Finding Santa

    WILLA CLARKE WAS one hundred percent done with Christmas. Now, it wasn't that she exactly disliked the holiday itself, per se. She liked the joy that always came with it, and she liked the constant outpour of Christmas songs, much to the surprise of other holiday haters. She liked the decorations, and the colours, and the lights. She liked the snow. (Although that was more of a coincidence than a result of Christmas.) And she liked the smell. Willa had always had a particular fondness for the smell of pine trees and peppermint.

    This isn't to say, of course, that she loved Christmas. She didn't. You would never see her saying, "How do you do?" to every passerby, or going door-to-door singing Christmas carols. You wouldn't see her stringing popcorn, or wearing Christmas sweaters, no matter how cool she thought they looked. You wouldn't see her buying a real evergreen tree, or making Christmas cookies. (You might, however, see her making snow angels. But like she said, snow would fall with or without Christmas.) You would never see her buying presents for other people.

    Which brings her to why she is so done with it.

    Willa didn't grow up with a stocking and tree trunk full of presents like most kids. You see, when you grow up in an orphanage, there isn't a whole lot of stuff to go around. Everything is shared and used. Everything is a hand-me-down from someone else's hand-me-down. Not that Willa ever complained. The other kids in the orphanage were nice, most of the time. (Although, when were kids ever nice all the time?) And the head of Mrs. Ivy's Home for Children always tried her best to take care of the kids and give them a good life. But while most kids were complaining about getting socks and underwear, Willa was wishing she had socks and underwear.

    So you can see why she might be a little bitter whenever someone asks her what she wants for Christmas.

    Okay, so a lot bitter.

    Because, Willa thought, do they even care what I want? Or are they just waiting for me to ask them what they want? Which was always the case. Someone would ask her, and she would lie, and shrug, and say that she didn't know what she wanted, but hey, what do you want? And the person who asked would blurt out a huge list, because that's what they had been waiting to do the whole time. They didn't care about her. They just wanted to talk about fulfilling their life-long desires. She was sure that they were all opening their beloved gifts this morning. (Willa gives the presents a week before they lose their appeal.)

    Not that anybody could give her what she really wanted, anyway.

    Could they bring people back from the dead?

    And it was because of all of this that Willa was grumbling as she walked through the snow covered park. She shivered as the wind whipped at her, and wrapped her turquoise scarf tighter around her face.

    "Why does winter have to be so cold?" she said, her voice muffled by the wool from her scarf.

    "I'm pretty sure that coldness is part of the job description."

    Willa whipped her head around, trying to find the person who had spoken. Sitting – more like lying – a few meters away from her on the top of the playground, was a girl her age. She had short silver hair, and ice blue eyes, and rosy plump cheeks. She filled out her red and white fur-lined coat (some might say perhaps too well, as the black belt around her waist seemed to cut off the circulation to her head, which would explain the rosy cheeks), and she was sucking on the end of a candy cane with her arm propped up on her knee. And she kind of just...sparkled. Willa swore the air around the girl was shimmering.