The beginning at North Pole Christian (also known as the one serious chapter.)

      James got off the red bus and looked ahead. The chill all around him in this wintery wonderland sank into his skin, all the way to his bones, even through the heavy winter coat he was wearing. The giant school building loomed over him as it cast a giant shadow, almost as big, if not bigger, than the school itself, causing the cold air to freeze up even more with the lack of bright sunlight. This enormous building was North Pole Christain. Unsurprisingly, given its name, it was actually located on the edge of the north pole, in the middle of absolutely nowhere. It was the school for kids of the arctic researchers, the first of its kind.

      James nervously walked up to the giant building, its grey walls looming over him. Red highlights stood out among the greyness, like veins at the end of the building. Whiteness covered it haphazardly, making it blend in with the colorless landscape of the north pole. After stabilizing himself from the push of the wind, he went towards the doors. They were thick, with bulletproof glass and metal hinges, just thick enough to keep the cold out. It was like he was walking into some sort of secret government facility. With a big tug, he pushed the heavy doors open and rushed inside, eager to get away from the cold.

      The wave of heat when he entered was immense, almost sending him into shock. He looked around. Much like the outside, the building was mainly gray, to a depressing extent in fact, with red highlights here and there in the corners. A grey concrete floor filled the hallways and lobby, adding to the sense of dullness around the building

      “Hey,” said a voice beside him. He turned to see a seventeenish looking girl around his age. Her shoulder length blonde hair laid flat against her pale skin, almost hugging it. She was a bit shorter than James, about five ft three to his decent sized six ft four. Her slender build was something of a contrast to his, James noticed. She was wearing a light blue sweatshirt with a plain pair of jeans. A decent sized NASA logo adorned the center of the sweatshirt. James looked at her bright blue eyes, noticing how they shone with intelligence. All her bright blues and yellow hair made her stand out against the sea of reds and grays around her.

      “You're the new student, James right?” she asked, her eyes peering up near, but not exactly at, his with curiosity.

      “Yeah, nice to meet you,” he said while holding out his hand. She took it and shook his hand. James was surprised by how soft her grip was. Despite her obvious intelligence and demeanor, she was clearly someone with less physical strength than it looked like she had, even while looking so petite.

      “I’m Emma by the way. I was instructed to guide you around here and help you throughout the day. I'm sorry if it's not the best, shockingly, we don't exactly get many new students in this thriving metropolis up here” She said, smiling at her own joke.

      James returned a smile of his own towards her. He remembered how he was told that he was the first new student in the last five years.

      “How much were you told about the school,” she asked while motioning for him to follow her out of the lobby and into the maze of hallways.

      James thought about that for a second. His parents had not really told him much, like normal. He knew that the school was the first of its kind and that the government treated it as some kind of science project, testing students in harsh environments, but that was about it.

      Emma smiled and guessed by his reaction to her question that he sadly did not know much if anything at all.

      “Figures you wouldn't know much. Here at the wonderful North Pole Christain, our school is extremely similar to a normal high school in its workings. Our only major difference is the fact that we can't choose our own classes. We just all go together to the same classes every day with everyone in our grade. It is not too much of a surprise though, we barely have enough kids to fill a single grade after all.”

      James listened to Emma talk about the school as he looked around the school building’s hallway. It was much smaller than the lobby, but at the same time not too small. It was cozy if he had to use a word to describe it. Black lockers lined the hall on his right side, with the top and bottom lockers all numbered, but with no locks on them for some reason. Doors were in between the chunks of lockers, their light wood panels standing out in the sea of gray, even with the red lines running across the top and bottom of the wall.

      At the end of the hall, Emma pushed open one of the doors. The door looked like any other he had seen, with its polished wood shining in the artificial light. As they headed in, he looked around the room. Like the rest of the building, it was predominantly gray, with splashes of other things in the room. Philosophy posters lined the walls, with giant filled bookshelves in the back on either side of the door. There were around thirty kids in the room, all around his age. They were seated in rows around a big whiteboard in the front of the room. The desks, like everything else, had grey tops with shiny metal stands holding them up. Next to the board was a grey desk. A Marvel poster was on the front, adding a tiny bit of personality to the room.

      “Liking the absolutely colorful rainbow,” Emma asked as she walked in beside him with a hint of sarcasm in her voice. If I remember right, your desk is over there” she said, pointing toward an empty desk near the only window in the room.

      He sat down in the seat, and because he had no supplies, looked at the front of the classroom. The person in front of him, sensing a disturbance behind him, turned around to see what had happened.

      He was a redhead, and a mischievous one at that, James thought to himself. His shaggy, normally cut hair lined his white skin. His skin was densely populated with freckles all over, from his face to his arm, on every inch of bare skin he could see, which was not a lot due to the completely understandable dress code the school had. It was one of the reasons James was ok with going to North Pole Christian. James was smart enough to know that seeing a woman's shoulder is satanic after all. While James thought about the dress code, the redhead’s blue eyes looked at him curiously. He wore a red shirt, which was a little darker than his hair, with some fast looking sports car on it.

      “You must be the new student,” He said while putting his freckled hand out. “I’m Noah.”

      James shook his hand. Interested in the rest of the class, he looked around. He noted the variety of people in the room. He turned back to Noah, who had started speaking to him again.

      “Next to me over here is Trey, and on the other side of me is Rebecca.”

      James looked at them both. Trey was wearing a basketball jersey with purple stripes and a yellow base. The word Bryant was printed on the back. He matched the jersey with a pair of black athletic shorts. His face was athletic in nature, with brown eyes, and windblown brown hair, just long enough that you could see his perm. Rebecca had what looked to be almost an afro, but not one at the same time. With her dark brown hair that matched her skin. Her brown eyes shone with intensity as she nodded in a polite greeting.

      “So what's it like here?” James asked

      “It's not too different from a normal school. I would say the biggest thing is that we are all a lot closer as a class than we would be in a normal school. I remember back at my old school…”

      Noah put his hand to his chin, as if deep in thought. “That's weird.”

“Hey, are you ok?” James asked. He didn't want someone to have an issue in front of him on his first day.

      “No, I'm fine. Just had something on my mind. Anyway, It's a lot of fun here. I'm sure you will get used to it quickly.” Noah said, regaining his composure.

      As James went to talk more, the door opened again as the teacher, a lanky man with a beard, walked in and then up to the board. He wrote the words “Dr. Green.”

      He then turned to the class. “Hello class, and welcome to another year at North Pole Christian. As you all know, we have a new student this year.” He pointed to James.

      James stood up. “Why is there so much attention on me?” He thought sheepishly as all the heads in the room turned towards him.

      James sat down as Mr. Green continued to speak.

      “I’m expecting you all to teach James how things work around here, and for you to keep the rules yourselves. I know you all know these by heart, but in summary, just remember to keep the seven p.m. curfew and to not look outside after that time.”

      James glanced around the room, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “Why can’t we look outside?” He looked at everyone and eventually caught Emma’s eye. She looked at him with a “tell you later” look, then went back to her book.

      He noticed that while everyone was fervently looking at the teacher, Emma was relaxed, reading the textbook, almost like she was working ahead on the first day of school. James put that thought aside. There was no way anyone, especially anyone out here, was that hard of a worker.

      After their class was dismissed, James walked straight over to Emma, wanting to ask about these illusions, and why there was a seven p.m curfew. He tapped her on the shoulder. Emma turned around with no sign of surprise as if she had been expecting this.

      “You want to know what he meant, right?” she asked James.

      James nodded his head.

      “First of all, the curfew is not really a curfew. It does not mean we have to go to bed then, we’re just confined to the dorms at that time. Have you seen the dorms yet?”

      “No,” said James, “I didn’t even know we had dorms to be honest.”

      Emma laughed at that. “Seriously, I knew that you said no one told you much of anything, but to think you didn’t even know about the dorms. What did you think, that you would walk back to the base camp in the negative twenty degree weather every day? Besides, did you somehow not notice that all your luggage was delivered here?”

      She had a point, James thought. He knew that his luggage was not at his house. He had freaked out when he couldn’t find his anime disc collection and his anime body pillow. After all, it was his most important possession. It would make sense that his possessions would be here. It’s not like his father would tell him anything.

      “Okay, that makes sense, but why only seven p.m.?” He asked. That seemed early.

      “Because of the darkness. We are in, you know, the north pole. It’s not exactly a sunny tropical paradise around here.”

      Again, she had a point.

      “But what about the illusions, what the heck are those?”

      Emma looked at him seriously for the first time.

      “It depends. There have been reports of several different things like shadows and markings. There are several other reports of things that have actually been seen by people. I know people who have seen elves and reindeer. One person even said that they saw a walking nutcracker out there. It’s super weird.”

      “What are you saying?”

      James looked at her with disbelief, no way what she was saying could be true. “You have to be lying to me here. I know we're in the north pole and all, and I know ‘Santa’ lives here and all that, but there is no way that something like that is true.”

      “It’s true,” Emma said with a completely serious face. “And that's not even close to the weirdest fact about the illusions. It really gets weird when you consider the fact that they get more and more frequent the closer you get to Christmas, and rapidly drop off after the New Year for whatever reason. I know some people who have said that they have even seen what looked to be Sants Claus on Christmas Eve, albeit a warped version of him.”

      “Warped?”

      “A nightmarish thing,” said Emma, “Apparently it’s Santa, but he is extremely skinny, and apparently had a malicious aura around him.”

      “Don't be ridiculous” said James in disbelief. “I thought they were normal, but these people have to be freaking crazy,” He thought to himself. “Also there's no way it’s Santa, who believes in him at our age, I mean, I have not even believed in him since 8th grade.”

      “8th grade… huh… “ Emma looked at him, trying her absolute hardest to keep a straight face for some reason that James did not understand. “Does she still believe in Santa or something?” he thought curiously.

      “Anyway,” Emma said to get the conversion back on track, “It’s true. I've seen the illusions, or so they’re called myself. Everyone in the class has. Trust me, you will see them tonight when you look outside.”

      “Why would I look outside? I mean, we were told not to”

      Emma laughed at his obliviousness. “Yeah, and you think we just obediently listen like sheep? Like I said earlier, everyone has seen them before. Also, if the school really cared enough to do something, we wouldn't have access to the windows in the dorms, especially the ones in our rooms.”

      James had to admit she had a point, but he was determined that she was still pulling his leg, or was crazy.

      “Ding Dong” Went the bell, singling the start of the next class

      “Crap,” said Emma, annoyed that she had been talking for too long. “Hey, I’ll talk to you about it later. It wouldn't look the best to be too late on your first day,” she said as she walked away, heading to their next class.

      James followed her quick pace, wondering about the crazy things she had just said. He thought about the illusions that she had been talking about “No way those are real, it must just be a joke” he thought. Still, it tugged at the back of his mind. From his admittedly brief impression of Emma, while she had a major sense of sarcasm and extremely dry humor, she was not exactly the type of person to come up with some crazy joke like this, or support someone else in carrying the joke. He thought back to the people in the class he had met before. While he could have seen Trey and Noah doing something like this, no way Emma and Rebecca would, much less Dr. Green. Especially with how introverted, but friendly he seemed. James felt he couldn't put up that serious persona if he didn’t believe it was true.

      “Everyone here must just be crazy,” James said to himself as he got to the next classroom, and entered it with more curiosity than before.