An Eighth Grade Christmas Story

It was now time for the annual Crowley Christmas party. Each year Leah's family put on an extravagant Christmas party for the whole eighth grade. This party was definitely the highlight of the school year with all the memories still being discussed months afterwards.

"See you all tonight!" said Leah as she handed out invitations with last minute details on them. The invitation said as follows: Meet at Crabtree Valley Mall at 6:00 PM for dinner at Kanki and then a late night mall wide scavenger hunt. Remember to wear Christmas color clothes! Sincerly, the Crowley's

At exactly 6:00 o'clock, Jillian walked into Kanki with Abby. Leah, seeing her two friends, instantly ran up to welcome them! The restaurant was already bustling with the typical dinner rush, and about twenty eighth graders. "Hey guys!" said Caleb approaching us. He was carrying a package of some sort. "My Mom made a fruit cake for the party!" he said proudly presenting the brick of a cake to Leah. "Thanks." said Leah trying to be nice, but knowing nobody would eat the cake. "Guess what? I wore my ugly Christmas sweater!" Caleb exclaimed. His sweater was a dark green with a big picture of a reindeer on the front and strands of tinsel and glitter had been thrown all over the sweater. It was truly ugly.

After what seemed like forever, the waitress had finally set up the table for us. Our class was back in the party room and we all sat around a table staring at the stove hungrily. "Hello! I am Chef Kai. I will be serving you tonight." said a man. He took out a match and the stove instantly erupted into flames. "Fire!" screamed Caleb. Chef Kai shot him a weird look and continued to cook our food. There was at least one pound of rice, shrimp, chicken, and steak on the stove. "Hey, chef's here are supposed to do tricks with their knives and fling food around, right?" asked Josh skeptically. "Of course." replied Chef Kai. "Whats your name young man?" he asked. "Josh." "Well, Josh, how about you come over here since you want to see tricks so bad; you can help me." Chef Kai said. "Yeah!" cheered Zach as Josh got out of his chair.

Chef Kai took out two knives and started twiling them around with ease. "Josh, can you do this?" he asked. "No. Of course not!" Josh said amused. "Well, your about to." Chef Kai said. He handed Josh the knives and for the first time, Josh looked somewhat frightened of the idea of twirling knives. "Well, start twirling them." Chef Kai demended. He stood back and watched as Josh, very slowly, began to twirl the knives. "Hey, look I'm getting the hang of it!" Josh said grinning. Except, Josh didn't have the hang of it, he threw the knife in the air, but it didn't return to his hand, it landed in the middle of the fiery stove.

"Josh, sit down;NOW!" Chef Kai said enraged. Chaf Kai had to run back to the kitchen and get a pair of tongs to remove the knife from the smoking stove. All the while, our food sat in a lump with flames engulfing it making it black as a lump of coal.

Once Chef Kai finally got the knife off of the stove, the flames were completely extinguished and our food was completely charred. Chef Kai got the plates and gave us our burnt food. "Well, I must go now, please enjoy!" he said flashing a look that probably signaled he was going to get fired tonight. "Hmm, I've never had black rice before." said Caleb very matter of factly.

Leah looked rather distraught as the whole first hour of her party had failed. "Well, on the bright side, things can't get any worse can they?" Susie said trying to lift Leah's sad spirits. "Your right. Besides, we have the whole scavenger hunt and gift exchange." Leah said.

"Hey guys, listen up!" shouted a booming voice over the chatter of the class. Mr. Crowley was standing on a chair to make sure everyone could see him. "We are now going to split into groups for the scavenger hunt." Mr. Crowley explained. The groups are as follows: Josh, Zach, Gio, Hannah, Susie, Leah, Caleb, and Jillian. Group two is: Kassidy J, Jon, Dallas, Alex, Abby, and Noah. Finally group three is: Parker, Kassidy B, Wessie, Maddie, Andrea, Min, Nicole, Emma and Jackson." Mr. Crowley explained. We all moved to our groups excited to participate in the scavenger hunt. "Josh, Alex, and Maddie, please come and get the cards with the clues on them." Mr. Crowley said. "You have until 9:00. Your time starts...now!"

The mall instantly erupted into mass chaos as all the students raced around trying to organize themselves. The first task was to go to Belk and to find the pink hat with sunflowers on it. My group started sprinting towards Belk so we could be the first group to complete the task.

When we entered the department store, the whole section of shoes looked as though it had been ransacked. Group Three stood in the midst of the spilled shoe boxes thinking a hat would be in the shoe section; not where the hats were.

My ran towards the escalators trying to find the hat section. When we found them, Group Two was running away with Noah clutching the prized envelope in his hands. The hats were strewn all over the floor and it was going to be nearly impossible to find the envelope with our clue in it. "Everyone, get on their hands and knees, we've got to find this!" Hannah said frantically. We all dropped to the ground turning hats upside down searching for an envelope. I'm pretty sure the workers in Belk thought there was something wrong with us due to some of the looks that were shot at us.

"Guys, I found it!" Zach said holding up the envelope proudly. He began to rip open the envelope excited to read the next clue. "Radio Shack is where we will meet, but a peppermint coffee you must bring. to receive clue number three." Zach read. He began to crumble up the envelope, but Josh stopped him. "Bro, there's something else in there." "Oh, my bad." Zach said pulling out a giftcard. "Guys, we have to get a peppermint mocha at Starbucks." "Starbucks is on the first floor, we've got to hurry if we want to beat Group Two." Hannah said. As we were leaving Group Three came up to us, but before they could ask us any questions, we ran for the exit.

The mall was jam packed with people shopping for last minute Christmas gifts and looking for one more good bargain before Christmas Eve. Hannah led the way since she knew where the Starbucks was, and the rest of us trailed behind her weaving through the hundreds of people filing throughout the mall. "Uh." said someone. Behind me, Caleb had face-planted. He was about to get trampled. Jillian looked down at him and noticed his nose was bleeding. His arm was outstretched and Jillian managed to grab it before he got stepped on.

"Thanks." he said. We both ran as fast as we could trying to catch up to the rest of the group, but our effort seemed almost futile. The mall was so busy, even in just the small amount of time it took me to help Caleb, we had lost the rest of our group. Thankfully, Jillian also knew where the Starbucks was and Caleb and I kept running.

"Where we you two?" asked Leah when we finally caught up. "Caleb fell and I stayed back to make sure he was ok." Jillian said. Group One was about to get their drink and I saw Zach was just now ordering ours. "Thanks!" screamed Noah as he grabbed the drink and ran out of Starbucks to get the rest of his group. However, poor Noah didn't make it too far. His shoe had come untied and Noah tripped, fell, and spilled the burning hot coffee all over himself. "Noah, are you serious? You had to trip and fall. That's so inconsiderate." said an angry Jon. "Jon thats rude!" said Dallas as he offered Noah a hand. Noah's white shirt now had big brown coffee stains all over it. "I guess I'll wait in line again." Noah said reluctantly.

"Alright guys, lets roll!" said Zach speed walking out of Starbucks. "Where is Radio Shack anyways?" asked Leah. "Its just around the corner." replied Zach. As we were walking being carful to not spill the coffee, we saw Group Three finally getting in line at Starbucks.

In the entrance to Radio Shack, Mrs. Crowley was standing there. "Merry Christmas!" Zach said handing Mrs. Crowley the coffee. "Thank you, and here is your next clue!" she said handing it to Susie. "The playground is where you must go and a human pyramid you must show in order to receive clue number four." Susie read. "Are you kidding me? Now i have to publicly embarrass myself." exclaimed Josh shaking his head.

As we neared the playground, we could hear the screaming and crying of little children as they toppled over top of each other. "Ok, there's an order to this. There need to be four on the bottom, three in the middle and one on top." Susie said. Zach, Gio, Josh, and Caleb got on their hands and knees to be the base of the pyramid. As we began to form our pyramid, Group Two came running up closely followed by Group Three. This was anyone's game now. Jillian had volunteered to be the top of the pyramid since no one else was willing to most likely fall off.

Susie, Leah and Hannah braced themselves as they tried to form the middle layer of the pyramid, but they were struggling greatly. Finally, Susie was balanced and it was now time for Jillian to either make or break the pyramid. As Jillian steadied herself to climb on top, she noticed Alex, from Group Two, was also about to climb on top. Jillian grabbed Leah and Susie's shoulders and climbed on top, but she couldn't hold her balance, and ended up falling off the top dragging poor Leah and Susie with her. As we crashed to the floor laughing about you ridiculus we looked, a loud cheer erupted as Group Two ran away clutching the final clue. We had to beat Group Three. "All right, lets try this again." Susie said. Leah and Susie re-balanced themselves and Jillian made it too the top without knocking anyone down. Mr. Crowley handed us the next clue and Group Three also just finished.

"I'll read it!" said Caleb jumping up and down reaching for the card. "A selfie with Santa is what you need, complete the task and you will succeed. Meet back at Kanki at 9:00, but please don't be late!" Caleb read. Simultaneously, our group and Group Three began to run towards the center of the mall. As we rounded the corner, we could see the winter wonderland where Santa was milling about wishing children and their families a merry Christmas. Group Two was already surrounding Santa and talking with him. Group Three came to a halt right behind us. "This will be real fun." said Maddie sarcastically.

I looked up and saw Caleb walking towards Santa. "Hey Santa can we take a selfie with you?" he asked gesturing towards our group. "It's for a scavenger hunt." Josh explained stepping forward. "whoa, whoa, whoa. We were here first!" said Kassidy J totally butting in to Caleb and Josh's conversation with Santa. "Well, we got here at the same time as you guys." said Wessie pointing at us. "We asked him first though." said Susie retaliating back at Susie.

Before we knew it, we had all started bickering with one another and we had gotten Old Saint Nick caught up in the middle of it. "Well, kids I hate to tell you, but its 8:45. Its time for my fifteen minute break. Can't you wait until 9:00?" he asked. "No!" screamed Parker. "We all have to be at Kanki at 9:00." "Sorry, said Santa, but you'll just have to wait." he said.

With that, Santa turned on his heal and started walking away. "He is not getting away from us!" Josh said with determination in his voice. Then, before anyone could stop him, Josh began running after Santa. Next, the inevitable happened: Josh tackled Santa to the ground in the middle of the mall. As soon as Santa and Josh were on the ground, a hush went out over all the bystanders and the entire eighth grade. We all stared in horror as Santa struggled to get up. Someone must have gone to get security as two officers showed up.

"Young man, what do you think your doing?" asked a short man who looked a lot like an elf. "Well, you see I really needed to take a selfie with Santa and um, he , uh kinda left and i jumped on him so he wouldn't walk away any farther and he sorta fell." Josh said sheepishly grinning at the officers who weren't the slightest bit amused. "All of you kids are coming with us." said another officer. Before we walked away, Caleb ran over to Santa who was now sitting on a bench trying to catch his breath, pulled out his phone, and Caleb took a selfie with a very angry Santa.

The security guards took us into some private area of the mall and put Josh behind a make-shift jail cell. "All right, what is this? Some kind of scavenger hunt?" asked the short officer. Murmurs of yes traveled throughout the room. "Ok, Who exactly is in charge of this?" he asked. Leah stepped forward towards the officers. "Go call your parents and tell them to get here as quickly as they can." the officer said. Leah stepped out of the room totally dreading this phone call.

"As for you, young man, you could be pressed with assault charges. Now, I don't think that's a very pleasant Christmas gift to your parents now is it." said the officer walking towards Josh. "No. I didn't mean to hurt the guy." said Josh. I could tell just by looking in his eyes that he felt bad about the whole ordeal. "My parents are going to kill me." said Leah to Hannah and Susie as she collapsed into a folding chair. "I don't even know why we do this anymore." she said sadly.

Mr. and Mrs. Crowley entered the room looking rather concerned. Leah, ran over to her parents saying how horrible she felt about the whole evening. The officers took Mr. and Mrs. Crowley into a private room to debate what to do with Josh.

In the mean time, Caleb's angry Santa selfie had begun to go viral. People had seen it on Instagram and now social media was erupting with this picture of Caleb smiling and Santa looking like he wanted to punch our lights out.

After what seemed like forever, the Crowley's finally stepped out of the room followed by the officers. "Kid, you got lucky. You've got a ninety day probation after tonight." said the officer freeing Josh from the cell.

"Well, I have to hand it to Caleb here for still taking a selfie with Santa. I think we can safely say that Group Two won." Mr. Crowley said. "However, there's never a loser at the Crowley Christmas Party."

When we rounded the corner, we saw tables all set up at Yopop, the frozen yogurt place. At each table a cup of frozen yogurt was waiting to be decorating with all the toppings. "I guess tonight was still pretty epic." said Leah sitting down. "I think this was by far the best Crowley Christmas Party I've been to." said Jillian stuffing her face with gummy bears.

The memories from the eighth grade Christmas party lasted for eternity. Itss not every day that one of your class mates almost goes to jail for tackling Santa. So, if you've ever wondered why you can't have a scavenger hunt at the mall, you can just thank the eighth grade class.