on my face, hears it in my voice. “I know it’s hard for a guy like you to understand, Toby,” she huffs, inching away. “But some of us need this job, and we need this place.”

  I follow her and she keeps talking. “So, yeah, the candy cane separates the guys like you, who just want to tick their Dads off, and someone like me, who has to help pay the rent back home…”

  I touch her shoulder and she flinches a little, turning around awkwardly on her bad leg. “Grace, do you really think I’d be wearing this goofy ass hat if I didn’t need the job?”

  She snorts a
little and lightens up. I watch a crooked smile spread across her face and, for the first time, think she could possibly, maybe, be pretty. I’ve never dated a redhead before, and up close, in the twinkling Christmas lights from the 27 or so trees scattered all around, her green eyes look soft and kind, and her freckles kind of… cute.

  I only know her a little from school. She hangs with a different, smaller crowd, clustered at that little table way back in the cafeteria, far from where the jocks sit.

  There’s a waitress station in the corner, kind of like a little alcove, with an ice bin and clean water glasses turned upside down and baskets full of candy canes. The little, individually wrapped kind you get at the bank for free during December.

  “The waitresses give them out with the checks,” Grace says, watching me watch them. “Kind of like fortune cookies at a Chinese restaurant.”

  I nod and watch the front door open. An old man walks in, with a rain hat on even though it was sunny on my way to the interview. “That’s Mr. Carol,” she says, nudging me. “One of the regulars. He comes in every month, on the 25th, with his wife.”

  “That’s impossible,” I say,