With the idea of a 'scary Christmas' firmly planted in our heads, we went about planning and creating something that was not only scary, but would win the competition Jason had put in place. Personally, I wasn't too bothered about winning, I just liked the idea of turning Papa's traditions on their head and doing something he would most likely hate. Niska, on the other hand, was way to into the competition and it was a little concerning, she acted like Papa when we interrupted his work. Even Joel kept raising his eyebrows at me and pulling stupid, scared looking faces when she took control. From what I could gather, actually doing any form of work was a rare thing for Niska, though Jason seemed impressed with her.

By the time the bell had sounded and the lesson was over, we had a scene by scene plan and characters pretty much set. All we had to do was put it together and hope that it went well when it came to actually performing it. Actually, hope was going to do nothing, we were dead if we didn't win so fear was our main emotion after that lesson. Or it was for me. Niska was seriously nuts when she got obsessed over something and I did not want to be on the receiving end of her anger if we lost the competition and ended up humiliating ourselves.

Although Drama had passed by with little to no incidents, I, unfortunately, cannot say that the rest of the day was like that. For one, I had to endure small comments from people about my last name being Claus when the teachers read out my full name when they first saw me. Grandpa had said something like that would happen, but hadn't specified just how often it would go on for, nor that it would be followed by sarcastic comments. Not only had I been subjected to the mocking of my name, I also had to endure the Maths teacher from hell.

I'm not kidding. Niska had mentioned that a large majority of people referred to her as 'The Devil' and I honestly thought she was joking. There was no way a teacher could be bad enough to be nicknamed the King of Hell. She was, in fact, worse than the King of Hell and I did not understand how I was going to last six weeks worth of Maths lesson with that woman, though I had Niska so that kind of made up for it.

Her name was Mrs Reynolds, she had short brown hair that fell just above her shoulders in an almost bob-like style. She certainly didn't match the typical mean-teacher stereotype I had in my head from when I used to binge watch Teen Drama films and TV shows. On the day I met her, she wore a black shirt covered in small, red flowers and a pair of work trousers, accompanied with a pair of simple, black heels. My first impression was that she was nice, or at least she looked nice, she didn't have the standard glare I had expected. Instead, when she noticed me, she smiled slightly and then, in a sickly sweet voice (similar to Umbridge) she said "who are you?"

"Mackenzie Claus," I had replied, fishing around in my bag for the note I was expected to hand over to all teachers about my uniform.

"Where is your uniform? I was under the impression all exchange students had to wear the correct uniform when in attendance at our school," she said. Without saying another word, I handed over the slip of paper and stood with my bag on my shoulder as she read through it, her eyebrows getting closer together the further down the letter she read.

"I shall have to talk to the head about this. Sit down." Mrs Reynolds handed the slip of paper back to be with some force before she took a seat behind her desk, watching me intently as I made my way down the rows of chairs with Niska, sitting down between her and a girl I had never met before.

"Ignore the old battleaxe, Kenzie, she missed out on the Head of Department role and it got to her a bit," Niska whispers as I grabbed my stuff from my bag and put it on the desk in front of me.

"That and she's not too keen on students, thinks they disrupt the learning of everyone else," the other girl muttered, a smirk tugging at the corner of her lips.

"Alya, don't frighten the poor girl, she only just got here," Niska had laughed, causing me to join in as the mere thought of being scared by that comment was hilarious to me.

I wasn't a normal student for one thing, most students are from other countries and can speak different languages and that is something I failed in doing. I struggled speaking English most of the time and that was the only other language I knew, well, that and Reindeer, but that's just noises rather than a real language. Also, the large majority of people in that room had met me before and none of them were particularly interested in getting to know me, so there wasn't much of a distraction to be had.

I had officially met my first shark teacher and, I have to admit, it went better than I thought it had. Truthfully, from what I saw on my binge watching, most evil teachers have a habit of placing someone in detention for doing something as simple as breathing so I was lucky that it didn't even cross her mind. Unless it had and she had to swallow the thought because I had a reason for not being in uniform and you can't punish someone for having a reason. Or can you?

Whatever the case may have been, she was one teacher, the rest had all liked me and none of them had been particularly bothered about the lack of uniform. It is safe to say that, although I had one run in with a teacher, the rest of the day had gone by without so much as a hitch and school was starting to look like something I could thoroughly enjoy. Well, minus the early mornings and the unholy amount of homework. I hated waking up early and my attention span was not suited to doing work at home where I had distractions like a computer.

Returning home that afternoon, Granny had almost pounced on me with a bombardment of questions about my first day at school. It was like being on an episode of Mastermind, minus the spotlight. "How'd it go?" She asked as I dumped my bag at the bottom of the staircase.

"It was good, yeah," I smiled, following her from the hallway into the kitchen where the smell of cookies filled the entire room. Coming home to Granny's was like being back at home, with the smell of baking in every room in the house.

"Make any friends?" Granny held out a tray of freshly baked cookies and nodded at me to take one, something she did for Nick and me quite frequently.

"Yeah, a girl called Niska who is in a few of my classes and my form." I took a bite of the cookie. "Oh, and Joel, though he hasn't spoken to me very much."

"I knew you'd have a good day! I just knew it! What were your teachers like?"

"My Drama teacher is the coolest guy in the world and we're doing a Christmas themed performance, but it can't be clichéd. We went for a spooky theme. My Maths teacher was the polar opposite, though."

"Oh well, you're Father never cared much for Maths so I wouldn't be surprised if you disliked it."

"True," I laughed, small bits of cookie spraying from my mouth as I did so. Not exactly the most nicest thing to happen, but let's face it, it's happened to everyone at some point or another.

"Why don't you go upstairs and do your Homework whilst I make dinner. Take some cookies up with you, don't want you thinking too hard on an empty stomach."

I smiled at Granny and grabbed a couple of cookies from the tray, the half eaten one still resting in my hand. As I left the kitchen, I passed Grandpa as he fished around under the stairs for a weird contraption he had lost several years before. Why he was looking for it under the stairs I will never know. Snatching my bag and jacket from the floor, I almost threw myself up the stairs and into my bedroom, flinging my stuff down onto my bed before shutting the door. I dropped the cookies onto my desk next to my laptop and began pulling out the sheets of homework from my bag.

Jason had asked us to work more on our characters for the performance, something that we had already completed in the lesson. Nevertheless, I grabbed the sheet from my bag and sat down at my desk, filling out the relevant details on the sheet. Considering the piece was only supposed to be five to ten minutes long, the character detail sheets were huge, with sections about personality, appearance and weird traits listed as important. How we were supposed to fit everything about our characters into a ten-minute performance was, and always will be, a mystery. By the time I had finished the sheet, my hand was cramping from holding the pen and the insane amount of writing I had had to do. If Icing hurt your hands, writing was just as bad, if not worse.

Living in the North Pole, it was a rare occasion for myself and Nick to do any writing for a prolonged period of time, and if we did it was always done on a computer rather than with a pen. I had never had to hand write an essay, or take a hand written test, or even write for over seven minutes or so. Icing on the other hand was something I did quite frequently, and it always hurt my hands afterwards because my fingers were always stationary and I had to keep my wrist still. Filling in the sheet was kind of like that. I had my finger wrapped tightly around my pen and the only time I moved my wrist was to flex it slightly when it started to ache. You would have thought that years of icing experience would have made me immune to wrist and hand pain. It hadn't and, when I was finished, I was not looking forward to the insane amount of writing I had to do for the other five thousand sheets of homework I had been given on my first day.

With the easy sheet done first, I took a bite out of one of my cookies and fired up my laptop, ready to take on the Maths homework with the help of my trusty sidekick, Google. The only Maths I had ever done at home was toy counts and that was just seeing how high you could count before forgetting and starting over. Never, in my life, have I had to do something as complex as Trigonometry or Algebra, it was all a foreign language to me and I have never been good at those either. Nevertheless, with Google by side I knew I could do a small amount of the work, well, I thought I could, but when I read the first question I felt like crying. There had to have been an easier way of doing Maths, a way that didn't involve my brain in any way, shape or form.

There was an easier way. After spending several minutes staring aimlessly at the worksheet, trying to figure out how I was going to answer the questions, the solution came to me. I didn't have to strain myself trying to figure out the answer when I could just use magic to answer the questions for me. Papa had always told Nick and I that you should not use magic for your own gain, unless it was important, but that saying had never been true. I had used magic for stupid things all my life and there had never been any repercussions for it. So, why not use it to answer the Maths questions I would never have the ability to answer myself? Some may call it cheating, I call it being smart and using my intuition.

I glanced down at the sheet, my eyes scanning over the sheet of paper, taking in the questions and committing them to memory, something that plays an important role when it comes to magic. Once the questions had been solidified in my head, I shut my eyes, taking a deep breath as I did so. I emptied my mind of everything, but the questions, seeing them materialise through the darkness. With everything in place, I dropped my pen onto the desk and clicked my fingers, watching as the answers to the questions appeared almost instantaneously before me, all I had to do was write them down.

With the answers floating around before me, I snatched up my pen and began to scribble down the answers I had been shown, finishing the sheet within a matter of seconds. I smiled to myself, scanning down the paper and confirming that they were all correct before I slipped the sheet back into my bag and zipped it up, throwing it into the corner for the next day. Whoever said homework was an impossible task had clearly never tried doing it with North Pole magic, it was an entirely different experience when you don't have to put the effort in.

Knowing I didn't have anything to do until the next day, I wolfed down my remaining cookies and sat, scrolling through the internet in an aimless daze, looking for something of interest as I did so. My social media feed wasn't particularly interesting seeing as I only had family members on there and they never posted anything interesting. I had given my name to Niska, so she could add me when she had the opportunity, but that had yet to happen, so I was subjected to hours of endless scrolling, well, maybe not hours.

"Ken! There is someone at the door for you!" Granny yelled up the stairs, snapping me out of the daze I found myself in. It had only been a couple of minutes since I had opened social media and I had someone managed to miss the sound of the doorbell.

"Coming!" I replied, stuffing a cooking into my mouth and slamming my laptop shut.

As I made my way down the stairs, still eating the cookie, I wondered who on Earth would be at the door for me. No one knew where I lived other than family, but it couldn't have been them, if it was, Granny would have named them. So, either I had a stalker who followed me all the way home and somehow knew my name, or it was a neighbour who wanted to meet me after seeing me leave and enter the house. Either way, I was extremely curious, though more terrified at the idea of it being a stalker than anything else.

I knew who it was before I had even made it down the stairs, the distinct voice with a slight hint of a Russia accent. The green ribbon reflecting through the door was the biggest giveaway of them all, though, there was only one person I knew that wore a green ribbon.

"Ahh, here she is!" Granny said when I jumped off the last two steps and landed in the hallway with a loud bang. I smiled at Granny as I passed her and stood in the doorway, looking at Niska.

"Before you say anything, I found you address in the good ol' phone book," Niska said, noticing the look of concern on my face. Okay, so it wasn't concern, more confusion.

"Right," I replied, furrowing my eyebrows and tilting my head to the side.

"Joel found this in the Drama room and thought you might be wanting it back," she said, holding out her palm and showing me a small, heart-shaped pendant in her hand. The same pendant Mama had given me before I left to live with Granny and Grandpa. I had the pendant folded up in the pocket of my jacket when I left the house.

"Oh, I must have dropped it when I took off my coat," I mumbled, taking the pendant from her hand and closing my fingers around it tightly.

"I would have given it to you tomorrow, but he was pretty adamant you get it today, no idea why." Niska shrugged at me, a smile planted firmly on her face.

"Well, thanks," I said.

"You're welcome. I should go, I told my mum I'd be back before dinner."

"Bye."

"Bye," Niska said before turning around and taking off at a full sprint.

I closed the door behind her, my fingers running over the metal on the chain, it felt cold to the touch, but that didn't bother me. What did bother me was the fact that I had left it behind in the first place. How could I have been so stupid?

~~~

A/N - First of all, I want to apologise for the long delay with updating!! Christmas happened and then back to school and I haven't had much free time to write, but now I have!! This chapter was actually really hard to write for some reason, but I hope to be more frequent with updates, even if it means writing really late at night. 

Secondly, I found out today that my Hamilton inspired story had been ranked in Historical Fiction! If you haven't checked it out already, please do so, it would mean a lot to me!

Don't forget to comment and vote as well as add to your reading list so you never miss an update from me!

Dedication - This chapter is dedicated to NASN21 who left some really sweet comments on the first few chapters of this book! Thank you so much for those, they mean a lot.

First Published - January 14th, 2017