Up on the Rooftop by Kristine Grayson

That’s arithmetic. But he needed to shut up now. He needed to stop talking and let her say something.
    “Math is a phenomenal thing,” Julka was saying. “You can represent it with sticks on the simplest level—you know, one-plus-one-equals-two kinda thing. Then math starts getting really complex, and you have to imagine it and sometimes you have to trust it, and there are pockets of it and corners of it that no one understands at all.”
    His breath caught. She did know math. Not arithmetic. Math .
    “I have a hunch, if you come back home with me, you’ll find some people who can explain the math and the science to you. It’s elegant.” She glanced at what looked like several old-fashioned TV sets, but through one of them, he could see the neighborhood. He could see his driveway.
    Delbert was missing. Was that important?
    “You’re telling me that it’s not magic. It’s science.” Marshall couldn’t quite keep the sarcasm from his voice.
    “I seem to recall reading a book when I was a kid that said that all science looks like magic to those who don’t understand it,” Julka said.
    She was quoting Arthur C. Clarke. A science-fiction writer. One of Marshall’s favorite writers when he was a kid. How long had it been since he had read something for fun?
    How long had it been since he had fun?
    Then he wondered if he was supposed to be wondering that. Was there something in this sleigh/RV/invisible thing that made him think thoughts he didn’t want? That magicked him?
    He sank into a nearby chair. It was large and it smelled of peppermint. He popped out of it quickly.
    “So you’re saying it’s all science,” Marshall repeated.
    “I’m saying I don’t know.” Julka came closer to him. “But what if it is magic and not science? What’s wrong with that?”
    “It’s not possible—”
    “Most things aren’t possible,” she said. “ Bumblebees aren’t possible, yet they exist. Soul mates aren’t possible, yet people always say they found theirs.”
    She bit her bottom lip as if she had said something she hadn’t planned on saying.
    Soul mates. His parents said they were each other’s soul mates and believed it too. He had done the math on that as well, and figured with billions of people on Earth that the odds of finding the one person who suited you were—well, billions to one. So he figured (but he never said to his parents) that everyone had a bunch of soul mates, and it was all chemical, and none of that explained the look in Julka’s eyes.
    The anticipation, with a bit of fear. The fact that her pupils were slightly dilated which, he had learned in some long-ago biology class, was a sign of attraction.
    And it didn’t explain how it bothered him to hurt her or to upset her or how he just wanted to take her hands in his and pull her forward and kiss her silly.
    He’d never done anything that bold in his entire life.
    “Why did you bring me here?” he asked softly.
    She shrugged and looked away. “I was going to get in trouble anyway.”
    “For what?”
    She bowed her head. “Fraternizing.”
    “With me?”
    “With anyone who wasn’t, you know, someone I had to talk to, like one of the employees at Burger King.”
    Marshall frowned. “You’d get in trouble for talking to me. Why?”
    “We have illusions to keep up,” she said, head still down, voice almost a whisper. “The entire world thinks Santa does this alone.”
    No, Marshall wanted to say, we’re taught that he has elves. And then Marshall realized that they were taught about the elves in the workshop , not elves outside of the workshop. Not elves on the rooftops of Connecticut.
    “You were scouting out chimneys,” he said, less as a question and more as a realization.
    “No, not exactly,” she said. “I’m tasked with looking for the best entry locations on the proper houses.”
    Corporate speak. She was actually using corporate speak.
    “How big is this organization?” Marshall asked.
    She shrugged. “I