Free The North Pole Challenge (Flea's Five Christmases, #1) by Kevin George

suddenly kicked up its blustery pace. Mr. Strick held out his hand and opened his palm to reveal a simple gold ring.
                  “Go ahead, take it,” he told Flea.
                  Flea had the strong urge to slap the ring from his teacher’s hand and march off, but there was a sincerity in Mr. Strick’s tone that he couldn’t ignore. He’s a good liar, don’t trust him , Flea reminded himself but he took the ring anyway. Although the ring shined brightly in his hand, Flea had the sense that it was very old.
                  “A ring? That’s really weird,” he told Strick. “What is it and how could it possibly be that important?”
                  Although the wind shrilled loudly, both of them could still hear the single word being yelled at them in the distance.
                  “You!”
                  Flea didn’t have to turn around to recognize the sound of Miss Mabel’s angry voice. The better question was exactly how much information she knew. A glance at Mr. Strick’s face showed his eyes wide and his lips turned down, so apparently he assumed the worst. When Strick spoke, he did so very quickly.
                  “Some strange guy at the television studio wanted me to give it to you as a thanks for your participation on the show. It looks pretty important so I’d make sure to be extra careful with it if I were you. Sorry I have to go, see you in school tomorrow.”
                  Strick didn’t even wait for Flea to close the door before stepping on the gas. The quick acceleration of the truck caused the door to slam shut. The tires fishtailed a bit in the snow-covered street but Strick kept control as he sped away. Obviously, he was more afraid of facing Miss Mabel than Flea was. When Flea turned around, he saw his foster mother moving quicker than he’d ever seen.
                  “You just had to go on that show, didn’t you?” she yelled, breaking her own rule about never causing a scene in public. Flea’s horrible day continued to get worse. For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out how Miss Mabel found out about the show already. After all, they didn’t have CTV and Flea had never seen her talk to the neighbors – or anyone for that matter.
                  “How did you find out?” Flea asked. If he was going to be in trouble, he might as well find out how he’d been caught.
                  “Uh uh, this isn’t the time for you to be asking me questions,” Miss Mabel yelled. She grabbed Flea by his ear – the split ear at that – and dragged him back into their apartment, yelling at him the entire time. “In one day, you’ve undone all the hard work I’ve done to make sure we stayed hidden.”
                  “Well what exactly are we hiding from ?” Flea yelled back once they were inside. He broke free from her vice-like grip on his ear.
                  “Don’t you worry about that, that’s my business,” she said. Now that he could only hear the sound of her voice, Flea thought he recognized as much fear and concern from her as anger, though he knew Miss Mabel was unlikely to explain why. “Now that we’re probably being watched, it’s too dangerous to stay here much longer. Once the snowfall lets up, we’ll head farther south to safety.”
                  “But I don’t want to leave,” Flea argued weakly, unsure whether he really believed those words any longer. He expected Miss Mabel’s usual reaction but she answered with an eerie calmness that was more worrisome to Flea than her screaming.
                  “We are leaving and you have no one to blame but yourself,” she said. Miss Mabel headed toward her bedroom. “I’m going to start packing, I suggest you do the