Tracy Tam: Santa Command by Krystalyn Drown

in knots like the time she had worn her mom's bracelet to school without permission, and then lost it on the playground. Tracy hadn't touched her dinner that night, and at three am the next morning, she got up and confessed to her mom. Her mom took away her allowance for a month, but Tracy didn't mind, because the pain was gone.
    Tracy clutched her stomach as she realized what exactly was making it hurt now, and it was far worse than a lost bracelet. In the past few hours, she had snatched one of the Santa coats with the intention of keeping it, stolen a camera from another child, and broken Santa Command's main computer. And after all of that, she ran away. Were Phil and Beth even able to fix the computer? How many kids were going to miss Christmas because of her? The Santas may have been fake, but the presents and the spirit of giving were not. That was something Tracy had forgotten, but her stomach was doing a very good job of reminding her. As her stomach twisted in on itself, Tracy realized it was time to make the pain go away.
    “Chris?”
    “Yes, Tracy?”
    “I think I've done something very bad.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
     
    Tracy
     
    The excitement from the ride disappeared. She wanted nothing more than to be on the ground where she could pace or call someone or do something.
    She grabbed hold of Chris' arm. “I need to go back to Santa Command. I need to talk to Phil or Beth. I've got to fix this.”
    “Fix what?” Jared asked. “What did you do?”
    How could she explain the importance of it all? How could she justify what she had done? “I was trying to do a good thing. I wanted to get Pim back. My whole family needs her back.”
    “Will you tell me?” Chris watched her with wide, concerned eyes. For some reason, she didn't want to disappoint him, but she didn't have another choice.
    She took a deep breath and blurted out, “I broke Christmas.”
    Chris didn't scowl or reprimand her. He didn't even ask her to explain. He simply waved his hand in the air. A trail of yellow stars dropped from his palm, and the three of them were back in the barn, sleigh and all.
    “Whoa!” Jared said. He jumped to the floor and tapped the walls of the barn. “Did you have theme park engineers install that ride?”
    Chris took a curvy, black pipe out of his vest pocket, lit it, took a few puffs, and leaned back in the sleigh. “My dear boy, I have no idea what you're talking about.”
    The candle that Chris had left on the floor was still burning. The light flickered on the barn walls. Jared moved into the shadows, but Tracy could see him poking each knothole that he came to. When that didn't give him any results, he ran into one of the stalls behind the sleigh. Tracy couldn't see him anymore, but his breath sounded wobbly like he was trying to climb something. “Where are the projectors? There has to be a bunch of them to accomplish something like this. I couldn't even tell we were looking at a screen.”
    Tracy turned around in her seat and saw that Jared was now standing on his tiptoes on the half wall between two stalls and sticking his hands into every crack and crevice he could find.
    “I saw this special on Discovery Channel,” he said, “that talked about theme park rides and how they did Spiderman and Harry Potter at Universal. Is that how you did this? Is it built on the same type of platform?”
    Chris didn't watch Jared. He just smoked his pipe and laughed. He clearly enjoyed the boy's questions.
    Tracy didn't. Jared had gone from rude to hyper in a matter of seconds, and neither one was any help. She hopped out of the sleigh and fussed at him. “Will you stop wasting time? There's maybe three hours left before the sun comes up.”
    Jared jumped from the wall and landed agilely on his feet in front of Tracy. His eyes nearly popped out of their sockets, making him look less like a future football player and more like a cartoon character. “Are you kidding? We just went on the most amazing ride ever.