Free Jingle Boy by Kieran Scott

belly, my posture, my walk, the twinkle in my freakin’ eyes, and now the way I was
sitting
?
    “And what’s your name?” I asked the little girl, who was now rocking back and forth in front of me, her tiny hands clasped behind her back and her lips pressed together so tightly they’d disappeared.
    “Tameeka!” she blurted out.
    “Well, come on up here, Tameeka,” I said in my best Santa voice.
    I held out my arms to her and that seemed to be all she needed to come right out of her shell. She hurled her entire body at me, flinging her arms onto my chest and sort of dangling there between my legs. Trying not to groan, I adjusted her until she was sitting on my knee, grateful for the extra padding the suit had in the groin area. If it hadn’t been there, little Tameeka would have heard a stream of highly inappropriate expletives.
    “I want a karaoke machine!” Tameeka announced, clapping. “And I want it to have all of Aaliyah’s songs, even though she died, and all of Britney Spears’s songs and all of Janet Jackson’s songs—”
    “Ho ho ho!” I chuckled. “You sure know a lot about music.”
    “My older brother Joaquin is a DJ!” Tameeka announced proudly. “He says I’m gonna be a star!”
    “A DJ!
Real-
ly?” Scooby said, breaking the cardinal rule of elfdom—no talking to the kids unless they need to be pried away. Apparently most tiny tots were even more afraid of the elves than they were of Santa. “Is this brother of yours here?”
    I was about to tell Scooby to back off when Tameeka turned around and gave him a look that could only be called sassy. “And who the hell are
you
?” she asked.
    Scooby blanched and stood up straight and I had to stifle a laugh. “A karaoke machine,” I said to Tameeka. “Have you been a good girl?”
    “You better believe it!” Tameeka said. “I do all my chores
and
my brother’s
and
I gave half my books to the needy this year. I didn’t want to, but my mom made me and I think that should count for something.”
    “Ho ho ho,” I said. I liked this girl. “You’re quite right, Tameeka. I’ll see what I can do about that karaoke machine. Have a merry Christmas, now!”
    “Thanks, Santa!” Tameeka said. She slid off my lap and gave Scooby one last scathing look before running off to her waiting parents.
    “Why did you let her go?” Scooby demanded.
    “What? She didn’t have a card,” I replied. If a kid’s parents pay for a picture with Santa, the kid is given a little card and that means Santa has to hold on to him or her and pose for the photographer elf, a depressed photography student named Quentin, who was dressed up as a reindeer.
    “Forget the card, loser! You totally forgot to mention my CD,” Scooby said. “She was a prime target.”
    “They’re not targets,
Scooby,
they’re kids,” I told him through my teeth.
    “Well, la-di-freakin’-da!” Scooby said, bending back and waving his hands in the air. “Look at Mr. High and Mighty! Guess your Goody Two-shoes attitude didn’t get you very far with Sarah.”
    I tried really, really hard to keep the angry flush from rising to my face, but there was nothing I could do. And the second Scooby saw it, he knew he had me. And once he knew he had me, it was all over.
    “Aw! Did I hit a
sore
spot?” he taunted me. “You miss your little girlfriend, do ya? I guess I can see why. She
is
the best kisser I’ve ever had in my life and I’ve had plenty, if ya know what I mean. . . .”
    Scooby had definitely mastered the single entendre.
    I stared at the line of children and their parents in front of me, willing the little boy who was bawling and clinging to his mother to just get a grip and get the heck over here. He was holding up the line and if I didn’t have a kid on my lap soon, Scooby was going to keep going and eventually I was going to have to rip his head off. And I really didn’t think the management of Paramus Park was going to look too kindly on a Santa who traumatized